this is BHS

This morning, pre-tuesday restart, I logged into the game briefly to 'check on some things'. I was on maybe 30 minutes before the SERVER timers began. I was doing the usual, checking the GB, moving items around, etc. I see Heydoc post in GC...and this is the conversation after he initially praised BHS for the warm reception his girlfriend received last night.

Heydoc: "I said thats how we roll" (referring to his speaking to his girlfriend after she was elated by the warm welcome to the guild)

Heydoc: "I was floored by the prayer in vent before the raid and how everyone took a knee. That was amazing."

Makarios: "and that is something we will always strive to have before (and I would often say we should have a closing prayer as well)

Heydoc: "and a buddy called who is lost and searching for his faith and the raid paused where any other raid would have replaced me and on top of that i get a tanking shield when i was healing i couldnt believe it."

Makarios: "Doc, the testimony you are giving right now is what our vision is about. making it fun and shocking people against the norm of wow playing. we are not of this world (so to speak) and you noticing that means we are on the right path."

Heydoc: "thats what i told my buddy last night...i feel uplifted when i am in vent a vent full of joy i feel i have become a better person in the last few days ive been in here."

Makarios: "awesome, God Bless all and hope to see you on the other side ;)"

simply, WOW! This was very uplifting for me personally as a member and officer of BHS. I feel we definitely needed this type of post in guild chat, especially in light of many of our member's accounts being compromised and flaming of our guild's vision.

(click to enlarge)

The guild website is down atm, but once it comes up i hope to post this very thread (or similar to this one) on the site.

new jinx! shirt

So I was browsing the jinx! clothing website this morning and came across a shirt design (Jesus Saves T-Shirt). I think I had seen it before. In the shirt link there was a quote by a poster that said:

"Jesus was a horrible healer, always gettin' teh aggro" followed by

"WTF PETER TANK THE PHARISEE ADDS FOR THE LOVE OF ME"

Wow, you gotta have a sense of humor that's for sure :)

I think this shirt is rather harmless. It was designed by the famous Erol Otus of the D&D art design fame.

So if for nothing else it's an original piece of art from a legend in the RP art community. Not sure if I will be getting this shirt or not but most likely will be looking into purchasing a different shirt. There is a Priest shirt that Jinx! offers. Actually there are two shirts I am considering, but I will only be choosing one. Here are the two shirts:

{ or }

There you have it...oh and I'll leave you with a shirt that made me laugh

warcraft census Thunderhorn

So I did some sleuth work of sorts today. I wanted to see how many lvl 80 priests (alliance side) there were on Thunderhorn-US. Here are my findings:

• There are 509 (reported) level 80 alli Priests
• Draenei: 122 ~ 24%
• Dwarf: 70 ~ 14%
• Human: 209 ~ 41%
• Night Elf: 108 ~ 21%

So, looking at the above numbers it is clear that Makarios is in the minority and I'm fine with that. As a side note, and I only post these numbers because I now have a level 80 horde Priest named Perdishun.

• There are 186 (reported) level 80 horde Priests
• Blood Elf: 93 ~ 50%
• Troll: 20 ~ 11%
• Undead: 73 ~ 39%

Now, currently Perdishun is undead. However, I strongly feel should he remain a horde toon permanently I will inevitably change his race to Troll. My first horde Priest ever was a Troll and I just enjoy playing them for some reason, plus Berserking  isn't too shabby a racial.

some ponderings on the Cat changes...

I will try to keep my 'discuss' to a bare minimum as it is late and I just got off work.

What I like about the New Catty spec (in no particular order):

• Inner Will / Inner Fire - I have never had a problem keeping IF up and active, I have, however never cared for the fact that it has charges...i mean is that really necessary? Anyways, I like that the two will be w/o charges and can be used 'on the fly'. Inner Will gives you a 12% speed burst and a mana discount to your instant casts. Seems to me to be more PVP sided...sure I wanna run a little faster to get to that next boss in VOA but don't really see myself using IW over IF.
• Leap of Faith (Life Grip) - Awesome sounding...if you wanna play daddy or mom in the raid. I am of the school that the healers know what is going on in the raid as a big picture more than the dps or tanks. Not only do the healers watch green AND blue bars they are at a distance (typically) checking things out at max camera range. So why not give them the "get over here you knucklehead' spell. I do like it, some have posted their dislike of the idea...but as a healing priest, I care about the raid, their longevity and contributions {{ALIVE}} so I wont be the wiseguy that macros a raid/say/whisper/chat emote that announces I just saved your butt...if that were the case y'all would have seen that from my Pain Suppression or Guardian Spirit (GS back-in-the-day, I'm not holy ;p) spells going off.
• AOE bubble (Power Word: Barrier) - woot, shieldin' on easy mode?! I don't know if this is the OP part of priests yet or what but man what a spell. I imagine the mana cost will be high for such a beast as this :)
• Also diggin' the drop of Divine Spirit (save a candle or twenty)
  

What I think is 'still' missing from the healing priest:

• Ahem, I've always wanted an interrupt ability while i am healing. I play a shaman as my second main and love, love, love Wind Shear. It is a beautiful thing. So, I'd like something like that while I am healing. I always main target the boss or last multi-mob (jokingly my AFK Mind Sear casting while bored) when raiding (since I use healbot to heal) and am always aware of the spells they are casting.
• ^^ I actually used that old, old spell (only available to draenei and dwarves) I think it was called Chastise? Anyway it would stun a 'humanoid' target for XX seconds. Was nice in pvp.
• Fear Ward - I love this to have more than one charge, maybe 2 or 3. I know I could get Glyph of Fear Ward but who in their right mind would?

I grow weary and tired and shall end this post here. I am, alas, pleased with the changes and will continue to love the Priest class...whether its on the dark side or the light side of priestyness.

Heal on brothers and sisters...heal on...

Cataclysm Class Changes: Priest

Cataclysm Class Changes: Priest

by Adam Holisky Apr 8th 2010 at 2:55AM

As we've been expecting, we now have the first glimpse of what the priest class will be like in Cataclysm. These changes are straight from Blizzard, and they provide great insight into where the designers want to take things. Please remember that these changes are for the beta and will very likely be modified as the expansion nears release.

Some of the major highlights:

• Mind Spike (level 81): Deals Shadowfrost damage and puts a debuff on the target that improves subsequent Mind Spike damage.
• Inner Will (level 83): Increases movement speed by 12% and reduces the mana cost of instant-cast spells by 10%. This buff will be exclusive with Inner Fire, meaning you can't have both up at once
• Leap of Faith (level 85): Pull a party or raid member to your location. Leap of Faith (or "Life Grip") is intended to give priests a tool to help rescue fellow players who have pulled aggro, are being focused on in PvP, or just can't seem to get out of the fire in time. Instant. 30-yard range. 45-second cooldown.
• Discipline will finally be getting Power Word: Barrier as a talented ability. Think of it like a group Power Word: Shield.

The full Blizzard announcement after the break.

Priest Cataclysm Changes

In World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, we'll be making lots of changes and additions to class talents and abilities across the board. In this preview, you'll get an early look at some of the changes in store for the priest class, including a rundown of some of the new spells, abilities, and talents, as well as an overview of how the new Mastery system will work with the different talent specs.

New Priest Spells

Heal (available at level 16): While priests already have a spell called Heal, the existing version becomes obsolete at higher levels, which is something we intend to change in Cataclysm. Introduced at a low level, the "new" Heal spell will functionally work much like a down-ranked Greater Heal did in the past, adding more granularity to your direct-healing arsenal. If you need to heal someone a moderate amount and efficiency is an issue (making Flash Heal the incorrect spell for the job), then Heal is what you want to use. Heal is intended to be the priest's go-to direct-healing spell unless they need something bigger (Greater Heal) or faster (Flash Heal). We will be following a similar philosophy with all the healing classes.

Mind Spike (level 81): Deals Shadowfrost damage and puts a debuff on the target that improves subsequent Mind Spike damage. The intent of Mind Spike is to fill a niche missing in Shadow DPS, though it may be occasionally useful for healers as well. Mind Spike provides a quick nuke to use in situations where the priest doesn't have time to set up the normal rotation, such as when adds are dying too fast or you have to swap targets a lot. Spamming Mind Spike will do about as much damage as casting Mind Flay on a target afflicted with Shadow Word: Pain. The idea behind the debuff is that when you cast Mind Spike, we expect you to cast a lot of them; we don't intend you to fit it into an already full Shadow rotation. It also provides Shadow with a spell to cast when locked out of the Shadow school. (School lockouts will no longer affect both schools for multi-school spells.) 1.5-second cast. 30-yard range. No cooldown.

Inner Will (level 83): Increases movement speed by 12% and reduces the mana cost of instant-cast spells by 10%. This buff will be exclusive with Inner Fire, meaning you can't have both up at once. Inner Fire provides a spell power and Armor buff; Inner Will should be useful on a more situational basis.

Leap of Faith (level 85): Pull a party or raid member to your location. Leap of Faith (or "Life Grip") is intended to give priests a tool to help rescue fellow players who have pulled aggro, are being focused on in PvP, or just can't seem to get out of the fire in time. Instant. 30-yard range. 45-second cooldown.

Changes to Abilities and Mechanics

In addition to introducing new spells, we're planning to make changes to some of the other abilities and mechanics you're familiar with. This list and the summary of talent changes below it are by no means comprehensive, but they should give you a good sense of what we intend for each spec.

• All HoTs and DoTs will benefit from Haste and Crit innately. Hasted HoTs and DoTs will not have a shorter duration, just a shorter period in between ticks (meaning they will gain extra ticks to fill in the duration as appropriate).
• We want to bring back Shadow Word: Death as an "execute" -- something you do when the target is at 25% health.
• While we want to keep the priest's role as a well-rounded healer, we also want to make sure the class is a viable tank healer, which is something priests moved away from a little in Wrath of the Lich King. Greater Heal will probably be the tank-healing spell of choice, though we've also discussed giving Discipline a second shield so that they have a small shield to cast on lots of different targets, and a big, more expensive shield to cast on a tank or anyone else taking a ton of damage.
• Divine Spirit and Prayer of Spirit will be removed from the game. As Spirit will be the primary mana-regeneration stat, we don't want it to vary as much between solo, small group, and raid play. Blessing of Kings and Mark of the Wild will not boost Spirit either.
• Mana will be a bigger consideration for all healers. We aren't trying to make healing more painful; we're trying to make it more fun. When the cost of a spell isn't an issue, then casting the right spell for the job is less of an issue because you might as well just use your most powerful spell all of the time. We are, however, getting rid of the five-second rule, because we don't want to encourage standing around doing nothing. We're also going to cut back on the benefits of buffs such as Replenishment so priests (and all healers) don't feel as penalized when those buffs aren't available.

New Talents and Talent Changes

• We want to improve Discipline's single-target healing capacity. One key is to make sure shielding isn't always a more attractive option than healing.
• We want to improve Holy for PvP healing. One way to do this is to make sure that Heal's throughput is similar between both specs.
• We want to improve Shadow for short fights and reduce its susceptibility to school lockouts.
• Discipline will finally be getting Power Word: Barrier as a talented ability. Think of it like a group Power Word: Shield.
• We want to make Holy a little bit more interesting to play. One new talent will push the Holy priest into an improved healing state when he or she casts Prayer of Healing, Heal, or Renew three times in a row. The empowered state varies depending on the heals cast.
• Since the Shadow tree has a lot of passive damage-boosting abilities -- something we're trying to avoid in Cataclysm -- we will need to replace several of the tree's talents. One idea is to play off of the new Shadow Orbs mechanic (see Mastery section below), possibly allowing you to consume an orb to increase damage from Mind Blast or reduce Mind Spike's cast time.
• Misery will no longer affect spell Hit chance. We want players to be able to gear themselves around a Hit cap that isn't variable depending on group composition.

Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses

Discipline
Healing
Meditation
Absorption

Holy
Healing
Meditation
Radiance

Shadow
Spell damage
Spell Crit
Shadow Orbs

Absorption: Improves the strength of shields such as Power Word: Shield, Divine Aegis, and Power Word: Barrier.

Radiance: Your direct heals add a small heal-over-time component to the target.

Shadow Orbs: Casting spells grants a chance for Shadow Orbs to be created that fly around you and increase your shadow damage. This will help lower-level characters feel more like "Shadow priests" before they obtain Shadowform.

We hope you enjoyed this preview, and we're looking forward to hearing your initial thoughts and feedback on these additions and changes. Please keep in mind that this information represents a work in progress and is subject to change as development on Cataclysm continues.

source

Update: Ghostcrawler has chimed in with some clarifications.

Re: Priest Cataclysm Changes

A few quick clarifications:

Neither Inner Fire nor Inner Will has charges. The decision is on which armor you want up at the time.

Preventing dot clipping is something we want to do in general. It obviously benefits Shadow priests just as much as warlocks.

The idea behind Mind Spike is that you can't always settle into your normal, and high-ramp up rotation. It's also useful when you have to move or get school locked.

The closest analogue to PW:B is the DK Anti-Magic Zone, but it has some important differences, such as a way to counter it in PvP (since it absorbs all damage, not just magical damage).

The idea behind the Holy "cast three in a row" talent (it's called "Chakra") is that we've always positioned Holy as a versatile healer. This talent lets you shift into different modes. If you need to be a tank healer, cast three single target heals and your single-target healing is now better. Cast three area heals, and you can be a temporarily specialized group healer. We're going to try to play this mechanic up with a cool UI to try to get that "I'm almost in the zone" feel. We'll let it apply to as many types of spells as we can, perhaps even Smite for those times when nobody's taking damage.

We pulled Misery because we are pulling every group benefit that improves hit. It's annoying to have to swap your gear in and out depending on who shows up for your group. In general we're going to push even harder in Cataclysm for bringing people you like to play with, not bringing people who have awesome buffs. The answer to almost every question of "But why would they bring me?" should be "Because you know what the hell you're doing."

source

gear updates, etc.

recent gear updates:

• Soulcleave Pendant

• Sandals of Consecration (finally pooled together enough Primordial Saronite (5) needed to have Caricic make these for me.
• Kilt of Untreated Wounds. Didn't win this item, however, I did roll on it and Magturk of our guild won the pants. These weren't originally on my list but after reviewing them may move ahead of Leggings of Woven Death (because the Kilt is easier to obtain--if I had 10 primordial's growing on a tree then maybe these would fit the bill)

With my playing more, at least to get the daily frost badges going on my Shaman and Pally I may be able to obtain more Primordial Saronite for crafting some priesty gear(s). Not a rush priority mind you, just a eventual goal.

Still having fun running ICC10 with the guild. On our first night of the week (Wednesday) we cleared the first wing and got Festergut and his stank brother Rotface (all on the first night)! That sets the stage this Sunday (If I can make it back from our Easter trip back home in time to tip over the Professors table of mutations.

In other raiding news. The guild did an impromptu Sarth 3-D (10-man) run this week. After a few attempts, as I was the only healer, we got him down and all received the title <...of the Nightfall>.

farewell for now...