Filed under: Priest, (Priest) Spiritual Guidance, Wrath of the Lich King

Every Sunday (and the occasional weekday) Spiritual Guidance offers holy and discipline priests advice on how to wield the holy light and groove to the disco night. Your hostess Dawn Moore will provide the music.

I’m the fish girl.

I never wanted it to be this way. I never wanted to be that girl. You know, the fish girl: the woman in the raid who takes it upon herself to make sure all her fellow raiders are eating right by supplying Fish Feast after Fish Feast. Sure, sometimes it’s a fish guy (in fact, just the other day my heal captain joked that he had brought Capri Sun and orange slices for the raid) but usually it’s a woman. I guess it’s a maternal thing, or maybe it’s wanting to save time by always going in with max buffs. Whatever it is, I wasn’t always like this. In fact, I used to wonder why my raid leader’s wife would so willingly spend her feasts on our raid as we wiped all over 3-drake Obsidian Sanctum. I admired her generosity, particularly because I felt they were going to waste on stupid mistakes, and her efforts deserved better.

Then one day, after I had moved onto another guild, I found myself surrounded by raiders who were lacking vital nutrients in their diets. That’s how it began: first I was helping with the fishing, then I started spending my own precious spices. The first day I laid a feast in a raid, I felt my feminist side cringe. But before I go off on that tangent, let me clarify that this article isn’t about fish (not exclusively anyway), it’s about the various consumables available to priest healers.

Continue reading Spiritual Guidance: Food, flasks, and potions

Spiritual Guidance: Food, flasks, and potions originally appeared on WoW.com on Sun, 31 Jan 2010 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Priest, (Priest) Spiritual Guidance, Wrath of the Lich King

Every Wednesday, Fox Van Allen uses his dark, shadowy powers to take the reins of Spiritual Guidance, causing severe harm to others in the form of large, yellow five-digit numbers. Holy and disc brethren, alike — come join the dark side before his shadowfiend eats you.

Fact: Priests are pretty much awesome.

It’s because we’re versatile. We can DPS the living snot out of Lord Marrowgar in shadow, and then change to discipline so we can cover the raid in Power Word: Shields and Renews for Deathbringer Saurfang. Heck, we can even do both. We’re just that awesome.

But awesomeness comes at a price, my friends, and that price is called the hybrid tax. It’s the term commonly used to explain why our DPS is designed to lag behind that of mages, warlocks, hunters, and rogues — the pure DPS classes. If you’re a jack of all trades, you’re supposed to be a master of none.

(It’s cool though, they need the handout. It really sucks not being a Priest.)

We can be forgiven, though, for looking at Recount or a World of Logs parse and thinking that whatever the hybrid tax is, it’s just way too high. But is it really? Are we finally doing the kind of damage that we should?

Continue reading Spiritual Guidance: Paying the hybrid tax

Spiritual Guidance: Paying the hybrid tax originally appeared on WoW.com on Wed, 27 Jan 2010 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Raiding, Lore, Wrath of the Lich King

Guys? We have our pony!

The Warcraft twitter account just linked to a new page on the official World of Warcraft site regarding Invincible. This stallion served Arthas in life as his mount. Unfortunately, Arthas worked his mount a little too hard and slipped on ice. Arthas had no choice but to give Invincible a merciful death. (You can find more details about the story if you’ve read Arthas: Rise of the Lich King by Christie Golden.) When Arthas became the Lich King, he visited Invincible’s grave and raised him from the dead in order to serve him.

How do you get him?

Oh, it’s fairly simple to get. This pony can’t get hungry, tired, or feel pain. Great for a Lich King to use when traveling around, right? All you have to do is pry it from Arthas’ cold, dead hands. Beat Arthas in Icecrown Citadel on heroic mode, and Invincible will serve you.

But we don’t know if everyone in the raid is going to get one (like Ulduar drakes) or if only one mount will drop (akin to killing Sartharion with 3 drakes up or the Mimiron head mount from Yogg-Saron).

We have our pony: Invincible revealed originally appeared on WoW.com on Wed, 27 Jan 2010 15:37:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Paladin, Warrior, Analysis / Opinion, News items, Death Knight, Wrath of the Lich King

If you like tanking (sure, we all do) you may be interest in this update to yesterday’s post about tier 10 tanking gear: the dodge on gloves and defense on chests is being removed and the armor is being increased to bring them in line with the off-set tanking pieces due to the popularity of higher armor in Icecrown Citadel, and we now finally have hard numbers. So far, it looks as if the armor increases are pretty significant (882 armor on iLevel 251 gloves, 1064 armor on iLevel 251 set chestplates) and should make up for the dodge or defense lost, especially as armor has increased in popularity due to the Chill of the Throne debuff in ICC. We’re told that the armor increase scales with iLevel so the iLevel 264 and 277 versions will also have proportionate armor increases. This is a patch 3.3.2 change so don’t panic if your gear doesn’t have the armor yet.

This makes me even more happy that I chose to focus on my tier set over offset pieces to get the four piece bonus as soon as possible. It makes these pieces far more attractive when compared to the high armor offset Cataclysm Chestguard and Gauntlers of the Kraken. (the Sanctified 264 versions should have exactly the same armor). I’d like to have seen a little more armor on the pieces, myself, but it’s still pretty solid.

Stats on updated T10 tank plate revealed originally appeared on WoW.com on Tue, 26 Jan 2010 18:36:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Wrath of the Lich King

Blizzard, perhaps jumping the gun a little, has posted the patch notes for the upcoming Patch 3.3.2 mini-patch on the official Korean site. We’ve translated them for your convenience. Lots of changes to heroic dungeons, some class buffs (warlock, shaman, druid), and some class nerfs (prot warrior). All this and more, after the cut.

Disclaimer: Translation is hard! Some of these notes, especially more complex ones, may be slightly off. We’ll post the official English notes when they’re posted as well.

Update! Warbringer change clarified (again). Ghostcrawler chimed in about it.

Dungeons and Raids

Icecrown Citadel

• The Frostwing Halls, the last stronghold of the Lich King and the Scourge, has been added, but the Ashen Verdict must break down the door first. (Does this mean we have to wait some additional time to fight Arthas?)

Halls of Stone

• Brann Bronzebeard has been working out, so he’ll run faster during the escort event.

Forge of Souls

• Devourer of Souls will cast Mirrored Soul less often.
• Trash mob Spell Reflect abilities have been changed. It now has a casting time, and will proc only twice at a rate of 75% instead of 100%.

Continue reading Patch 3.3.2 patch notes on official Korean WoW site

Patch 3.3.2 patch notes on official Korean WoW site originally appeared on WoW.com on Mon, 25 Jan 2010 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Druid, Paladin, Warrior, Death Knight, Wrath of the Lich King

“We recognize that many plate tanks are making their gear choices based on the amount of armor they’re provided, as this is currently the most preferred stat. In order to make the tier-10 plate tanking sets more desirable, we will be adjusting the stats on the gloves and chest pieces in order to inflate the amount of armor they provide in the next minor patch. This will apply to all item levels of the tier-10 death knight, warrior, and paladin tanking gloves and chest pieces.”

He also noted that Emblem gear will continue to be comparable to the tier gear in terms of stats and, for those concerned about Feral tanks, they’ll be keeping an eye on gear scaling on druid tank gear as well.

Upcoming tier 10 tank armor stat changes originally appeared on WoW.com on Mon, 25 Jan 2010 16:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: PvP, Interviews, Wrath of the Lich King, The Colosseum, Achievements

The Colosseum takes us inside the world of the Gladiator (Relentless, Furious, Deadly, Brutal, Vengeful, Merciless, and otherwise), to interview some of the top Arena fighters on the battlegroups. Our goal is to bring a better understanding of the strategy, makeup, and work that goes into dueling it out for fame, fortune, and Frostwyrms. We’re especially focused on the people who play these games, to further shed light on the world of the PvP player. If you’d like to be interviewed for The Colosseum, please feel free to contact us — be sure to include your armory as a link!

Gladiator Bearzerk of US-Mannoroth won’t be wearing his gladiator title much longer — he’ll be upgrading to Relentless Gladiator! Our rogue interviewee today is team captain of a rogue-mage-priest composition named A B C that was able to go on a victory streak and get the coveted title on the last day of the season.

Read on after the break to see what Bearzerk had to say!

Continue reading The Colosseum: Bearzerk, rogue of Mannoroth

The Colosseum: Bearzerk, rogue of Mannoroth originally appeared on WoW.com on Sun, 24 Jan 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, News items, Wrath of the Lich King

Poster Sennshi makes a post to the general forums questioning why we have to run the whole dungeon to get the two frost emblems for completing our first random dungeon of the day. Thankfully, Crygil comes in and makes sure it is known that skipping to the end isn’t something Blizzard has in mind for heroics. It’s kind of sad that it even needed to be said, but at least they’ve said it.

I have to say, and keep in mind I’m one of the bitter sour curmudgeonly tanks who constantly gripes even when things are going well, but if you can’t endure a 20 minute instance run to get 2 frost badges, you need to reconsider running random heroics. Even the longest heroic dungeon is hardly so huge an imposition that you can’t get through it without asking for some kind of magical backdoor that summons the boss to you. We’ve seen changes to dungeons like Oculus to give players an incentive to run them or streamline them, going to some weird Thunderdome of boss summoning would be a step backwards in my opinion.

Blizzard says no to skipping to the last boss originally appeared on WoW.com on Sun, 24 Jan 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Warrior, Analysis / Opinion, Wrath of the Lich King, Cataclysm

In a forum thread discussing the recent prot warrior block changes and Warbringer nerf and the state of prot warrior DPS (it’s basically acknowledged as the lowest DPS among the tanks) Ghostcrawler chimes in that they intend to buff sustained prot DPS while reducing burst in PvP. However, he quickly comes back to point that at this stage in the expansion they don’t want to make any sustained mechanical changes and so, don’t expect one. The sustained DPS increase will come from buffs to existing abilities.

While I can understand the trepidation from prot warriors at this statement (no one is terribly excited about a buff to Devastate, not even me) it’s an unfortunate but valid point he makes here. You really don’t have the time to make drastic mechanical changes this far into the cycle. We might like a more drastic solution, but with Cataclysm looming on the horizon you don’t really want to see too much tinkering with the base mechanics.

Still, please don’t just buff Devastate. Please. I’m begging you here.

You won’t get a pony, but prot will get sustained DPS increase originally appeared on WoW.com on Sun, 24 Jan 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, PvP, Breakfast Topics, Wrath of the Lich King

In season seven, we saw beast cleave (beast mastery hunter + enhancement shaman + holy paladin) win the majority of high-profile tournaments and become quite popular. Very few saw it coming. Beast cleave, of course, got handed several nerfs (only one of which was serious) which many considered a death knell, but the composition is still very strong. Towards the end of season seven, protection warriors (and to a lesser extent, protection paladins) were the new flavor-of-the-month craze. Again, almost no one saw it coming.

The new season is slated to be quite different from previous arena seasons in WotLK. Resilience is getting a huge boost in effectiveness, increasing the benefit of wearing PvP gear in arenas. Some people (even on arena junkies) are stating that PvE gear will be even better in PvP because of the change. The idea is that arena players can get away with donning more loot from dragons because the added resilience benefit will make up for the forfeited survivability. While I might be wrong here, that sounds like terrible logic.

One gladiator is predicting the shift to more survivability will benefit warlocks, warriors, and druids. The same poster believes mages and rogues will be harmed, while everyone else will keep status quo.

So, I ask you, breakfast readers: What are your predictions for arena season eight?

Breakfast Topic: Your predictions for arena season eight originally appeared on WoW.com on Sun, 24 Jan 2010 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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