Archive for the “Priest” Category

Yup, with 3.3 on the PTR, and Icecrown Citadel yummies sitting off in the horizon (not to mention a change to how Emblems of Triumph are gotten that is in line with the recent change to Emblems of Conquest), Blizzard has released the new set-bonuses for the last tier set of W0tLK!

Of course, playing a Priest and Druid, you know where this post will be focusing.

So, let’s look at Balance Druid’s bonuses first!

2 Pieces (Balance): When you gain Clearcasting from your Omen of Clarity talent, you deal 15% additional Nature and Arcane damage for 6 seconds.
4 Pieces (Balance): Your critical strikes from Starfire and Wrath cause the target languish for an additional 5% of your spell’s damage over 4 seconds.

The Clearcasting proc buff is kind of neat, though technically it *shouldn’t* be a Balance bonus- Omen of Clarity is actually in the Restoration talent tree. Granted, many a moonkin will snag the talent (myself included), because hey, mana-free casts are made of win! Still though, I don’t really keep track of my OoC procs, and it seems most of the time it procs when I don’t need to cast anything again (usually when I’m buffing with Mark/Gift of the Wild or Thorns). Or at least, I only notice the procs when I don’t need to cast anything else. Is it going to be as strong as a bonus as T8/8.5′s 2-piece is/was? Not sure, I’m sure testing on the PTR will give us a better idea, though.

As for the 4 piece bonus. I’m kind of meh about it, honestly. So after critting for say, 12000 damage with a Starfire that means that the target will take and extra 600 damage on top of that over 4 seconds? Meh. It might bump you on the meters a little (I know during Lunar Eclipse I put out ridiculous numbers with Starfire crits), but I have a feeling it’s only going to be a marginal increase. We’ll see I guess.

They did post the druid models though for the gear. While I am *so* not feeling the headpiece (I also have a certain affinity for my Sailor Moon crown), the shoulders are pretty freaking bad ass. Which of course is going to mean they’re going to be damn near impossible for a fairly casual raider to get, knowing Blizzard.

Druid Tier 10 graphics

Onto Priest bonuses! We’ll look at Shadow first.

2 Pieces (Damage): The critical strike chance of your Shadow Word: Pain, Devouring Plague, and Vampiric Touch spells is increased by 5%.
4 Pieces (Damage): Reduces the channel duration and period of your Mind Flay spell by 0.5 seconds.

Okay. Wow? VT and DP crit a lot to begin with (VT crits a crapload for me, actually), so this is going to be a nice DPS increase. Although, even being marginally geared for ToC25, I still put out pretty pathetic numbers (I don’t like being 11 and lower on the meters ). Anything that bumps Shadow DPS is welcome though, and since Tier 9′s bonuses were, in my opinion, pretty lame, this is a pretty nice change.

4 piece? Oh wow. While half a second isn’t a lot, it will be enough for me to sneak Shadow Word: Death back into my rotation. Assuming, as stated above, I don’t have to jump through ridiculous hoops to snag the 4 piece bonus (I really like how they set-up distribution for Tier 9 actually. Even if I barely have enough emblems to get my 2 piece). The only thing I can see being a little bit of annoyance here is with a Heroism/Bloodlust pop. Although, it might mean being able to add in an extra MF anyway, which is going to mean a sizable DPS increase, honestly.

Okay. Yummy healing bonuses now!

2 Pieces (Heal): After your Pain Suppression and Guardian Spirit talents expire on your target, they grant your target 10% increased healing received for 10 sec.
4 Pieces (Heal): Your Flash Heal spell has a 15% chance to reset the cooldown on your Circle of Healing and Penance Spells.

2 piece is nice, especially for Holy priests who have GS glyphed. This is going to mean I’ll need to make a macro for PS for raid purposes (time to learn how to tie a macro with Clique -.o). In a situation where you’re popping wither of those two cooldowns, you’re anticipating your target (usually a tank) taking a HOLYCRAP lot of damage (initial Auriaya pull, anyone?), so that bonus healing after the effect wears is going to be really nice.

4 piece… oh god. Oh. God. Anything that lowers Penance’s cooldown for me is welcome. And lord knows I’m usually spamming Flash Heals when Penance is on cooldown. So yeah, kind of in love with this.

I’ve noticed though, that a lot of the priest bloggers I’ve read are kind of meh about these. Honestly, I think these bonuses are worlds beyond the kind of crappy tier 9 bonuses (especially when someone ran the math to find the bonus to Divine Aegis on the 4 piece was a laughable increase at best). Maybe I’m just a little less experienced (and a little more idealistic?) than some of them though. We’ll find out the average rate of refreshing the cooldown though, once testing on these sets opens up on the PTR. I’m still feeling positive, though. Just hoping now that the graphics of this set are prettier than Tier 9 was. That shit (for Alliance, anyway) is fugly as hell.

It’s been an interesting week. Once again, I didn’t raid all that much but I did manage to get some other stuff done.

Last night I logged in to see my guild doing 10-man VoA. I was annoyed and a little hurt, as I’m a member of the “core” 10-man team who usually does that and Ulduar with the other officers and core/regular raiders. Since I was doomed to PuG again, I jumped into a VoA25 with my Druid.

Which pretty much fell apart due to weak healing and people not being able to NOT stand in fire.

It’s not a difficult thing, and is an ongoing mechanic for boss fights in WoW. Don’t stand in fire. Don’t stand in slime. Don’t get hit by the giant flame wall that takes 3 seconds to even form up and start moving. Don’t drop your Grobbulus debuff in the middle of the raid. It’s not rocket science, people!

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So it’s been a real relaxing week for me. I opted out of raids (aside from the guild’s regular 10-man stuff, and a pickup Naxx10 for badges), and spent my time in a far more laid-back fashion.

Mainly, I did a whole lot of PvP the last two days.

Aside from that though, i’ve managed to powerlevel my Inscription up to 443 now. All I can skill up off of is Darkmoon Cards and Research, but still, I’m not worried. I just wish I’d be luckier with which cards I get (keep getting Chaos, Undeath, and got *1* Prisms. Meh).

Sunday night I swapped to Feral spec, since I was bored and was working on gemming it out, finally. I saw it was a WSG (Warsong Gulch) weekend for battlegrounds, and since that’s my favorite BG, I decided why not. Besides, Druids are awesome in that one for flag carrying and whatnot (and I did get to cap a few times, wewt). After a bunch of those, I decided to try Isle of Conquest (I’d done it once, unsuccessfully, on my Priest) and had crazy fun with it. Then I wound up doing some Arathi Basin before calling it a night (of course, by then it was 5:30 am soo… >_> yeah).

Yesterday, having been bitten hard by the PvP bug again, did some Wintergrasp on Binya, then grabbed my 2′s partner and did some arena. I was reminded once again how stupidly overpowered Resto Druids are in PvP, ugh. I may win up scrapping Binya’s Feral spec once I accumulate a set of PvP gear for her, and going Resto for arena, heh.

Anyway, after the failfest of arena, I decided to do what I’d been toying with a few days earlier- changing my PvE Shadow spec to PvP. And hot damn, did I have a ton of fun with it!

First of all, Silence in PvP is made of awesome. As is Improved Mind Blast. Those two, with some Mana Burn thrown in helped in taking down more than a few clothies (in particular, Mages and Warlocks). I changed my glyphs for that spec as well, so I now have Dispersion/Inner Fire/Shadow Word: Pain, and they work nicely. The 45 sec cooldown on Dispersion is AWESOME. I was rarely, if ever, out of mana.

I was having such a blast, I’d nearly forgotten how much I used to love PvP’ing as Shadow when I was leveling up Binya. When I was 49 I spent a lot of time in BG’s, and used to have a blast. I definitely see myself filling in the gaps the next few weeks with some random BG action- aside everything else, it is a great outlet for frustration! Get pissed off? Go melt some faces! XD

I meant to update this yesterday, and get back on schedule, but due to an insomnia attack, my day got a bit effed up. Oh well.

Was a quiet week, though we did get a lot done.

This is a long ass post, so adding in a jump so it doesn’t take up the whole first page!
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