Dispelling

I’ve been having a look back over my posts over the last few weeks and it struck me I’ve not mentioned my primary topic; priests, nothing, nada, not a drop.  Possibly something to do with priestly ways being done to death by the blogsphere until the next patch drops, and possibly something to do with me playing alts more, and being generally slack…. so in an attempt to redress the balance a little, here we go, a post on dispelling for Shadow (and any other) Priests.

Dispelling (and decursing or curing poison etc. I’ve decided I’m going to use dispel from now on to cover every generic kind of ‘remove something’ simply for my sanity, don’t come whining to me ok… deal with it) like interrupts have made a bit of a resurgence since Cata, yes they were used in previous versions of WOW, but I can’t ever remember an occasion when they were needed so heavily.  Yes, back in the days of Molten Core and Lucifron as a mage(which I was at the time) you’d find yourself decursing 40 people.  Back when decursive was ‘legal’ you simply mashed the button 40 times and carried on.  Then it was outlawed and there was uproar; dispelling classes would have to do more than just mash keys, oh the pain!! to placate people (I assume, or perhapse they realised that, actually, selectively dispelling tens of people was quite hard, and actually VERY dull).  Blizzard introduced mass descurse/spell/poison Prior to Cata there was the occasional boss fight which required this, but it was occasional, and it was generally restricted to raids, not 5 mans, and you’d generally have a designated mass dispeller who did nothing but dispel.  In Cata, as a healing priest, I constantly find myself dispelling nasty crap, even on trash, to mitigate healing needs, there’s some quite nasty stuff which gets thrown about.  In Grim Batol, Throngus really needs to be dispelled, the end boss, Asaad, in Vortex Pinacle is one example who requires the use of mass dispel, and a whole host of others.

Gone are the days when dispelling was the sole responsibility of one unfortunate in a raid, and gone are the days when only the healers are responsible for dispelling.  I still occasionally see the ‘we always used to do it that way’ from the DPS, but I’ve found more and more that when I’m shadow, I need to dispel to help my healer out.  It’s quite polarising actually, the good DPS players tend to be those ones who know how to use their classes secondary abilities like interrupt, dispel, and to some extent crowd control (though most classes have had some form of crowd control for years so are generally quite comfortable with it).

I use healbot when I’m healing, binding my most used healing spells to direct mouse clicks, my lesser used spells with a shift-click and my dispel abilities an alt-click.  I replicate this across my alts, so on my druid my most usual heal is the left click, my ‘panic’ heal is shift right click, my dispel mechanic is alt-click and so on, this really helps (I find) with the muscle memory.  I used to disable healbot when I was playing DPS to give me more screen space, but recently I’ve kept it active so I can see when people need dispelling; if the healer is doing it (and not struggling) I’ll ignore them and melt away.  If we’re having problems then theres an easy indication both because the debuffs are highlighted and I can see peoples health bars more clearly. 
I’ve actually since re-skinned healbot so it’s not so big when I’m playing DPS, I still have all of the same keys bound so I can not only dispel, but also drop out of shadow form and start healing if I’m needed.
More generally, I’m not a big fan of mass dispel (in heroics) there’s for the bosses like Asad in Vortex Pinnacle where several classes can get out themselves, and anyone with any nouse is able to jump to avoid the debuff in the first place so dispel is simply used to pick up the stragglers.  In most other scenarios its simply a case of knowing the debufs that mobs dish out on knowing whether they’re worth getting rid of; for instance a melee speed debuf on a caster can be left.  This has got me wondering if there's any intelligence built in to healbot (or any other mod) or any other add to tell you if you really need to dispel someone.  I’ll have to break Google out when I get home.  Clearly in raids it’s a different story, its a case of choosing the most efficient method, be it mass or point dispelling. 

I think my point is, as a class who can dispel, you should always look to dispel, if possible, (and beneficial) whether you’re the healer or DPS; don’t assume someone else will do it, they’re probably assuming you will.  Know your debuffs too! know what might be coming, and be ready to deal with it.  Oh and when some muppet spams the DPS meter at you, spam the interrupt / dispel count back at them.

How I roll

I’ve finally got round to adding a blogroll, to the site (see the right hand menu), something I’ve been meaning to do for ages, but never quite got round to it until I was having a look at my referral stats over the weekend (you know I’m a stats whore..) and had my conscience pricked as I seem to be making it on to the blogrolls of the occasional other blogger (my regular reader need to take note: you’re no longer the only one).

I thought rather than just stick it up unannounced I’d prattle on talk a little about why some of them are on there.  Firstly my main port of call, and probably the initial reason I started reading blogs; WOW Insider, it’s moved about a bit over the years as it’s become bigger and bigger (and possibly a tad more commercial), and is the only blog which I know about which can boast coverage of every class and every spec and a whole host of other regular columns.  Fox Van Allen is the regular Shadow Priest author, Dawn Moore the Holy (and Disc)  and both talk an enormous amount of sense (generally).  Seriously, if you’re regularly reading WOW blogs and haven’t heard of these guys you’re not doing it right.

One of the first blogs I click on when catching up on the rss feed is Divine Aeigis, with two main authors, Lyria and Lilitharien with regular posts focusing on the pro’s and con’s and the use of specific priest abilities, raiding, up and coming developments and patches, its a must read for me.  Next Comes the Stories of O, written by Oestrus,  who until very recently had jumped ships and was authoring for Divine Aegis.  Oestrus is now back on the one blog and covering similar types of topics to Divine Aegis but is often found branching out to druid (branching! geddit?? ), shaman, and paladin healing to take more of a generic look at all things healing.

The Greedy Goblin is a strange sort of blog, Gevlon strikes me as a pretty hardcore player of WOW and his views are often quite extreme, and polarise the blog community; just have a read of some of the comments on his more controversial posts if you don't believe me.  The blog is extremely  ‘elite’ player focussed and Gevlon spends a lot of time ‘helping’ morons and slackers ‘improve’.  I’ve included a commentary on this blog specifically because it stands out as one of the prime reason why people should blog; Whilst his views aren’t always popular, or in line with my own, Gevlon generally makes good, well balanced arguments, comments are (understandably I suppose) pre vetted by Gevlon as I would imagine he gets a fair few abusive comments, but to his enormous credit, he always seem to post critical comments (by critical I mean “I don’t agree, and here’s why…” comments, not “this post is crap…” the latter I would consider abuse).  I’ve seen some excellent debates go on in the comments of the posts here as a result, and I’ve taken inspiration for a number of my own posts as a result of reading posts or comments here.

Moving from the more niche focussed blogs to, well, random, we have Pugnacious Priest, I’m sure some time in the distant past this blog was more focussed around priests, now it’s at best loosely priest focussed, but is still an excellent and entertaining read.  Larissa and her Pink Pigtail Inn is another one of these blogs that I wouldn’t class as having a specific focus, taking a look at wow from the perspective of a raider, gives an enthralling commentary on the thoughts of Larissa on WOW and the Blogsphere.  with the added bonus that Tamarind, who was recently lost to the blogsphere, occasionally stops by with a guest post.

I also couldn’t write a post like this without mentioning two of the blogs and bloggers that have, for whatever reason, stopped blogging.  Misery written by Merlot which was loosely based around his shadow priest but encompassed an excellently articulated commentary on WOW.  And then there was Righteous Orbs, written by Tamarind, an excellent,well thought out, and thoroughly engaging blog.  Both of these guys decided to hang up their pen about the time I stared putting my ramblings down in prose and I do hope both will have a change of heart soon (though as I mentioned above Tam does occasionally pop up else where, but its just not enough).

Well there's a seemingly random sample of the blogs I read, there are loads more, but I think I’ve prattled on for long enough.  My blogroll will contain only  blogs which I genuinely read and wont be an attempt to get more links.  Rather topically I received an email from some random as I was half way through writing this post “I really like your blog ‘pleasefeedthetroll’ would you be willing to exchange blogroll inks….” yada yada yada.  Looking at the ‘blog’ it was clearly nothing to do with WOW, or actually anything in particular and just survived on trading links with other spam blogs.  I almost replied “certainly, if you can tell me one thing about the content of my blog”, but sensibly decided to consign it to the spam trap instead.  Hey ho….

10-man went to Maloriak

So I was milling around last night, minding my own business running a heroic when a little whisper pops up in my chat box from a guildie "have you done BWD this week?" I explained I still don't raid so clearly haven't, to which the reply comes "would you like to?" Now one of the reasons I don't currently do any raid instances is I have commitments on every evening my guild raids. Mondays I'm generally playing badminton, but as (bad) luck would have it I've sprained my wrist so was unable to play last night. As it turns out, this was a 10-man with a different guild, they are a smallish guild and struggle to make up the numbers on some nights so had invited this guildy along on a number of previous occasions (my guild has no issue with alts and casuals running 10-mans with PUGs) so I finished up the heroic and jumped in. There ended up being 3 Camelids in the raid; we started at the 3^rd boss, Maloriak, in BWD, this was their first ever pull of him, I quickly scooted round Org pulling together mats for a few potions and flasks, jumped on their Vent server, and took the summon to the instance. Their guild leader took the time to carefully explain the strategy, from the way he described it he'd clearly been there a few times, but wasn't overly sure of what he was saying for other roles than his own, as he ran through the strategy I had wow wiki up checking off its guide and making my own crib notes. I was one of three healers, a Paladin, my friend another (Disc) priest, and me. It turns out the fight was pretty simple for a healer, or specifically me, I was assigned to AOE healing so most of the usual spells in the kit bag went out of the window – I assigned Circle of Healing and Prayer of Healing to alt-mouse clicks in Healbot (I normally use key binds for them in instances as they're not as useful as the direct healing spells).

As I said the healing is pretty straight forward, there's no crap on the floor to avoid, the only complexity in the fight for me was the three vial stages (he throws a vial into a cauldron which initiates different abilities), red blue and green; red meant grouping up in the middle and sticking down a few big AOE heals, occasionally running out of the group if you get a debuff. Blue meant spreading out, basically mana conservation and watching out for characters which got ice blocked in order to sling a few heals their way, and the green stage which was pretty easy healing. The phase struck me as being all about mana conservation later in the fight. The lighwell went down, amazingly it got clicked, lots, and I was struck by how good the raid leader was on vent at communicating what was going on and what people should be doing, typically I copped the first red debuff, untypically I noticed straight away, and was already running when the call came over Vent for me to move out. After the first fight ended, which was a bit of a blur in all, having gone reasonably well (30 something % I think) I had a chat with my other priest who told me in no uncertain terms that I needed to concentrate on AOE heals more and forget the direct heals – I protested explaining that there was very little raid damage and the tank was copping it, hence the skew towards direct heals and muttering something along the lines of "healings not just about the numbers". He was having none of it and politely told me to shut up and do as he said… The next pull my healing output went up, my mana conservation down, and a feeling that my effectiveness was lessened, I also suffered from three consecutive debuffs in the red phase which had me running round doing very little healing. The raid wiped because the main tank went down, I smugly announced over whisper that "I could have saved him, but you told me not to use direct heals…" (Clearly this wasn't true, I'm not that much of a dick, I was out of mana, but I do like winding people up).

We went through the motions a few more times, the raid got progressively better, as did my healing output, and more importantly my own feeling of how I was performing. On the meters I was on a par if slightly behind the Pally and ¾ of that of my fellow priest which was to be expected as my gear is pants in comparison; most importantly I felt m performance improved, to the extent that I was never in danger of going oom, with at least one CD or pot left until something went wrong like a tank dying. Unfortunately I was only able to stay for two hours, the final two pulls were very close and I had the feeling that Maloriak would be downed very soon, but alas I had a stupid-o'clock train to catch, which I'm writing this from now BEFORE 8am, so I had to leave them to it. All in all a great night, a large flasks bill, a large repair bill, and a few new friends, well worth it.

It’s not easy being a priest

I first realised I might have a little bit of an alotoholicism problem last week when I stepped back and had a look at the number of alts I have. I'm in the position now where I have 3 characters at 85, two of which (Priest and Mage) have been through tens of heroics, one which (the DK) is on his way to being reasonably geared, so I can safely say I know quite well. I've the druid which is late 60's and a Hunter Warrior and Warlock all in their 60's that I must confess I haven't played at all (yet!) since returning to WOW, a Rogue and Paladin in the 30's and the Shaman that I created but haven't played purely to make up the numbers. That's nine out of the ten classes I've spent playing, when you consider the different specs too, I reckon it's about 16 different class / spec combinations I've played, clearly some of those experiences are out of date since Cata hit as the play styles on most classes have changed significantly but you get the picture.

I was running a good few heroics over the weekend on my mage and DK as we had guild healers available, and then swapping to the priest with many of the same group. We were taking it easy and chatting as we went, when it struck me how much more involved the Priest is to play; on the mage I play a fire spec, I can easily kick out 12k DPS on regular occasion, with pretty poor gear, all that's needed is Living Bomb and Fireball till your heart's content, with a quick scorch to begin with, and looking out for Pyroblast and Fireblast procs; there's a little bit of complexity in choosing the correct spells for crowd dps, and the cool downs, but nothing overly challenging. Contrast this to the Priest, as DPS you've got three dots to keep up on the mob, your own buff to refresh, providing you have shadow orbs to be able to, Mind Flay to ensure you don't clip, SW:D to bring into the equation when the mob is at 25%, and that's before you take into account the cool down spells and when's best to use them. Cross over from the dark side and take a look at healing and it's even more complicated! There are a massive 12 healing spells which a holy priest may use in general play, another 4 occasional and "oh shit" type spells, and a further 12 situation specific spells, like Dispel Magic, which may or may not be added into the mix for a given encounter, add to this the different usage profiles of these spells, depending on what Chakra state you're in, the very fact you can now cancel Chakra after 30 seconds and recast to another state; it's a nightmare, a great big, fun filled, nightmare! Now don't get me wrong, I love the complexity the priest offers and the learning curve for playing it, anyone can pick up a priest, either healing or DPSing, but it takes a long time to master it.

Now I'm being a bit unfair to Mages in comparing them to healing Priests, I've always said tanking is harder (to master) than healing, and my experiences on the Death Knight over the last week certainly back that up, and healing is harder than straight forward DPS. But just taking the DPS comparison, looking at my first heroic with both classes, the Priest kicked out about 5k, the Mage was touching on 10k. Even on the healing front, I've been running through the old instances on my Druid, and am now getting to the stage where the instances are becoming difficult to heal (i.e. a Rogue with a few bandages and a bottle of magic spray couldn't do it) and I can't believe how simple the choices are, basically it's a hot, and a small heal (read Renew and Heal equivalents), a big heal for when things go wrong, a PoH equivalent and a reverse Holy Word: Serenity type spell (in that it removes a HoT and adds a big heal, plus an AOE healing circle on the ground, as opposed to making the next heals better with a Priest). Admittedly I'm not at 85 yet, so it might get more complex, but looking at the spell list on wowhead I doubt it's going to be that much different.

Actually the most difficult class I've played to pick up is the Death Knight, Tanking especially, but even on the DPS front; you're instantly presented with a million and one different diseases and abilities, with Runes and Runic Power to bring in, and none of the normal early learning curve as you don't start from level 1, fortunately I had a friendly guild DK, who I'll be eternally grateful to, who explained that it was more about priorities of sorts, than a true DPS (or tanking) rotation. Once you get to grips with the DK's abilities it's a lot more straight forward, it's not the face rolling it used to be by any means, but it's not hugely taxing. Of the other classes I've played, Hunters are pretty straight forward, ahem auto shot ahem, Warlocks are just wannabe Mage's with DoTs and a self-harming problem, Rogues just stab things in a similar vein to Cat Form Druids (but with knives I suppose) Paladins have it a bit harder (from memory) and warriors were a set key mashing order. Clearly if you're Tanking (well) on any of the classes which can, it takes a lot of ability, but as healing or DPS goes, I can't think of a harder (or more fun) class to play than a priest. But perhaps I'm biased? Go on tell me I'm wrong!


 

Shadow priest guide up and running

I don't think it'll show up in RSS feeds, so this is a little post to say there's a shadow priest guide page been added to the site, you can access it here or via the links across the top of the page under the banner. I'll be pulling together an equivalent holy post sometime soon, but it took a lot of effort to write and edit so don't expect it too soon. If anyone wants to see anything more over and above these on the site, or has more general comments on the content in the guide please leave a comment or email me.

The reason behind this guide is the abysmal state of information I've seen on the interweb about shadow priests, with incorrect, incomplete, cluttered, and out of date information confusing the hell out of people (including me). I've tried to keep the information minimal and to the point and will be endeavouring to keep it up to date, or at least marking it as out of date if I'm being slack.

Prime Position

One of the main aspects of learning to do heroics and rad in Cata is players' awareness of their surroundings and their positional play (i.e. not standing in crap). Now I'm the first to admit my positional play hasn't always been that good, not bad, but not as good as it should be, and I've made a concerted effort since I came back to sort it out. Those of you reading my last blog entry will know that I've rolled a druid alt for a bit of fun; now originally I went balance and restro for my specs as I've never really got on with melee classes, but last night I decided that balance wasn't the easiest way to roll a druid so gave it a go.

The first thing which struck me about running instances with a melee class (ok, I was supposed to be healing…) is that you instantly look up from your cast bars / healing addon, stop playing whack-a-mole and start to take notice of the world around you. I think there are two reasons for this; firstly, as melee, you're position for DPS / survival is far more important, you're far more likely to get tail-swiped, flame-breathed, or a multitude of other nasty's. You obviously need to stay in melee range, obviously, which is more difficult than staying in casting range, and your abilities may also depend on you being positioned behind the mob. Secondly, most of the main melee abilities (certainly of a druid, and a number of the other melee classes I've dabbled with) don't have cooldowns, there's a set priority of abilities to use, all of which I've been using in auto-pilot mode from keybinds, yes there are some big DPS boosts from abilities with longer cooldowns, but by definition, you're not looking down at your cast bar to find them that often.

Contrast this with my priest, firstly as a healer. First and foremost (in a heroic 5-man) I'm looking at the health of the tank, is it high enough, does he have a renew active, do I need to cast a direct heal to refresh it? Are the other party members healthy, if not can I heal them without killing the tank? Have I got Chakra up? Which Chakra state do I need next? Does anyone need decursing? WILL YOU PLEASE CLICK THE LIGHTWELL, which is the best healing spell, or combination of spells from the choice of 50-odd I have to use next? Hang on, why is my health bar dropping faster than Andy Gray's popularity with the ladies? Oh shit, I'm stood in crap….

With the shadow priest it's not quite as difficult, but still demanding, is SW:P up, does it need a MF to refresh it, what about DP and VT, do I have an Orb up to cast MB, is the mob below 25% health for a bit of SW:D lovin? Plus the numerous cooldowns that are crucial to maintaining DPS – I'm generally thinking at least two or three spells ahead at any one time.

Probably wrongly, traditionally the last thing on my mind has been movement. I put this down in some part to my past raiding experience back in the day; yes you occasionally needed to move to get in range, but it's rare as a ranged caster that I'd have been standing in crap, or had to move quickly, in any of the Vanilla WoW raid instances.

Where is this all going I hear you ask, well here it is, I've spent a couple of hours playing a melee druid in instances, and already I've noticed a marked improvement to my positional play and awareness of what's going on around me. I've only managed one heroic since then but even there I noticed my reaction times with the movement keys was a lot sharper. The moral of the story, well, if you're struggling with avoiding crap, or just general awareness of the world around you, why not roll yourself a melee class and see how the other side lives. It won't instantly make you pro, but it can't hurt? Can it?

Every Little Counts

When you know you're going to be tight on mana for a boss fight either because you're still improving your gear or the guys you're healing aren't capable of not standing in the crap, there are a few things you can do to help yourself out.

Making sure you have mana potions handy is the first thing to look at, there are a number of different favours useable depending on the situation allowing you to instantly recoup 10k mana with a Mythical Mana Potion, or 22k with a Potion of concentration providing you can spare 10 seconds to use it.

Look at the makeup of your group, a warlock has health stones which are a must, someone healing themselves is a mana saving for you. A shadow priest can help out with shielding and is far better equipped to regen the mana than you, arcane mages can buff your crit rating with Focus Magic etc. Aim to know the details of all of the other classes in the game and work out how you complement each other.

One thing which may not be so obvious for a healer is first aid, if you need a heal, but you're not desperate, then a bandage is a far more efficient way of doing it. Common sense needs to be employed, but there's definitely a time and place for bandages.

Now we come to pre-casting spells, I regularly do this and it can save around 10% of your mana bar. Lightwell is the obvious one, get this down before the fight and make sure it's well positioned. I generally follow this with a Renew on the tank, Chakra, Heal, Prayer of Mending and a power word shield for good measure. You can then sit down and drink as the tank pulls and be full mana before he takes any damage, it also gives you a little grace to get into position before the tank gets squashed. A word of warning, if it's a PUG, whisper your tank and explain what you're doing, there's no point doing all of this if the tank instantly charges in or sits there waiting for the spell effects to wear off.

None of this replaces players ability, and those players who don't take damage by doing silly things will always be easier to heal. As my year has got better I've found I need to do this less and less, but it's good to have it in your locker.

WARNING ahead be beasties!

A funny thing happened to me last night, I decided pratting around on a low level alt was preferable to grinding herbs while watching the footy, and after a few quests I found myself in the dungeon finder for a low level dungeon. After about three seconds I was healing in Gnomeragon; my low level equivalent to Grim Batol, I remember many an evening wasted in this horrible place. As with all the low level dungeons it's a damn site easier than it used to be and we set of killing things.

About 5 minutes in we were jumping down to ground level to get to the first boss, if you know the place you'll know where I mean, when the shadow priest in our group hurtled past me and face planted into the ground. We pressed on to the first boss, without her as it's so easy, midway through the fight I noticed the same happened again. Third time lucky with the boss dead and we set off on trash towards the next boss where I noticed a funny noise… it was the sound of a wand being fired!! Looking round in amazement I saw a shadow priest with full mana waving their wand about! I have to admit, my mouse cursor hovered over the vote kick button momentarily, but then I stopped, and I'm glad I did; it's not like me to be quite so trigger happy so after having a word with myself I politely whispered the priest "can I ask why you're using your wand?" I was half expecting a "BECAUSE I R L33T" type answer followed by a torrent of abuse, but to my surprise her response was along the lines of "because I have one, is it wrong?" so a brief conversation later and she was sticking DoTs up properly and Mind Flaying away. We ended up chatting all the way through the instance where I found she was new to WoW (to the tune of 2 or 3 days), having moved from another MMO with her husband, both seemed to be struggling to get to grips with the deluge of information and things to learn.

This struck a few cords with me having recently returning to the game after a long absence, I felt overwhelmed at times, even finding where my mounts had gone, or where the guild roster had gone was a problem (why the hell was that ever moved of the social panel??? Nonsensical!). I still remember wandering round Silverpine Forest after I followed a friend to my first instance, not having a clue where I was or how to get home(no it wasn't last month).

We ended up staying in the same party (she was from a different server) and chatting some more and, I hopefully, gave her some pointers to getting to grips with the game, and I said I'd post a few pointers here as it'll help her out, and double my readership in one swoop, everybody's happy! I'm going to focus on priests, but I guess most of what I write will be applicable to all, here goes:

Starting Areas

When you first create your character you'll find yourself in a starting zone, this is a 'safe' area with low level mobs where you'll be drip fed your first few spells and abilities to help you learn the ropes. Depending on the race you choose you'll start in different areas so if you want to start with a fellow 'Newbie' from the very start make sure you choose players from the same race; if you're the same faction you'll be able to meet up later, but if one choses horde and one alliance you'll never be able to play together.

Zones

As a troll priest (hadn't you guessed by now?) I started in Durotar which has Orgrimmar, the main Horde city in the game to the North, if you start here you'll quickly progress to the Northern Barrens where the main town is the Cross Roads you will generally meet other Taurens. If you chose one of the other races, undead for example, you'll find yourself on another continent, it used to be the case that the quest chains naturally took you to the Cross Roads, but nowadays you'll get so much experience so quickly it'll be possible to skip the Northern Barrens all together.

Travel

You can get about the world in a number of ways, it's improved vastly from Vanilla Wow back in the old days, you can walk (clearly) or at level 20 (it used to be level 40) buy a mount to speed things along. Pretty much every outpost also now has a windrider which, once discovered, allows you to fly from point to point more quickly. There's also a Zeppelin (and sometimes boat) system at most of the major cities and ports which will let you move between the continents, generally the questing system will introduce you to these gradually, but I've found my level getting so far ahead of the quests I'm having to skip whole zones.

Levelling

You can gain experience (XP) to increase your level in a number of ways, the two main ones are questing and in instances (you'll also get quests to go to instances which give you additional benefit). You'll also get an XP boost from things like herb gathering, mining, exploring new zones and a number of other things, but I'd stick to questing and instances.

For quests stick to stuff which appear as green or yellow in your log, anything that's grey is too easy and will glean too little XP, anything which is red will be far too difficult. As a rule of thumb, if you can't kill three mobs simultaneously (from full mana and health) then you're probably in a zone which is too hard. If you're finding most of the quests are grey, look to move on to a harder zone.

Talent Spec

Specs have got a bit easier in my opinion since WoW, once you stick one point in one of the three trees available you're locked to that tree until you've spent 31 points. You'll get a new point every other level, or there abouts for the first few levels then you'll start picking up a point every level, you'll nicely get told of the new spells and talents available to you as you hit each new level.

The only real choice for levelling is shadow (you're not suck with this, and you can change at any time, plus you'll get dual specs which allow you to easily change between roles at later levels but we won't worry about that now).

There are a few mandatory choices in shadow, (actually there's a lot of mandatory talents), as a rule go for things which will improve the amount of damage you're going to do, some are obvious, some are not.

The main thing to aim for is shadow form, but before you can get that you need to open up the higher tiers by picking lower ranked talents.

I'd go for improved shadow word pain 2/2,

then Darkness 3/3, this will open the second tier,

next Twisted faith 2/2 this increases your damage and also converts spirit to hit. I won't go into the full reasons for needing hit here, but basically if you don't hit you don't do damage, there's little or no hit gear at low levels hence this is an excellent levelling talent.

Then improved devouring plague 2/2, this is a big source of damage and is important to have

You'll now have 1 point left to open shadow form, I'd go for improved mind blast
1/1, it's not a great damage spell any more, but it's useful for a buff it gives you when combined with shadow orbs (again more advanced than we really need to be going here)

This will give you shadow form with your next point, and you should have a tree something like this http://www.wowhead.com/talent#bZZG0Rd I'll leave the rest to you, the 'cookie cutter' DPS build for all shadow priests is http://www.wowhead.com/talent#bcZZGbGdMzrd0fo and if you follow this you won't go far wrong for levelling. There's a good guide to levelling builds and other stuff here http://www.wowwiki.com/Priest_builds if you want to read more

Spells and how to use them.

Make sure you always have Power Word: Fortitude and Inner Fire cast on yourself, for damage your main go-to spells for levelling at low levels should be Shadow Word: Pain, then Mind Flay – just repeat Mind Flay till the mob dies. At level 28 you'll get Devouring Plague, use this as your second spell in addition to the two above. You'll then get Shadow Word: Death at 31, use this to 'execute' mobs when they're low on health – be careful, if you use this and it doesn't kill the mob it will damage you too! When you get to 20 points in the shadow tree, you'll also be able to get Vampiric Touch, get it! This is another DoT and should be cast before Mind Flay as it does a lot of damage.

Stats

You'll notice the gear you pick up has different stats on it, some stats are better than others and some are no use to you what so ever, this differs from class to class, and spec to spec. As a Shadow Priest aim to get gear with intelligence, spell power (there isn't many items with spell power on any more), haste, crit and then spirit (in order of priority). Intellect is roughly twice as important as haste and crit.

You may notice that on your character pane you can expand the tab to till you your hit crit and haste percentages along with a whole host of other stats. You'll also notice that if you find an item at level 1 (for example here) with +10 crit on it it will make a huge difference to your crit percentage, the same item at level 85 would hardly be noticeable. This is called scalling as you go up through the levels you'll need more and more of a particular stat to keep the same percentage – don't worry to much about this for the moment, just try and get as much Int and Haste as you can

Tank? Healer? DPS? WHAT???

If you've ventured into an instance by now, chances are you'll know the difference, if not, you may not have a clue. Basically, there are three broad types of role for characters to play in WoW, all classes can be DPS foucssed, some can heal as well, some can 'tank' as well, some (Druids and Paladins) can do all three. This all depends on your choice of talents, and as a priest you have a choice of DPS or Healing. Now you've obviously been paying attention and have specced shadow haven't you? Good. This means you're DPS, at low levels you can still heal (yourself and in instances) but this will become less and less viable as you move up the levels. Tanks are there to stop us cloth wearers being squashed, if you're in an instance and you keep getting squashed, you either need to google "aggro management" or your tank is crap (or both). The healer is there to apply the magic ointment and tell you you're a brave soldier.

Monsters (mobs) and Elites

there are loads of mobs across WoW, keep an eye on their level (the number next to their picture which appears when you click them), in the same way as quests grey is too easy, and gleans no xp, green and yellow are killable, red is hard, a skull means you'll get murdered.

Look out for a metallic dragon round the picture, this means they're elite (much harder) there are different breeds of elite, bronze, silver and gold, each being harder to kill.

Guilds

Guilds are like minded group of people generally set up with a purpose in mind, some are real life friends, others objective is high end raiding, others levelling or more casual. Look on your realm forums, find one with an ethos which suits your objectives and apply to join, you'll get a wealth of information and knowledge from other players

Other Players

Thankfully I can say the majority of the WoW population are nice, friendly, people. Some however are, how shall we put this? well, arseholes. Because WoW is quite a mature game, most players know it inside out and true 'Newbies' are rare on established realms, this is one of the reasons Blizzard sets up new realms occasionally for new players, the dungeon finder circumvents this so you'll come across players on their sixth alt who expect everyone to be the same and won be very forgiving of mistakes. Generally if you explain you're new to the game, and need a little guidance they'll be fine and help out, occasionally you'll encounter idiots who'll be abusive. Remind them, they were there once, it's just like learning to drive…. It's easy once you know how. Forget about them and move on.

Trade Skills

You can do a whole host of secondary 'stuff' in WoW, if you're out to get involved in everything then trade skills are the thing for you (you can have two primary proffessions), some go well together like herbalism and alchemy, others like enchanting are stand alone. You can level without these and pick them up later, or you can start early. Read up on them before making the choice, some of the assumptions you might make about certain skills will be incorrect. http://www.wowwiki.com/Profession is a good place to start.

Addons

Addons are a big part of WoW, Blizzard has now incorporated most of the good functionality into its standard UI, given how much you need to learn, I'd ignore addons completely until you reach a higher level. Curse gaming (wow.curse.com) and wowinterface (wowinterface.com are the two main sites.



Further reading and searching

http://www.wowwiki.com/Newbie_guide

http://www.wowwiki.com/Starting_a_priest

are both good links to read

WoW Insider is an excellent blog site for everything WoW http://wow.joystiq.com

www.shadowpriest.com is for higher levels and is very in depth

www.elitistjerks.com is another good one for all classes

if you're struggling just head over to google and stick in a search, be careful of the crap from previous releases which are out of date, I tend to start all of my searches "wow cata 4.0" and then whatever I'm searching for, for this reason.



And that's it, I've intentionally skirted over lots of stuff so as not to (overly) confuse, there's lots more to learn than I could ever hope to write here, use your initiative and take time to read around areas and ask friendly players who you've met on the way – they don't bite. If you've found this useful, have questions, or would like to see more detail on anything please leave a comment or tweet me @wow_PFtT. Above all, Have Fun!

Suicidal Tendencies

Spirit of Redemption is a strange talent, I'm not aware of any other talent in any tree of any other class which is similar. It gives you 15 seconds of unlimited healing upon your death (21 glyphed). Why would anyone in their right mind spend a precious point on a talent which is only useable when you're dead? Well I did! And here's why:





In my view there are two reasons why you would spec SoR

1. You're general awareness is pants
   
2. You're general awareness is excellent
   

Now the more mathematically inclined amongst you (possibly statisticians, I don't know) may point out to me that my two reasons encompass all players, not so. The middle ground of not being pants, but not realising quite how SoR could be employed exists, here's a nifty little diagram to summarise my thoughts.

It's not so cut-and-dry, I suppose what I'm saying is all pants players will need it lots, because they've done something silly which has killed them, generally this will result in a wipe, but sometimes it'll be just enough healing to let the group kill whatever needs to be killed. Average players, where most of us sit, will drop the ball occasionally and do silly things too; the more you progress towards the middle ground the less you die, the less you need it? True. And the same has happened to me over the past few weeks, I've considered dropping SoR, but then a funny thing happened to me, we were Fighting Lord Walden in SFK, and I was completely out of mana, all my cooldowns were gone and I'd even popped my mana pot (can you tell the fight was going well?). Four of five of the party were alive and Walden was sub 5 % health, as were most of the party, when the green Toxic Coagulant debuff pops up. Veterans of SFK will know this means move around quickly or die (in fact I quite expect to get several comments of purely qqqqqqqeeeeeeeqqqqqqq just from the natural reaction to strafe at the mention of the green nastiness). Instead of my natural reaction to move immediately, my hand froze; I'm not sure this was intentional at this point or just an admission of defeat, moments later I was in SoR form and healing away again the part were back up to fullish health and Walden was as dead as a manic depressive Warlock with a haste buff. The logic is quite simple, commit Hari-Kari, incur a repair bill and have a chance of killing the boss, or don't do it, definitely incur a repair bill and wipe the party. If I haven't upset those statisticians too much to have left by now, they'll point out that this is simple game theory, which can be explained by a two by two matrix (the MBA graduates weapon of choice)

	Best Case	Worst Case
Suicide	Death & repair bill + loot	Death + Infinite repair bills (more subsequent wipes)
Don't Suicide	Death & repair bill + loot (kill it next time)	Death + Infinite repair bills (more subsequent wipes)

Admittedly you might wipe, reform, and kill the boss next time, but chances are you'll have at least a couple of attempts before succeeding, or calling it a night. Worst case scenario is no worse than not trying it. So in my view, it's worth a shot. I've employed this tactic on two or three occasions since to good success, there's a time and a place for it and it won't always work, but what have you got to lose? That's right, nothing. There are plenty of bosses in Cata which give you the opportunity to do this, so bare it in mind as a last resort. Don't expect to get thanks for doing it, people will just assume you died, so make sure to brag about being better than them if it comes off, or alternatively just keep quiet and sit back with a smug smile on your face knowing that you rock.

Click the Lightwell not to die!

The Lightwell is a funny thing, much maligned when it was introduced back in… actually I can't remember when it was, but let's just say a long time ago. Rightly so, in my opinion, when it was first introduced, the healing it did was negligible, and you had to be stood close enough to lick it to be able to use the damn thing. This relegated it to nothing more than a glorified range marker and subjected it to the derision of most of the WoW world.

Not so any more, HAURRAH I hear you say… the Lightwell ticks for 6 to 8k with average heroic gear three times, with 10 charges unglyphed (15 glyphed), and more importantly is clickable from up to 18 yards away, and EVEN MORE importantly you can use it while you're stunned, blinded, casting and pretty much any other situation you can think of. This means that it is not only a viable healing option but also, if used correctly, COMPLTELEY FREE, simply stick it down before the fight, and watch you're adoring party colleagues heal themselves, only stopping to whisper you and tell you what a good healer you are! Not a chance. It might be the most efficient healing spell in the game, it might be extremely useful given the movement dynamics of most boss fights, but can you hell get people to click it consistently?

I've tried a number of approaches in getting people to see the light, well, click it, with variable success. Guildies are easy, simply scream abuse at them over Vent until they cotton on J but in PUG's it's another matter. I've tried explaining the benefits of the Lightwells wholesome goodness before a boss fight, nothing. I've tried reverse phycology "you won't want to click the Lightwell and stay alive would you?" and much more. Sometimes people cotton on, wither because they're good players already and understand the changes, sometimes they're even better players and have the ability to learn and adapt (these types of players are the best in my view) but mainly they're completely oblivious.

My current approach is to drop a Lightwell on the first trash pull of an instance and explain what it is in a slightly tongue in cheek manner (me sarcastic? Nooooooooonnonono), then drop it at the star of each boss with a macro that announces its existence. I then proceed to spam another macro which yells to "click the Lightwell not to die" at points in the encounter where DPS not being thick would be desirable. Generally this has a reasonable effect, especially when combined with my relentless mocking should we wipe and the Lightwells still up. I've only once had someone take my word literally and click the Lightwell "not to die" BEOFRE the pull!!?! "But you said I had to click it else I would die" I'm still not sure whether this guy was a comedy genius, or a cretin, I'll leave it to you to decide.

I now understand the pain of the Warlocks suffering, not that they don't deserve it, but for years they've been dishing out health stones, only to see them go wasted as the party wipes with the boss on 1% health, again. We're even further disadvantage in that players can't simply sling it on the cast bar and click it, they have to actively search for it on the floor, make sure they're in range, and then click. (Ok, I take it all back, it's far too hard, don't bother even trying to click it…).

I recently experienced a novel approach to 'coaching for performance' (can you tell I work for a large corporate? J) from a healer at the first boss in HoL whilst brushing the dust off my mage and having a run out. "If you're shit and stand in the blue fire, I'm not healing you" again I'm pretty sure it was tongue in cheek, or perhaps he was just as scarred as I am on the stupidity front, whatever, it worked. So I'm tempted to steal his idea and threaten not to heal anyone until they've clicked the Lightwell at least once.

Ideas for improving the use of a Lightwell

• Make macro's to encourage its use and spam them relentlessly.
  
• Keep it friendly, I've found a little humour goes a long way.
  
• Drop one early on trash to acclimatise your party to it, it might be the first time they've seen one…
  
• Always drop it before the fight, have a drink, pull boss – free heals.
  
• Drop it in a sensible place, where it can be seen and where it'll generally be in range; midway between the melee and the ranged is ideal
  
• Don't give up, if at first you don't succeed, bitch and moan until somebody listens.
  
• Practice what you preach! You too can click the Lightwell; don't think you're special and thus exempt.
  

Who'd have thought it, I've written an essay on the damn lolwell, I'm off to petition the government to install 'vote kick' functionality to trains.

Seeing the Light

Spurred on by my first ever comment by my reader (I'm hoping for more, but I'm not sure it's quite plural yet) and boredom of yet another train journey, it's time for another brain dump. Kudos to Tamarind for posting the comment and making my day.

When I left this morning I was well in to the heroics, and had started looking at more advanced ways of tweaking my gear and playing style for maximum DPS, but as I've progressed, and the holiday season has ended there are less guildies available to run instances; I'm not quite sure whether it's my work commitments getting me online at bad times, the increased amount of raiding the guild is doing, or that people have started to realise how bad I am… I'll let you decide.

So anyways, I've started using the dungeon finder a lot, previously it was purely to top up the groups, now it's to find three or four other players. The first thing I notice, if there's a tank in my party you're into an instance quicker than you can blink, with a healer, I've generally got time to nip downstairs and put the kettle on. If it's just me, or me and only DPS, it's thirty minutes plus! THIRTY, three zero, there can't be that many Warlocks in the world can there?

As the handy-man said to his apprentice, "screw this", I'm getting the bandages out.

So off I go to have a read up on specs, I decide on http://www.wowhead.com/talent#bchZfurrRzbkcdoh as my spec and start to have a play with the healing mechanics; the first thing that strikes me is the options available to a healing priest nowadays, back in Vanilla WoW, which is the last time I did any serious healing, I used primarily Greater Heal, Flash Heal, and renew, with the occasional downrated standard heal if mana was an issue, and not much else. It strikes me that there are at least ten spells which will be in standard use, plus the more occasional spells like Guardian Spirit and Hymn of Hope etc. And what the hell is Chakra??? It sounds like some 80's punk rock band… I set up my bars in what seems to be a reasonable order, those of you who read my last post, you'll remember my fingers have long term memory issues and it takes a lot for me to get used to Renew, Flash Heal, Heal, and Greater Heal not being 7,8,9, and 0 anymore.

It just so happens that a few guildies need a healer for a normal instance for their alts, so I volunteer and head along and help out on the understanding I'm popping my healing cherry and am likely to suck…. And suck I did. Fortunately I had the sense to go for a normal where my overpowered gear and lower damage made up for my complete ineptitude. Several lessons were learned; firstly, Chakra is very important, secondly, I need some addons to help out desperately, thirdly, the bigger health pools mean that you can leave the DPS on lowish health for longer than I'd historically be comfortable with if you're desperately struggling to keep the tank up without too much danger.

I find healbot on either curse.com or wowinterface.com, I can't remember which, and set to installing it (I know, I know, "only nubs use healbot" pro healers use grid, I remember grid being a steep learning curve and I'm already feeling battered and bruised from my first healing experience, deal with it). I set about configuring it, so I have Heal on left click, Greater Heal on right click. I latterly add Decurse and Power Word Shield plus a few other bits and bobs, but you get the picture. Heal is my go-to spell, in normal circumstances I keep Chakra up on single target healing which renews Renew for free and makes it extremely mana efficient, I reckon I can keep Renew up on three targets quite easily if needed. My 'oh crap' spell is bound to ' again and I have the Chakra specific spell on 1, Chakra itself on 2, with Prayer of Healing, Prayer of Mending, and Circle of Healing on 3,4 and 5. This way, most of my healing is done by mouse clicks, and anything else is relatively close by my left hand should I need to change tack.

All in all I'm much happier with the healing since I've got this, I've also installed an addon to let me move pretty much anything about the screen so the important 'things to click' are all close together.

Some more general thoughts on (Holy) Priest Healing summarised below

• Single target healing Chakra with Heal is your main healing, with renew.
  
• Swap to Flash and Grater Heal when the going gets tough.
  
• Don't forget the chakra specific spell in this form, it's very efficient and improves the Crit of your next heal(s).
  
• Keep Prayer of Mending up if there's a lot of party damage; always cast it on the tank.
  
• AOE Chakra is crucial for some bosses (more on that in a later post) the specific spell can be vital, but is massively mana intensive.
  
• ALWAYS use a Lightwell before a boss pull, its free heals.
  
• Consider using a macro to spam party chat with "click on the Lightwell, numbtee" or something similar – the more scathing the better.
  
• Talk to your tank – whisper him or her when you first get to the instance and tell them if you've not been there, or you have problems with running short of mana etc…
  
• Use Circle of healing sparingly, I'm not sure it's that useful a spell any more, Prayer of Healing is far better for topping off part health.
  
• Don't be scared to shield targets, sling a renew at them and then come back to them later, suggest they click the Lightwell too J
  
• Be aware that DPS being silly is as likely to make you go OOM from not moving out of the crap as you being "a noob" the finger of blame is often pointed at the "nub healer" in PUGs, don't be afraid to, politely, point out that it's not (always) your fault.
  
• Leap of Faith is simply the best spell for annoying the hell out of your friends, work out the most ingenious way of doing so, and let me know what it is… (it's also useful in fights too)
  
• Have fun, healing rocks!