Glyph Selection Part 4 – Minor Glyphs

Welcome to the final chapter of the Glyph Selection series (as well as last day of 2008!). Today, we will cover Minor glyph selection for priests.

The complete list of Minor glyphs in-game can be found here. Since there are only 6 to choose from, of which 2 are very situational in use, this will be short and sweet, allowing all of you to get back to your New Year’s Eve celebration. :)

For other recommended glyphs per spec, please see the following posts:

1. Discipline
2. Holy
3. Shadow

Minor glyphs are completely superficial and more often than not, most classes will find that they don’t actually do anything to enhance their actual game-play (DPS, raid utility, etc.) but from time to time, you’ll find that they do make your lives a whole lot easier.

For example, exhibit number 1: Glyph of Levitate which is a must-have for me.
Use: Your Levitate spell no longer requires a reagent.

Remember the good old days when Levitate required a Light Feather? And how you had to find your way to all the lower level zones to farm screeching birds just to get a stack so you could float from lumber mill to blacksmith? Or so you might be able to save yourself to rez your fallen party when the whole lot of you run off a cliff for some reason? And remember how many times you would die with them because you put all your stacks of feather in the bank?! No more, people! Levitating without feathers is now the “in” thing to do. Now, all priests can walk across the green slime in Naxx without having their stats cut in half!

Exhibit number 2: Glyph of Shadow Protection
Use: Increases the duration of your Shadow Protection and Prayer of Shadow Protection spells by 10 min.

Really – who thought it was a good idea to make Shadow Protection a 10-minute buff and Prayer of Shadow Protection a 20-minute buff (and on top of that, why is it still not raid-wide?!)? It costs the same amount and type of reagents as Fort and Divine Spirit so W-T-F Blizz? For guilds who are just starting the raiding content, some of these fights go longer than 10-minutes pretty often! Am I supposed to rebuff in the middle of a fight?! Pft, fine, you gave us a glyph to circumvent this nonsensical difference but you still forgot about it when you made all the buffs raid-wide.

This next one is the 3rd Minor glyph I have equipped and let’s just say it would be a very dumb move if you don’t have this one also: Glyph of Shadowfiend
Use: Receive 5% of your maximum mana if your Shadowfiend dies from damage.

This glyph is obviously pretty useless in PvP simply because no one kills fiends. But if you’re a raiding priest in Wrath, I’m sure you’ve noticed that practically every boss deals AOE damage. And surely, you have seen your fiend die during an ill-timed cast right before said AOE before providing any substantial measure of mana. Now with the restriction of 1 potion for instance of combat, we have to be even more careful about timing our little demon friend here to make the most of it. You’ll be very happy with this glyph.

The rest of the glyphs are really up to you if you feel you need them. The 3 above are the ones I have currently equipped and I can’t say I would consider switching any of them out for the ones below:

Glyph of Fading
Use: Reduces the mana cost of your Fade spell by 30%.

Do you really use Fade that much? I guess if you’re a shadow priest who’s either running with an inexperienced tank or just nuking the bejeezus out of everything that you have mobs coming at you all the time, this could be for you. For me? There are really only 2 situations where I would use fade – either right off a pull and an ill-timed heal pulls aggro or the encounter spawns waves of adds that come mid-fight as I’m healing. But most of the time? I don’t use it at all.

Glyph of Fortitude
Use: Reduces the mana cost of your Power Word: Fortitude and Prayer of Fortitude spells by 50%.

Unless you make a habit of buffing mid-fight, is this really an issue? I think for most of us who raid, the routine is basically group up, buff, drink/eat, /readycheck, and pull. I might fort a tank in combat if he died midway through a boss encounter and got a battle rez but that’s about it…

Glyph of Shackle Undead
Use: Increases the range of your Shackle Undead spell by 5 yards.

This is slightly useful in a PvE environment if you’re running into a lot of Undead pulls and need some CC but… isn’t the range on it enough as it is? There should be no reason why you would need an additional 5 yards relative to the 30 yards you already have. Who pulls aggro from 30 yards away?! In PvP, situationally useful to a very small degree for that unholy Death Knight’s ghoul halfway across the arena who’sstarting to gun straight for you. That’s if there aren’t already 2 other DPSers focused on you already. /cry

That’s it for this year! We’ll be back on Friday with another wrap for the week (and the year). Catalyst is doing their first 25-man raid in-guild this Saturday so I won’t have any insight on that until next week but I’m sure it’s going to feel good getting back into the bigger raids. Otherwise, have a happy new year, everyone!

‘Mazing Mod Monday: ArkInventory

Today’s mod feature is one that has saved me so much time! It’s called ArkInventory and is one of the best bag mods I’ve seen around. What it essentially does is gives you a way to handle your entire inventory – bags, bank, guild bank, etc.

AI lets you assign categories to different bars and will then automatically sort your inventory items into the appropriate bars. The placement of your items is completely superficial relative to your actual bag space. If you decide to disable the mod, you’re going to see your items all over the place in your bags/bank/wherever.

The nice thing about AI is that it also allows you to view the inventory of all your other characters that you’ve logged into with AI enabled. Instead of logging onto your other toons to see if you have something, you can just change the location of AI on your current toon to see what you’ve got.

Here’s what I’ve made mine to look like:

Bank on the left, bags on the right. Sorry you can't eavesdrop on my chat or see how much money I have (or don't have...)!

Just to point out some key locations:

Categories created by purpose - professions, quests, gear, etc.

You can easily configure the categories your bars show by clicking on the yellow gear in the upper right hand corner next to the [X]. Your bars will all turn red and you’ll see a number that differentiates the bars. You can right click the number to get a drop-down menu at your pointer where you can see all the different things you can assign to each bar. While in edit mode, you can also change the categories that items fit into. For example, I’ve run into the problem of a Skinning Knife not being sorted away because it’s categorized as “Equipment (Not Soulbound)” by default. It was fixed once I reassigned it to “Skill >> Skinning” or something that made more sense.

If you want to configure the more technical aspects of ArkInventory, the command is “/ai config”. It will bring up the options menu where you can then choose the settings per inventory type (bags, bank, guild bank, mail, keyring). This is where I set it so that AI does not override my guild bank interface. And the reason for this is that AI hides the Log and Money Log for the guild bank, so I can’t see withdrawals and deposits (I would never know who ninja’d our bank!).

To enable/disable AI for a given inventory interface, just go to the tab under "Control" and check or uncheck the "Override" option. Unchecked = default Blizzard UI = good for gbank, bad for bags.

There’s loads of customization that you can do with this thing. I personally haven’t played around with it too much – just assigned categories in my bags and my bank so it’s sorted automatically. It has saved me buttloads of time because I used to allocate entire bags or half-a-bag to a profession or quest items or something and when that bag ran out of space? I was at a loss for where to put the extra items. It made me /sadface a lot.

There is one issue currently with the addon and that is sometimes upon logging in, I would shuffle my way to the bank teller only to see my entire bank interface grayed out and locked down. I would complain to the teller about their unncessary security measures (I’m the only one who has access to it!) but they would just say it’s not their fault and it was some 3rd party insurance program I had purchased for my items. WHAT?!

So the first time the addon locked my bank out on me, I tried a /rl, I exited the game, and sometimes, it worked. Other times, my bank was still locked down. I trudged on over to the dev’s page, ready to berate him for the headache he was causing me when I had finally farmed all the Winterfin Clams to buy a Siren’s Tear only to find that I can’t grab the eternals and the Frozen Orb I needed to make my Wispcloak /facebangkeyboard, when I saw that he had conveniently included a workaround for that particular bug in the config menu:

If you find yourself locked out of your inventory, /atb config and check the "Enabled" option highlighted here under Settings. It will magically fix the problem.

There you have it folks. Let your inventory micro-managing days be over! AI will do the work for you and then some so you can focus on the more important things at hand. Like phat lewtz.

Friday Wrap-Up: Mail Bag & Response to Comments

For this Friday’s wrap, I’ve chosen to answer 2 questions that I’ve gotten through comments and through email. I felt like these were great questions and deserved a more in-depth reply than it would get in an email or a comment reply. I also figured that many priests, both new and familiar to disc, would find value in reading about them.

First up, Stefan posted a comment asking:

… I tried aegis, but it seemed like it would prog only very very seldom with 10% crit chance… . if you are using penance all the time the cooldown allows it – are you willing to let drop your tank to 1/2 life so that it is not all in overheal? Or are you just hitting the overheal?

My current spec can be found here. It’s a pretty cookie-cutter spec with points put into Divine Spirit. Let me break down the choices made here:

1. Putting points into Divine Spirit can be a point of contention for priests of all specs and this really depends on your raiding situation (or lack thereof). My guild is currently doing 10-mans with the occasional 25-man raid through an alliance with another guild. Outside of raids, I am running heroics or questing. For those of us who don’t run with other classes who provide the same type of spell power buff (e.g. shamans and their Flametongue Totem for one), the group/raid will benefit from Improved Divine Spirit. If you’re running heroic raids, there’s a pretty good chance that there will be someone in the raid who will overwrite your buff. If you do primarily heroic dungeons and 10-man raids, there’s a better chance that speccing into IDS will be worthwhile. If you’re doing heroic raids, then skip it.
2. I’m also specced into Renewed Hope for the time being, as my current crit chance is 11.16% overall and 16.16% for Holy spells. As my crit increases, I will consider spending the 2 points currently in Renewed Hope into Aspiration to reduce the cooldown on Inner Focus, Power Infusion, Pain Suppression, and Penance. Right now, I’m using the Weakened Soul debuff to buff my crit chance for tank heals but as soon as I feel like my crits are where I want them to be, I’ll put the 2 points into Aspiration instead.
3. Divine Aegis is definitely one of the cornerstones of disc healing. The spec is focused on damage mitigation and DA is huge for doing just that as your crit goes up. Besides, it’s just a teensy bit satisfying to see something actually happen when you crit in addition to big numbers flash across your screen.

As far as using Penance and overhealing goes – Penance serves more than one purpose. Grace should always be fully talented. It just so happens that Penance is a volley of 3 heals so the quickest way to get full stacks of Grace is to get a full cast of Penance off on your target. The effect lasts 8 seconds. If you have Aspiration fully talented, you knock down the cooldown on Penance to 8 seconds. Look! You can have Grace fully stacked on your tank at all times! Coincidence? I think not! So yes, I hit Penance whenever it’s up, even if it will overheal. I also bubble whenever I can to ensure the Weakened Sould debuff helps my crit while I have Renewed Hope talented.

Next question comes through email:

I’d like to know your choices regarding gems. Right now I’m using them for int, spirit(from when I was holy) and some spellpower, mostly concentrating on int for a larger mana pool and greater regen with shadowfiend/Hymn/Replenishment. Do you think I should sacrifice some int for crit (My crit is quite low right now, it’s around 13% for holy, 8% for the rest, which includes penance unfortunately), or keep gemming int and get more crit-oriented gear?

I’m a big believer in balancing stats with straight up spell power and regen/mana. You shouldn’t sacrifice one to get more of another if it is detrimental to your performance. Yes, some stats are definitely more important than others but you can’t really straight up stack only one of these things unless you’re seriously lacking in that area.

First off, I would get rid of those spirit gems. MP5 contributes much more to regen than spirit. In short, disc priests are going to heal like pallies and shammies so you might want to consider stacking stats the way they do too. If your crit is low but find that your heals are big enough and you can last through long fights, it might be a good idea to grab straight up crit rating. I’m filling all my yellow and blue gem slots with Dazzling Forest Emeralds while filling red slots with Runed Scarlet Rubies to try to achieve an overall balance. Just remember what color gems are needed to activate any meta gem you might have.

Glyph Selection Part 3 – Shadow

Mmm, the zomgwtfpwneverything spec. I have such a deep, deep love for shadow and all its pretty frills that I think about switching back constantly when I’m not raiding. I cannot wait for dual specs. Of course, by that time, I might have to use my 2nd spec for PvP instead, which is still going to be discipline. One day, I’ll be a shadow priest again… One day…

Let’s get this post on.

Once again, the list of Priest glyphs available can be found via doing a search on Wowhead.com:

• Major Glyphs
• Minor Glyphs

Player vs. Environment

There are 3 surefire glyphs to take for raiding. They up your damage and that’s all you really need. Glyph selection becomes more challenging when deciding for PvP (not because they’re all great but rather because they’re all just kind of mediocre). The main idea here is moar damage. Let’s face it – after 3.0 and the xpac, shadow priests are no longer necessary for a raid and can be easily passed over for someone who does more damage and provides Replenishment (say, a ret pally?). It sucks but we’re going to need to prove to everyone that we can stay on top of the meters (it’s hard though).

• Glyph of Shadow Word: Pain
  Use: Increases the damage done by your Mind Flay spell by 10% when your target is afflicted with Shadow Word: Pain.
  Yes. Take it. Now. This glyph seriously sucked in beta (increased duration of SW:P by 3s) but they reworked it into something actually useful and something a shadow priest would actually want. It gives 10% more damage to shadow priest bread and butter. Are you convinced yet?
• Glyph of Shadow
  Use: While in Shadowform, your spell critical strikes increase your spell power by 10% of your Spirit for 10 sec.
  Remember that jubilation you felt when you found out Mind Flay crits? Now put it to good use. Crit has never mattered as much to shadow priests as it does now and with Mind Flay being the spell cast most often, this is one glyph that you shouldn’t and just cannot pass up. Stack that crit, baby!
• Glyph of Shadow Word: Death
  Use: Targets below 35% health take an additional 10% damage from your Shadow Word: Death spell.
  This is your Kill Shot. A weak one but it’s the closest thing we’ve got. This one is not the most useful out of the 3 but given what’s left of glyph selections, this is the best one to fill that last slot by a long shot. Hey, more damage is more damage. Besides, with Pain and Suffering talented (and why would you not have this talented?!), the increase in damage to SW:D won’t kill you. Or will it?

Player vs. Player

A priest in Arenas & Battlegrounds really serves much of the same purpose, regardless of what spec they are. Mana Burn, Mana Burn, Mana Burn. You get in some pew-pew if you’re shadow or throw in some heals if you’re discipline. Divine Intervention? Hand of Protection? Ice Block? Mass Dispel. And fit in a Psychic Scream whenever it’s useful or if things get hairy. If there’s no one to cleanse in your group, you might want to do that too.

• Glyph of Power Word: Shield
  Use: Your Power Word: Shield also heals the target for 20% of the absorption amount.
  Healing without dropping form in Arenas? Shadow priests heal?! What?! Survivability is key.
• Glyph of Dispel Magic
  Use: Your Dispel Magic spell also heals your target for 6% of maximum health.
  See the reasoning for above.

Before we go on, here’s where the glyphs get mediocre. The third glyph slot can be filled with whatever is better for your role in Arenas (primarily). In my opinion, they need to get cracking on a Mana Burn glyph! But I’ve seen more than enough QQ about how OP it is even after they nerfed it so that it burns a percentage of mana and not a fixed amount (bleh). Regardless, feel free to take your pick from any of the following based on your method of play:

• Glyph of Psychic Scream
  Use: Increases the duration of your Psychic Scream by 1 sec.
  The extra 1 second could be enormous or it could be business as usual.
• Glyph of Shadow Word: Death
  Use: Targets below 35% health take an additional 10% damage from your Shadow Word: Death spell.
  Kill Shot!
• Glyph of Shadow Word: Pain
  Use: Increases the damage done by your Mind Flay spell by 10% when your target is afflicted with Shadow Word: Pain.
  More burst = more wins seems to be theme of Season 5. In that same vein, you can also go with:
• Glyph of Shadow
  Use: While in Shadowform, your spell critical strikes increase your spell power by 10% of your Spirit for 10 sec.
  But I probably wouldn’t pick this one if I was making the decision based on overall utility.

There you have it folks, shadow priest glyph selections. There are a bunch of major glyphs I haven’t mentioned in any of my posts and that’s because I truly don’t understand why they even exist. Well, that’s not true – I see how they can be useful but I just don’t see why anyone would slot them over the other choices available to us. I mean, c’mon, we only get 3 major glyphs to actually use!

Next Wednesday will be the last and final post on glyph selection – minor glyphs! It’ll be a short post and appropriately so as we will be in the middle of the holidays here, as minors for priests are also meh. I wouldn’t want anyone to miss out on any information that might actually be useful (that is if you find my posts useful at all!).

Tomorrow is Christmas for those who celebrate it. Regardless of what holiday you celebrate, I wish you and yours a great holiday season in-game and IRL!

‘Mazing Mod(s) Monday: Raesa’s full UI

Ok, here it is. I guess I wouldn’t have been able to avoid this for very long if I did a weekly mod feature. Below are screens of my UI in raid and and out of raid (didn’t include one in party) and then I will go through all the mods shown. I did indeed copy a lot of formatting and mods from A Dwarf Priest’s UI because I liked how clean and shiny it was.

Raid w/ OPie showing buffs

1. Omen for threat so I can yell at overeager DPS.
2. Recount for on-the-fly meters to yell at underachieving DPS. 900 DPS on Patchwerk? You’re not trying and I can tell.
3. OPie for hiding things away via rings and key-binds (the 3 is supposed to be closer to the ring). I also use it to hide my trade skills and quest items.
4. SexyMap to replace simpleMiniMap after it was no longer updated and therefore, wouldn’t show me my Calendar icon. zOMG how can I sign up for raids?!
5. oRA2 Main Tank frames because they’re better than the Pitbull MT frames. oRA2 is really great for other things too (raid-wide checks on everyone’s durability, reagents, etc; auto-inviting per rank, etc).
6. Grid, GridManaBars because we all know it rocks for raid unit frames. I don’t use the additional Grid plug-ins because I can use it to display all the information I need as it is.
7. Autobar to keep all my pots, flasks, elixirs, and food together. It’s also super nice for other classes, such as my shaman, for totems, buffs, etc.

Raid w/ Ghost: Pulse

The mod that’s boxed in here is Ghost: Pulse 2. I use it to show me when things come off cool-down and when I lose buffs (any buffs). Since the longest cool-down a priest has is really only 5 minutes (and that’s only for Shadowfiend!), you really do have a lot of things to keep track of during a raid. And a 10-minute buff you need to have on all the time? Isn’t there enough to worry about as it is during a raid?!

So yeah, it tells me when Penance is up again, when Inner Fire comes off so I can rebuff myself, etc. Invaluable. I swear. And it’s the only way I can remember to PI the mage in the raid whenever it’s up. He thanks me for it.

Raid w/ ArkInventory

1. ArkInventory for a new bag interface. It auto sorts everything you have into preset categories that you configure, as well as tracks what’s in your bags and bank across all your alts so you can access from any toon at any time. I really just like the auto sorting. It does live updating so as soon as you throw something into your bags, it gets filtered right away into the correct area. You can also use it for your bank bags and guild bank tabs. I personally disable ArkInventory from overriding the guild bank because it also hides the log tabs. It currently has a little bug in it but the developer included a workaround to avoid it.
2. PoM Tracker because if you’re a healing priest, you’ll want to know who’s got your frisbee. It’s so simple yet so important that you’ll feel utterly lost when you don’t have it.

All by my lonesome. Before the name change btw.

Ok, so you can see I have quite a few things going on here. Lots of hidden things as well. The last image is a little dated – if you notice, I’ve removed the Outfitter outfit bar from my screen and reworked my action bars as well after I started using Clique.

For my action bars, I’m using Bartender4. After using Clique, you can see that I’ve key-bound Prayer of Healing, Holy Nova (you know, it’s not really that bad once you start using it), Pain Suppression, Power Infusion, and anything I want to keep an eye on for the cool-down remaining (Penance, Prayer of Mending, etc).

Other things:

• Buff Fluffer for a movable buff frame. I don’t need much else other than that.
• Cartographer for a map mod. I don’t like Cartographer 3.0, as shiny and spiffy as it is. Presented some bugs as I was using it so I switched back.
• Cellular to bring whispers out of the chat log into their own separate windows or tabs. Also keeps a log of all your conversations so for the times you wish you remembered to take an SS, here’s something that’s almost as good.
• DeadlyBossMods for all my deadly boss encounters.
• Eavesdrop for a compact combat log (it’s not showing here because I have it set to auto-hide when there’s no info to relay).
• Heal Organizer to easily give out healing assignments. It also auto-whispers people their assignment if they send you a tell with the proper keyword so you can set it and forget it.
• kgPanels for the black background on the bottom. I probably wouldn’t be able to see half the stuff SLDataText is telling me without the background. It’s a little annoying to configure because you have to use all slash commands while trying to configure something graphical… Bah.
• OmniCC for cooldown text on my buttons and a text timer on the DoTs on my target.
• Outfitter for easy outfit switching. The outfit bar has since been removed however, as I’ve begun automating the outfit switches (I only have 2 outfits anyway – PvE and PvP). In a battleground (for Outfitter, this includes all actual battlegrounds and arenas), it will switch to my PvP set as long as I’m not in combat.
• Pitbull for all my unitframe needs. I used to use X-Perl but Pitbull is so much prettier! And much more customizable.
• Postal for mail. I’ve had this one for so long that I don’t even know what the default mail interface is capable of anymore. f(o.O)
• Prat 3.0 for my chat log because the default one really just sucks.
• RatingBuster for stats comparison on new gear.
• Quartz for all my casting bar needs!
• QuestGuru for a quest tracker.
• SCT & SCTD for scrolling combat text.
• SLDataText is what all the white text is that’s showing all the info most people use TitanPanel and FuBar plugins for.
• tekJunkSeller to automatically sell gray items at a vendor. Oh man, this saves so much time from right-clicking all the garbage I want to vend.
• TipTac for more informative tooltips.
• XLoot so I can quickly see if the loot has anything to do with me and if not? Peace out! ;)

I still need to pick up some Arena-centric mods as I just started dabbling in games again (have a 3v3 and 5v5 team… need a 2v2…) so that can come in another post. The memory footprint of all these mods run about 30-40mb which, yes, is a little on the high side. You’re going to see that your loading time is noticeably longer… >.> The price we pay.

When doing heroics, my party unitframes show up right above my chat log and would overlap with the oRA MT and Grid frames if I showed them both at the same time but I disable party from showing in a raid. I try my best to eliminate redundant information.

From the way everything is situated, you can tell that I spend most of my time looking at the lower left quadrant of my screen during raid time. That’s where all the health bars are, my cooldown indicators, my PoM tracker, basically anything and everything I need to know in the least amount of space possible. This way, my mouse isn’t floundering all across the screen trying to find something also.

Well, that’s my UI for the time being. I’m sure I’ll totally overhaul it again at some point but I’m satisfied with it for now. It’s the cleanest and most streamlined one I’ve had so far so I think it’s here to stay.

Friday Wrap-Up: Another Heigan tip, Arena, and Clique

This week has been exciting in terms of what has come to the game and also for the fact that it’s the week before the nationwide holiday week between Christmas and New Year’s where no one is truly expected to actually work! Gotta love it. :)

So while doing Naxx the other day (Heigan specifically), I noticed the pattern to the Eruptions. The beginning of the lava in front of your current safe zone is the middle of the next safe zone. I had some problems by overruning the next safe zone a couple of times because I thought the next safe zone would start where the lava started but apparently not… So once I started standing where I saw the lava begin, I didn’t get hit anymore. That’s why the safe zones look different going in each direction.

Arena Season 5 started on Tuesday. I haven’t joined or made a team yet but it’s in the works. I’ll be teaming up with a lolretadin and try it out for 2 weeks to see if our tempers cause us to dismember each other. If not, we might possibly be successful. I did Season 4 with a rogue so I went Disc. However, I’m not sure it would work to our best advantage if I went Disc with a ret pally. I think being shadow might actually be more effective for the silence and shorter CD on Pyshic Scream. It would also be nice to have the improved Fade that comes with Improved Shadowform, since Hand of Freedom has a 25s CD on it. Trinket + Fade + HoF = no stunlock?

I’ll have to confer with the pally to see what we both think is best.

Feast of Winter Veil has started and I have 3-4 achievements left before I become Raesa the Merrymaker, considering you can’t do one until the 25th. I feel like the Winter Veil achievements are much easier than Hallow’s End! I guess that’s understandable because we would expect everyone to have less time to play during the holidays between visiting family and eating lots.

And man, oh man, the outfit? Scandalous, much? Well, I guess you don’t have to be completely naked underneath but it doesn’t look normal to wear other stuff with it! Can anyone make me red pants btw? ;)

I also started using Clique. It’s hard to get used to but I can see how it will be much faster once it becomes second nature. I’m glad I have a mouse with 8 usable button/wheel arrangements (my autorun is bound to my thumb wheel being scrolled towards me). Too bad WoW only recognizes 5 but that’s enough to keybind all my heals + modifiers. I’m also trying to customize my Grid even further but I think it’s sufficient for now.

My UI has gone through 3-4 iterations of massive overhauls already where I pretty much reposition everything differently. My latest one, inspired by A Dwarf Priest, is a lot cleaner with a lot of less-used things hidden with Opie, etc.

Have a great weekend, everyone.

Glyph Selection Part 2 – Holy

For holy priests, there’s a little bit more variety in glyphs. Obviously, Blizz believes the best healing spec for a priest is still holy (not that I disagree though). A holy priest is and will always be (unless they completely overhaul class mechanics) the most versatile and formidable PvE healer. What can’t a holy priest do?

For this part of the glyph selection posts, I will only make recommendations for PvE, as there really isn’t a true holy PvP spec. I’m sure you can make one if you want but the bottom line is there are better options, be it in the discipline or shadow tree. As for DPS, feel free to refer to Part 1 for the lolsmite glyph recommendations.

Major Glyphs for Healing

1. Glyph of Circle of Healing
   CoH glyphed heals an additional target. As if it wasn’t OP enough right? If you spec CoH (if you are holy in WotLK, you definitely should consider it if you haven’t gotten it), you should definitely get this. This is so much deliciousness that I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t get this glyph. For a cost of 21% of your base mana at Rank 7 and 41 talent points, you should think about how you can get the most bang for your buck and frankly, this is it. If you don’t talent CoH, skip to the next one as your primary choice.
2. Glyph of Renew
   Renew already stands as one of the most efficient healing spells in the game – instant cast, low mana cost, has a huge spell power coefficient, and can be talented to increase healing done. What? Seriously? Blizzard is letting us do this? Hold on, let’s think about this for a second… But it’s shortening the duration of the HoT by 20%… Yet increasing its healing done by 25%… What do all these numbers mean?!Renew base heals for 1400 over 15 seconds. What it really does is heal for 280 every 3 seconds, which is 5 ticks of 280. So let’s knock off 3 seconds.If Renew is 12 seconds, its base healing would be 280*4 = 1120. Now, the glyph increases the amount healed each tick by 25%:

   [280+(280*0.25)]*4 = 280*1.25*4 = 1400

   Wait… Hold on a second… Isn’t that… what?! That’s what it heals for unglyphed! Yes, but over 15 seconds. When glyphed, Renew heals for the same amount in less time. It’s the same HPM but more HPS.  The shorter duration but constant throughput makes this a very nice PvP glyph too. Might want to consider this one for Arenas as well.

3. Glyph of Flash Heal
   Yup, this one again. C’mon, it reduces mana cost of Flash Heal by 10%! For the high-crit holy priests who spec into Surge of Light and Holy Concentration/Improved Holy Concentration, this glyph is probably less useful to you due to the free mana cost procs of said talents but on an overall basis, this glyph just rocks your socks.

The next couple are highly situational and are up to you to decide if they’re worth a glyph slot. Some are definitely more useful than others but I’m not going to rank them. If you don’t have CoH, you still have a free glyph slot after picking up glyphs for Renew and Flash Heal. Let’s look at the rest of our choices.

• Glyph of Power Word: Shield
  As mentioned in Part 1 as well but here, PW:S doesn’t come with all the bells and whistles it does with a Discipline spec. However, we’re all about efficiency and throughput so slap it on for life-saving-1-hit-away-from-imminent-death heals.
• Glyph of Spirit of Redemption
  You’re better off dead, I say. If you find yourself dying a lot during encounters, this is the one for you (although the last time I checked, that wasn’t really the point of this game). What you’re getting is a 20% chance to add 4 seconds to the base 15 seconds of Spirit of Redemption. Like I said, unless you’re dying a lot, not going to be worth it. Save your raid a battle rez and just stay alive.
• Glyph of Lightwell
  I have to admit that I have never, ever specced into Lightwell. Ok, no, that’s a lie. I did it once accidentally just last week when I respecced holy to see if it would help on the Sapphiron fight (no but there’s more to that story for later). However, I have never, ever used it (actually, putting a Lightwell down behind an ice block during Sapphiron’s air phase is a super idea). If you do use Lightwell and use it often, this might be the glyph to fill that last slot.

  Unglyphed, Lightwell base heals for 4620 over 6 seconds. The glyph increases amount healed by 20% so when glyphed, Lightwell heals for 4620*1.20 = 5544. Not too shabby eh? But once again, highly situational and unless you use Lightwell a lot, it’s going to be a small, marginal benefit.

• Glyph of Holy Nova
  I don’t use Holy Nova often. I found myself spamming Rank 1 in Arenas in Season 4 to bring things out of stealth but that was it… I can see where this spell is going to be more useful in the near future as an AoE heal after the CoH nerf goes live, especially with how there’s a lot of AoE damage in encounters now but I personally wouldn’t use it unless I just really didn’t know what else to pick. This is probably more useful for a discipline priest who’s in sore need of a more powerful AoE heal but even then, this doesn’t really trump any of the other glyphs available. Heck, you might even choose Glyph of Prayer of Healing before you pick up this one.

Shadow and Minor glyphs coming up in the next 2 parts. Stay tuned!

If any of you were wondering or noticed, yes… I got a name change from Ephii to Raesa… I bought the character recustomization by accident. >.< Might as well use it, right?

No post today… :(

The most recent round of layoffs has relegated me to twice the amount of already overwhelming workload of before and I can’t afford the time for a post this morning. :(

Will make it up later today or just later on…

Glyph Selection Part 1 – Discipline

There are just too many glyphs to break down in all 3 specs so I’m going to have to break it down by spec. Part 2 will be for Holy and part 3 will be for Shadow. Each post will cover both PvE & PvP glyphs per spec where it applies (this excludes Holy), as well as healing & DPS glyphs (this excludes Shadow).

The list of Priest glyphs available can be found via doing a search on Wowhead.com:

• Major Glyphs
• Minor Glyphs

We’ll address Discipline and Shadow glyphs for both PvE and PvP because the functions are so vastly different that it’s integral for one aspect but completely useless for the other (e.g. Glyph of Fear Ward for PvE… cuz you know… those bosses really fear you around multiple times during a fight…).

I’ll also dedicate a post to minors by themselves, as there are only ~5 so no matter what spec you are, you will be slotting the same 1 or 2 throughout.

Player vs. Environment

Let’s talk Discipline healing for raids/dungeons. We should all know by now how it’s meant to work – bubble, bubble, bubble. Yeah, warriors and druids hate it. You know what guys? Your threat generation has been buffed so get over it. I’ll make sure I don’t bubble you when you only have 15 rage but if I see you’re at 95, you will get bubbled. Prot pallies? Don’t complain about not getting mana back from heals. You’re going to be getting beat on enough times to be spammed with heals during boss fights anyway. DK’s… you guys just creep me out.

Major Glyphs for Healing

1. Glyph of Power Word: Shield
   For a Discipline healer, if you understand how your spec heals, you will know this glyph is beyond delicious (May I have some moar?).  Base healing from the glyph heals your target for 0.2*2230 = 446. Since absorption also scales with spell power, you will be seeing heals bigger than that. The heals can also crit but it will not proc Divine Aegis.In practice, I see heals of ~1k from the glyph. With this glyph, you are getting an instant heal, a bubble, and mana gains from Rapture (have I linked this spell enough times for you to remember what it does yet?).  How can you not want it?!
2. Glyph of Flash Heal
   This is my next recommendation. It reduces the mana cost of Flash Heal by 10%. As Disc, Flash Heal procs your talents, in addition to Greater Heal and Penance. Reducing mana cost is always a good thing and will also prolong your utility in long fights. This increases the efficiency of Flash Heal, which has been long bemoaned for its expensive relative cost of amount healed per mana spent, compared to its more practical older sibling, so now you don’t have to feel so bad for secretly wanting to be able to spam like a holy pally sometimes. But you still shouldn’t do it.
3. Glyph of Dispel Magic or Glyph of Prayer of Healing
   As for the third major glyph, Glyph of Prayer of Healing really is the better choice. I use Glyph of Dispel Magic because I had PvP in mind in trying to create a character who was mostly geared towards PvE but viable in PvP without a huge respec and reglyphing cost. It’s also nice for those fights where magic debuffs are dealt out that usually tend to be DoTs. However, Glyph of Prayer of Healing really is more PvE-focused and more useful in a raid or dungeon healing setting. If you go this deep into the Disc tree, you will really miss CoH and your only choice for AoE healing is PoH. Make the most of what you have and slot this one in because it adds a HoT effect. If any fights require YOU to help out with AoE healing, there’s an 80% chance your party is going to take more AoE damage.

Major Glyphs for DPS as Disc/Holy (lolsmite? not anymore…)

Well, to me lolsmite is still lolsmite. I personally don’t use a Disc or Holy spec for DPS/leveling/grinding. I find the Shadow tree to be much more rewarding and versatile in this capacity (besides, a Smite build doesn’t offer Replenishment). There’s really only 1 glyph that stands out here:

1. Glyph of Smite
   It’s a nice glyph for grinding and the mobs are just beating on you. Decrease pushback by 50% so you can keep spamming and kill things faster.
2. Glyph of Inner Fire
   Now, if you’re going to be grinding, you’re going to want to up the charges on your Inner Fire. It sits at 32 un-glyphed and those charges die down pretty quick – well before the 10-minute duration is up unless you keep yourself constantly bubbled (at 23% of base mana? no thanks).

Selection here is definitely limited so pop in one of the healing glyphs to increase your utility while you’re grinding or leveling. It’ll make healing dungeons easier.

Player vs. Player

I will only address PvP glyphs for a Disc healer in Arenas/BGs. Let’s not talk about a PvP DPS Disc priest. It kills puppies. I’m not numbering the PvP glyphs because what you choose is highly dependent on your playstyle (BGs vs. Arenas) and your team composition (2v2, 3v3, or 5v5).

• Glyph of Psychic Scream
  There’s no Mana Burn glyph. We’ll have to settle. What are Disc priests good for besides l33t heals and Mana Burn? You offer emergency CC with your AoE fear. The other team pounding on you? Fear. Your team’s target is about to go down but that holy pally is about to heal him up to full? Run up to him and fear. Now keep them running for an extra second.
• Glyph of Dispel Magic
  For those nasty fights against warlock DoTs and shaman shocks. By the time you can actually dispel your teammate(s), they probably would have taken damage from the initial ticks.
• Glyph of Fear Ward
  Not really an all-around utility glyph because it will only apply when you have someone capable of fearing on the opposite team. But we also know that Fear Ward never stays on for the entire 3-minute duration. The extra 30s you gain from lowering the cooldown can make the difference.
• Glyph of Shadow Word: Death
  To be a well-rounded Arena player, you need to know when to do things and how you should do things.  There will be times you will need to be able to kill someone who’s low but someone managed to peel off your teammate who’s DPSing them. Kill him before his teammate lands a heal.
• Glyph of Mass Dispel
  I probably wouldn’t use this. From my experience in Season 4, fights didn’t last long enough for you to have to worry about mana. And if you went OOM during a fight, it was most likely because that stupid huntard landed a Viper Sting or you were idly standing in LOS of the other priest (i.e. you weren’t  pillar humping). And Mass Dispel only becomes important in a fight against mages or pallies.

  From how Season 5 looks to be shaping up so far, it’s going to be a DPS race against the other team so once again, fights shouldn’t last long enough for you to actually need this glyph.

Holy glyph selection for PvE coming up next week, probably Wednesday.

Dancing with Heigan the Unclean

First Wednesday post with actual content… Whoa! All 1 vote of my poll was a resounding yes so I will cater to your wishes. /bow

Catalyst cleared Noth the Plaguebringer and Heigan the Unclean on Monday night. The Heigan fight was epic and I’ll tell you why. And then, I’ll tell you how to avoid the experience I had that left me shaking from the pressure of knowing the entire raid’s success rested upon my shoulders…

I don’t like to /epeen or toot my own horn very much but I think I have to for this one just to show the amazing viability and functionality of the Disc healing spec for raids. We ran Naxx-10 on Monday to finish up whatever we could before the reset and found ourselves struggling with the Heigan dance. On our last attempt of the night, we downed him. But only after a 14 minute long fight where we 4-manned it after 40%. The only people who were able to master the dance were our MT, 2 DKs for DPS, and guess which healer? That’s right, yours truly. The raid got him down to 40% in 3-4 minutes, at which time the remaining 4 struggled to down him in the next 10-11 minutes (thank goodness he doesn’t have an Enrage timer) while avoiding Eruption and not dying to his disease.

Our 2 other healers were the resto druid (#2) and the resto shaman (#6). As you can see, they died pretty early on (as did I on our earlier attempts until I realized how to dance). By the end of the 14 minutes, yours truly did ~60% of the healing for that fight. Sexy, right? Yep, as a Disc priest, you can keep your mana going for 14 minutes during a boss fight. But before I tell you how, let me explain the fight mechanics.

Heigan the Unclean is pretty much the same in both 10 and 25 sized raids except he doesn’t hit as hard and his disease dot ticks for less damage. Otherwise, you’re still going to have to “dance.” For the duration of the fight, lava will erupt from cracks in 3 quarters of the room. There will always be 1 quarter that is designated as the safe zone. You essentially run from one side of the room to the other and back.

There are 2 phases. During phase 1, the MT and melee will do the running and kiting the boss through the safe zones while ranged and healers stand on his platform, where lava does not erupt. You will also be curing the diseases off your raid because it ticks for 3k damage every 3s and also decreases the hit points of all players within 20 yds by 50%. He also has an aura that goes 20 yds around him that will slow all casting speeds by 300% so stay at max range.

During phase 2, Heigan teleports to the platform and everyone in the raid has to run through the safe zones until the teleport phase is over. You have to keep moving. That’s right, you can’t stop anywhere. You don’t have time for that Flash Heal. You don’t stop and wait for the Eruption to pass before running to the next safe zone. You are constantly running during phase 2.

Now, my running wasn’t perfect but here’s how I avoided dying when I got hit – you are a priest, you have more than enough powerful instant cast spells at your disposal. Remember: You can’t worry about other people when you’re running if you haven’t taken care of yourself. People will die. Yes, you will have to ignore your deeply ingrained healer instincts for this fight.

Here’s how you can keep yourself up:

1. PW:S
2. PoM
3. Renew

Bubble and PoM yourself as soon as he teleports to the platform. There is a 1-2 second delay between him reaching the platform and the Eruption starting from the first quarter. This will give you a head start on your cooldowns in case you get hit again later.

Getting hit by Eruption causes more damage (~7k damage) than your bubble can absorb so it will also proc PoM to jump. This should be enough to get you almost back up to full. If you’re not, Renew yourself and repeat #1 and #2 as soon as the cooldowns are finished. If you have the Glyph of PW:S, that’s an added bonus because you’ll get an extra heal from bubbling yourself. You should be able to stay alive if you’re hit twice but you will have to be on top of your running game if you want to stay alive after because it will be very difficult to get yourself back to full after that.

As soon as Heigan comes off the platform looking for your MT, run yourself back to the platform and resume your normal healing duties.

If you find yourself caught in the same dreadful, nerve-wracking, harrowing experience as I did of being the only healer standing, just remember to stay calm and FOCUS. Think and strategize how you can maximize your time not casting and when to blow your mana regen cooldowns and do not, DO NOT, panic and start spamming your heals on everyone who needs it. During the fight, I popped my fiend twice and received an innervate after half the raid died. Between cleansing diseases and topping the other 4 people off, it was definitely a challenge to keep mana regen going. Here’s where you’re going to have to remember your 5s rule. Burst healing followed by bubbles and then sit tight! Long fights are your forté, disc priests. We don’t have Rapture for nothin’. Show them holy priests you can heal the main tank AND raid with ease. ;)

Okay, that’s it for today’s post. See y’all on Friday. I promise I’ll put up that glyph selection post I was talking about soon.