You’ve probably asked the question a million times - As a priest, what professions should you get?

Tailoring
The answer currently being pushed is tailoring. The Primal Mooncloth gear is absolutely astounding, and is arguably the best gear of its kind for a long, long, long, LONG time.

I believe it’s done as a way to reward non-raiders with raid-quality gear. This irritates raiding non-tailors, who believe that it is overpowered and should perhaps be on par with 5-man loot rather than raid loot.

I’m not here to argue that point, one way or the other. What I will say is that I doubt things will stay that way. I don’t think the devs want to REQUIRE a profession for any class. Choosing professions is one of the ways that players differentiate their characters, and herding all cloth wearers to tailoring has to be against the vision for the game.

I am not a tailor, nor do I intend to shift to tailoring. I am, however, eagerly farming mats for my Whitemend Hood - a raid-quality tailored hat which is BIND ON EQUIP, rather than bind on pickup.

If I were a dev, I’d make the Primal Mooncloth (and other such sets, like Frozen Shadowweave) BoE as well. The materials are scary enough that tailors would make money by offering them to non-tailors. I see that as a win-win situation, but obviously I’m not a dev and they may have reasons beyond my ken for the current state of affairs.

Anyrate, tailoring is considered a must-have for clothies looking to get the best gear available - and I would generally agree. It is the best gear available for most priests. But you don’t HAVE to be a tailor to be a good priest (or a good anything for that matter). It is a good choice, but not a required choice, I would say. There’s plenty of great gear available that doesn’t require tailoring to use.

And, on a purely shallow level, I like for my character’s outfit to change from time to time. I don’t want to have the same exact robe for months on end, even if it is totally awesome.

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Today, my gentle snowflakes*, we will discuss the priest ability Shackle Undead.

Shackle Undead (or just “shackle”, as most people call it) is a spell learned from the priest trainer at level 20.

The tooltip says :

Shackles the target undead enemy for up to 40 sec. The shackled unit is unable to move, attack or cast spells. Any damage caused will release the target. Only one target can be shackled at a time.

Let’s dissect the tooltip a bit.

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The answer is easy - I don’t make a red cent off this site. I do it because I love the class, and maybe someday someone will read it and learn.

In the meantime, I have a host of other responsibilities and time-consuming activities.

Perhaps someday I shall get enough interest to stay on track and do weekday-daily posts. Until that day, you’ll have to suffer through my sporadic updates.

I’m long-winded enough to filibuster* Congress, so I reckon I make up for the few days here and there that I miss with mind-numbingly long posts. One such post is forthcoming, by the way.

And yes, I know that I should write my posts a week in advance, build up a cushion of posts that can be put up when I’m not overworked.

But where’s the fun in that?

*filibuster is now the word of the day. It has a grand and hilarious history, too. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filibuster

In an earlier post, I mentioned the primary “games” for priests to play.

* PVP
* Soloing
* Group Questing
* Instancing
* Raiding
* Roleplaying

I’m going to amend that now to include Heroic Instancing, and I’ll tell you why.

They’re HARD.

I don’t just mean that you’ve gotta have better gear, farming out those non-heroics till you get all your gear drops. I don’t mean that you need a full group of well-geared people. I don’t even mean that you’ve got to heal more.

I mean they’re HARD. I mean all of the above, to the twentieth power. They can very realistically be referred to ask “Five Man Raids”.

Heroic mode instances are wipe-fests, even for good healers. They incorporate my least favorite stat in the game - luck - and then mock you as you try again and again to kill a single trash mob.

That does not mean that they’re impossible, or that constant wipes need to be the norm. I aim to make MY Heroic runs get to the point where wiping is a rarity, insomuch as I can.

All that was very nice and theatrical, but anyone who actually cares is going to want some specifics.

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“Where have all the good men gone
And where are all the gods?
Where’s the street-wise Hercules
To fight the rising odds?

Isn’t there a white knight upon a fiery steed?
Late at night I toss and I turn and I dream of what I need

I need a hero
I’m holding out for at hero ’till the end of the night
He’s gotta be strong
And he’s gotta be fast
And he’s gotta be fresh from the fight

I need a hero
I’m holding out for a hero ’till the morning light
He’s gotta be sure
And it’s gotta be soon
And he’s gotta be larger than life
Larger than life”

~Bonnie Tyler - Holding Out for a Hero

Today is Tank Appreciation Day, folks!

If you’ve found a good tank, shower him (or her) with flowers, hugs, cookies, and chocolates.

If you haven’t found a good tank, ask yourself why. Do you, as a healer, need to become better? Does your tank not really understand what shields are for? If you have any kind of tank at all, and he’s willing to learn, both of you work together. Read each other’s class forums. Spend some time getting to know each other. Work your strategies around what you BOTH need, and then go practice. Being a good healer is difficult, and being a good tank is difficult. Being a spectactular tank or healer requires someone of the other class that you know well and that you’ve developed a rapport with.

If you’re a good healer looking for a good tank, go post on your realm forums on the official WoW site - I promise you’ll get plenty of invitations. Be picky. Both healers and tanks are the scarcest classes in the game. Well-played versions of either deserve to be coddled and loved. But it’s not all peaches and roses, you have to work for it.

It’s worth it though. It’s worth every wipe, every mis-timed heal, every failed taunt. Because once you work the kinks out of the relationship between tank and healer, you are INVINCIBLE.

Cherish your tanks, priests. Tell them every day how much you love them, because without them you’re just an oblong stain on the floor.

Patch 2.1.2 comes out today. Here are the bits that seem most interesting to the average priest.

• Feedback: This buff can now proc when the Priest is sitting.
• Shadowfiend: This creature will now reset to full health when it is summoned. It will also automatically attack your current enemy target when it is summoned.
• Surge of Light: The buff from Surge of Light will no longer prevent Inner Focus’s charge from being consumed. In addition, it is no longer possible to get two free Smites when this ability procs.
• Touch of Weakness: This spell can now trigger Surge of Light when it does critical strikes.

The Shadowfiend is my favorite change - Mother of monkeys was that annoying, to call in your already gimpy Innervate, and have him stand next to you like a lump of clay.

I ended up making a quickie macro : /cast Shadowfiend /petattack : and then punching it a few times to force the pet to fight.

With this change, I won’t need it any more, but I may keep it anyway just for brevity’s sake. Saves me a pet bar.

Since instancing is my favorite part of this game, I reckon now’s a good time to introduce you to the “perfect” instance group.

Group Anatomy
For a successful instance, you NEED

1) Tank
2) Healer
3) DPS

and for a less painful one, it’d be nice to also have

4) DPS
5) DPS

If you can manage to slip a hybrid into one of the fluid 4/5 spots, even better. I’ve more than once had a druid kitty pop into healer form when a pull went sour, sliding into the role of emergency healer with an ease that, quite frankly, saved us from a wipe.

Am I saying that the people who occupy 4 and 5 are useless and unnecessary? Pfft, of course not. And there are a number of instances that absolutely require more dps than 1/2/3 combo. I love my 4/5 slotters. LOOOOOVE. *bakes them cookies*

But you cannot do an instance run without 1/2/3. (Don’t send me screenshots of how a group of five rogues totally ganked such-and-such instance. I know that by posting such flippant Nevers or Alwayses I’m just begging to be proven wrong. At least 95% of the time, you need 1/2/3)

But as long as you have a solid 1/2/3 - you can slap almost any other class combo into 4/5 and still have a good run. “What about an offtank?” “You need a backup healer!” “Crowd Controoooooooool!”– no. Sometimes those are nice, but in general…just no.

Every birthday and Christmas, I close my eyes and wish for this group:

1) Tank
2) Healer
3) DPS (main assist)
4) DPS
5) DPS-specc’d hybrid

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There is an amazing tool in World of Warcraft - the LFG (looking for group) tool.

With it, anyone interested in a PuG (pick-up group) can find each other and get together with far less fuss and muss than we previously had to.

It’s a supremely useful thing, and it brings a tear to my eye every time I think about how graceful and beautiful it is.

Not for me, mind you. I have an absolutely fantastic tank and a guild with enough skilled players to round out any runs we do. I have never used the LFG tool, because I’ve never needed to.

However, as a member of the least-played role in the game (healer), I find myself bombarded with random whispers. A night without at least one stranger inviting me to some sort of instance run is a rarity. (I did raise my eyebrows at the first few Kara invitations, I was surprised that instance was considered PuG fodder).

I am assuming, when I get these whispers, that there are no appropriately-leveled priests available in the LFG channel, and a group, sans-healer, is ready and impatiently waiting for some kind of healer.

All those assumptions taken into consideration, I feel that I can comfortably say that everyone reading this blog will either need to give or receive random group invite whispers from time to time.

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Today, my gentle snowflakes*, we are going to discuss the priest ability Fade.

Fade is the spell that priests get at level 8. The tooltip says “Fade out, discouraging enemies from attacking you for 10 seconds.” The icon looks like an advertisement for the Blue Man Group, and when you punch it, your character becomes temporarily translucent.

For giggles, use a Light Feather and cast Levitate on yourself, then cast Fade. BOOM, instant ghost! Better than a Hallow’s Eve costume. Childish, I know, but it never gets old.

Back to the topic at hand, I see a lot of priests misusing this ability, and I can understand why. The translucent spell effect is used on too many other abilities, and that can be misleading.

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Priests, listen up. I’ve got some bad news for you.

So you’ve read the boards, you’ve studied hard, and you know your class to a T. You know what all the spells do, you know how to solo, and you know more about healing than the guys who MADE the class.

None of it means a thing if you don’t learn at least a little about the classes you’ll be grouping with. True story.

And if you take a good look around, the non-priests who are reading this already know that fact.

To be a good player (no matter the class) you have to understand the game. You have to poke your head up and glance around at something other than health bars from time to time, and there is a lot that you can do to make a group go more smoothly.

On that note, the class type you need to understand most (after your own) are the tanks that will be protecting your squishy self from slavering death.

One of the primary tanks available in the game is a Protection-specc’d paladin.

There are a few things you need to know about these tanks (affectionately dubbed “tankadins”). The main concern of any tank is aggro management. The basic secret to this game is for the mobs to be attacking the tank, and not you. That’s aggro management at its most basic.

The tankadin has a few tricks to help him hold aggro, but most of his aggro is based around the damage he does - holy spell damage in particular.

If you stop and think about that statement, the rest of what I will say may come across as obvious.

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