Holy Cata Healing

I’ve been having a lot of trouble focusing my thoughts for this post. It seems like there is just so much to talk about in terms of healing in regards to Cata.

The big, main thing that healers have had to unlearn is that people don’t have to be full health. If someone is sitting at 50% HP… they are OK unless they are stupid. Then no amount of healing can help them.

Healers have more power now than ever before because it is up to us to help retrain all the less intelligent classes on how to play the game. I’ll talk more about that later though.

I want to focus on healing as a Holy priest and the things I’ve been coming across (especially in talent choices and spell usage).

How I heal: Whether it is a dungeon or a raid I’m always starting off with renew and then I switch into chakra: serenity (heal).  Then I spam regular old heal on the tank as he takes damage which refreshes renew.  If someone else takes damage I usually just drop renew on them and move along.  When someone begins to dip faster than renew is catching them up I will toss them holy word: sanctuary.  If the boss doesn’t really have AEs then I’ll use the holy word in place of a heal (because its much cheaper).  If that doesn’t catch the person up then bam! greater heal (or heaven forbid, flash if its REALLY vital).

I also try to keep prayer of mending on cool down by constantly just casting it on the tank.  Another thing I do is use COH on cooldown.

Two reasons:
1.  It’s unlikely everyone is top’d off unless you are on trash.
2.  Crits will cause inspiration which can always be helpful (yes I know its physical only).

Now, Talents.
Here is my talent and glyph choices.

Surge of Light: This used to be amazing and it has been nerf’d considerably but not so much that you won’t get some definite benefit out of it.  Flash Heal costs almost 6k mana so if you are spamming heal like I do a lot then a 6% proc for 6k mana seems pretty good.  The changes in how people are constantly sitting without full life leaves you with a plethora of places to put your power.

Desperate Prayer:  I’ve always been a huge advocate of this spell but with a 100k+ health pool… this ability is extremely useless.  The heal isn’t enough to save you from a mob hit or recover from an AE.  Think of it as an instant cast bandage.

Lightwell (+ glyph):  Remember when this was called Lawlwell?  It still kind of is, teaching people to use it can be frustrating and difficult.  It gets easier in a raid group.  In heroics I’ve told every non tank on this boss fight your only healing is lightwell it heals for 18k (with my current stats) in 6 seconds.  I watch for those to get the buff and I’ll toss them a heal if needed but those that aren’t… fuck ‘em.

Just some simple math, a lawlwell with 10 charges (+5 from glyph) at 18k a pop is 270,000 healing.  That seems pretty mana efficient for one talent.

Rapid Renewal:  The reduction in GCD on this spell is really clutch, especially if you drop it like its a hot (haha).  I haven’t seen a holy priest not using renew so I’m not sure why you’d skip this.

Spirit of Redemption:  I don’t have this talent anymore but there are several times on boss fights I’ve gotten myself killed so I could start healing people again because I was so oom and hope and fiend and pot were all down.  An iffy call but I think in a raiding situation there are better places I can put my point.

Body and Soul:  This talent used to be my lifegrip leap of faith.  It could help someone outrun Mimiron’s beam of death or help someone get across a fire faster or help me get to my tank more quickly but now that I have lifegrip I find myself not using it nearly as much.  I still have it because I’m bound to find a use for it other than running to places faster (which I love!) but it’s likely to get cut from my spec very soon.

Circle of Healing (+ glyph):  Not as effective as it was with the huge jump in health pools it still does a lot of healing (especially as our mastery gets bigger) and I’m happy to keep this lost gem.

Guardian Spirit:  I don’t have it glyph’d currently but I use this spell all the time now.  I use it mainly when I’m OOM of course and it gives me just enough time to regen the mana for a larger heal.  I should probably macro it to let the tank know that I’m literally wanting him to die but I get a kick out of seeing them panic.

The next talents aren’t in the holy tree but I’m gonna talk about several talents in relation to each other so I wanted to get these out of the way.

Mental Agility:  The current state of our mana pools makes this an absolutely mandatory talent.

Veiled Shadows:  Read mental agility.  Two shadowfiends > 1 in a fight.

Now, you have several talents that are optional in that it all comes down to player preference.

Test of Faith: I only have 1 point in this because I figured it was more useful at 1 pt than spirit of redemption (that is questionable of course).  I think a lot of people hover around the 60% mark but, below half health makes most of us healers nervous.  When I get to raiding more this might turn into something I want 3 of so I’ll revisit that when it happens.

At this point you will have 5 talent points to spend.  Your options are…

1.  Putting 2 more points into Test of the Faith to finish it out (if you have only 1 pt in it like I do).

2.  Putting 3 points into Darkness which will give you a quick 3% haste.  Haste is always good and allows you to spit out more mana efficient heals.

3.  Putting 3 points into Twin Disciplines which gives a flat percentage increase to healing.  Bigger heals good m’kay.

Personally I’ve opt’d for Twin Disciplines x3 and Darkness x2.  This gives me the healing bonus and a bit of haste.  If I decided to go back and pickup Test of Faith I’d just take the two points from Darkness to finish it out.

My raiding spec will most likely end-up moving towards this when I get a better feel for the damage that is going around.

And that’s where I’m at currently.

Change is in the Air

Can you feel it?  It’s the anxiety that’s in the air as 11 million + people can’t wait for the Cataclysm.  Some of you are going to start your new Worgens (Den) or finish leveling up your new dwarven mages (Betsy).  Others, like myself, will be taking a few days off to push the grind to stupid levels.  We will be pushing for 85 by Friday to get in a weekend of raiding.

The biggest change though… what I’ll be doing in the Cataclysm.

I don’t want to do 25man raiding.  I’m totally against it.  The problem is most of my best friends in game are healers.  I made a few new healing friends in Cata, Conifer and Kray, who have been with me pretty much since the beginning of LK.  They’ve been healing their asses off and when I left Relentless they came with me.

At the time it was going to be those two plus myself healing and I figured with the push in content we’d almost always need a 3rd healer.  That didn’t bother me too much plus it gave us a diverse healing crew.  The problem of being that I had to leave behind Shiningstar (and her husband, Adnar) to do this.  Shindig and Addy had been with me since 8.8.08… that’s a long time to have someone as a devoted raider!  They’ve never been able to join guild since their kids play on the accounts and well… any guild of mine is barely safe for adults in chat.

Plus I already had 2 tanks and 3 healers for my 10man so how do I fit in a 3rd tank and 4th healer?!

I checked with Kahnti who’s switching to his DK to tank in Cata to see if he just wanted to DPS.  He always loves DPS cuz it allows his epeen to get super big when he does silly damage.  He was like… yea ok.  Bam, that gave me the opening I needed for Addy and put my 10man group to 9.  Next was to poke Shindig.

She was rather sure she wasn’t going to play a DPS toon.  I didn’t ask Conifer cuz he’s easily confused.  He stumbled around for days after he lost treeform.  The next person on the list was Kray.  She was my only real hope since her feelings towards toons was based in the overall accomplishment and not in the toon itself.  Problem being of course that she enjoyed healing like I do.  Paladin, druid, shaman, and priest alts… all healers.

I weighed my options, it only left one person who could switch to DPS and allow Shindig in.  The problem of course is that I pay a lot of attention to whats going on and I find it easiest to heal and look at everything else.  When I DPS I get into the zone.  I’m super worried about being able to DPS (effectively) and still lead a raid.  The last thing I need is Kahnti trying to epeen slap me cuz he did three times my damage.  Plus how bad does that look if you are the weak link in your own raid?!

I’m gonna stick with priest though and just go shadow.  I’ll still get to heal in randoms but not in raid.  We’ll see how it goes!

Sidenote:  Does this mean I have to change my banner… AGAIN?!

Sundering Subtypes

Have you been sitting on your bank alt, watching guild chat scroll by and noticed something strange? Maybe you were tinkering around on a new toon and you got a tingle when you stepped through the haze of new. No, it’s not puberty or your herpes flaring up, its new ways of playing WoW.

Several new stereotypes seem to have spawned in the WoW universe since the Cataclysm rocked the world.

1. Nerd Hoarders – As the name implies they are massing nerd points for the day they can be turned in to win the game. They are usually quiet people, so engrossed in finishing quests their text scrolls by in streaks. Even when you do get them to talk it seems like a foreign language. Those not native to the land of achievements might not have any idea what they are talking about.

Since the coming of the Cataclysm they have been exceedingly easy to spot. Almost all of them can be found in a zone no level 80 should be for more than a few minutes. Your guild main tank running around in Wetlands for the last 2 hours… yep, he’s a nerd hoarder.

2. Alt-Keeper: Since the shaking of the barrens you might have noticed some peoples mains no longer exist. These people existed long before the Cataclysm but were only talked about in hushed corners or whispered about on blogs.

They are a new breed of altaholics birthed from the Cataclysm. They have replaced those mains with a gaggle of alts bearing similar names. They multiply the number of toons in your guild and spam your chatbox with character hopping.

3. Zombies: This one is pretty self explanatory. Zombies are the people you haven’t seen in months. They were dead, buried and gone. They weren’t coming back to WoW but the Sundering has split open those graves and people are flooding back in faster than the Wetlands filled up.

Zombies are commonly seen disguised as Alt-Keepers or Nerd Hoarders.

These are just some of the new types of WoW players you might have seen patrolling the landscape.

Big Talent Changes?

I’m strolling around the house this morning, bundled up like an eskimo (cuz I’m too cheap to turn on the heater) with my cup of hateraide and I boot up the comp.  Head on over to World of Raids where they have this article posted.  Let me quote the important part…

Zarhym dropped by and provided a few extra tidbits for us, too.  There are more class balance changes coming that should hopefully tide us over until we can get to 85.  Some of them are so dramatic that druids, paladins, priests, and shaman will have their talent trees reset.

I was like… what what?!  Sweeping talent changes… enough so that we get a free refund?

I’m not sure if they are talking about the changes that have already been made, which don’t seem so drastic we need a talent refund OR if they are talking about something so new and outlandish it will shatter our friggin’ minds!

Here’s where I start hoping and praying they get rid of the smite to heal to regen mana component (cuz I srsly fucking h8 it).

As a side note you might want to check your bind spot this coming Monday night.  When the world shatters its taking the Dalaran portals with it.  No one wants to get stuck in the frigid north trying to get home.  You will also want to stop eating out for a week so you can pay for that race change (or 6) for your alts so you don’t have to level up all over again.  That might not be a bad thing though since it looks like you are going to have some time before the xpac to explore the strange new world!

Anyone else giddy as a school girl on her first date?

Still Alive!

Looks like its been… OMFG… 12 days since I posted anything.  Can you believe that?  That’s srsly bad yo.

I’ve been off work for 5 days and this is the first time I’ve been in front of a computer since then.  IRL has been great.  I just recently got a PS3 and I’ve been playing a variety of games.

God of War 3 – Absolutely amazing.  All the graphics on the PS3 are really hot, the power behind this little thing is just amazing.  It makes me amazed of what can come out of the ps3 box that costs a fraction of my F’ing computer.  You think it’s a cut-scene until you realize you’re dying and you have to fight back.  Great game.

Final Fantasy XIII – I’ve only had a tiny chance to play it but its been mostly good so far.  You switch between stances a lot (think the stances that warriors use).  That is neat and all except you switch stances A LOT.  It turns into a big time consumption because it takes 2 or 3 seconds to go through the animation.  Other then that its beautiful and the story is great.  Graphics are fan-fucking-tastic.

Disgaea 3 – The video link is in a foreign language but it lets you take a look at it.  I’ve only played about the first 5 mins of it but it looks true to the series.  I played both 1 and 2 and while they aren’t graphically superior to anything they do sport a level of micromanagement that gets the raid leader in me all giddy.

Also, if you didn’t know, you can stream netflix through your ps3 AND the ps3 has wireless built in (the xbox you have to get an attachment for).  It has a blu-ray built in as well… ps3′s are fucking amazing.  I’ve been really surprised by it.

Buncha updates on random things so this post is gonna be a bit long…

Cooking… I looked at several of those Tyler Florence recipes and decided I just wasn’t up to snuff for that yet.  I’m still learning the proper way to cook chicken w/o it being done on the outside and salmonella’ee in the center.

My best friend Betsy (Delinia / Linaa) popped out her 3rd kid on the 5th.  She says they aren’t going for a 4th but I’m keeping my fingers crossed for irish triplets.

Let’s see, what else has been going on…

GARAGE SALE SEASONS HAS STARTED AGAIN!  It’s been cold around here and its been in swing since about the beginning of the month.  I’ve had several great finds I’ll have to post some pics of.  I got a new coffee table for $10 that just needs some sanding and a bit of paint.  I got an amazing throw blanket that I would have $20 for but they only wanted $3!  Delinia got some weird pillow that’s shaped like a U and wraps around your waste for when you are sitting down feeding the baby.  That way you don’t have to stuff something behind your arm or prop it up some weird way… she says, “BEST. BUY. EVA!”

Blizzcon Tickets are on sale June 2nd at 7am PST and June 5th at 10 am PST.  I’m still gonna try to get some even if Blizzcon is big for WoW info.  I still luvs me some Diablo and Starcraft!

Starcraft is a cult in Korea.  They have a huge e-sports league over there and its on TV and all sorts of crazy shit.  I’ve been following this story and awhile ago an investigation was launched to check on players throwing games for gambling (read: scandal!).  Welp, 11 people were just arrested… how crazy is that shit yo.

Sorry for disappearing!  That’s very disrespectful to y’all and I’ll try to be betta.