Everybody loves trinkets, right? Even Talon King Ikiss loves his pretty trinkets, and is willing to kill you for looking at them.

You can carry two trinkets, and there are a LOT of them available for you to choose from. THIS discussion is aimed at the trinkets available to healy priests from various instances through Karazhan, and why I hate them. I want to take the designers who developed them outside, strip them naked, and make them run through a field of irritable emus.

Because despite the wealth of healy trinkets out there, we really don’t have very much of any use to choose from.

First, let’s discuss the ways that various classes heal, shall we?

Everyone is special and unique and different, just like everybody else.
Paladins - Spam healing is frequent, continually casting flash of light, flash of light, flash of light…
Druids - Spam healing is frequent, tossing HoTs out on whoever needs them, keeping everyone topped off…
Shaman - Do not rely on spirit for their mana regen and have a flexible heal structure which sometimes has them spam healing…
PRIESTS - Big heal, followed by a hot, followed by an earnest attempt to stay outside the five second rule. Rinse and repeat.

Before you bow up and get all defensive, I KNOW that these are simplifications. But I think that in general, this is a decent description of how each healer spends most of their time when healing.

Now, let’s take a look at the type of trinkets generally available for healers.
(more…)

I’ve been meaning to do this for a while now, only just not found the time.

In my much-frequented Entitlement rant, there were some very noteworthy responses, and I’d like to showcase some of them here.

Sonvar brings up a very good point :

The problem is that people are inherently selfish and it takes some work to get to a point where you want to help others first. I can’t say that I do it in everything but I do try helping others out as much as I can. As long as you are playing with friends and not just random guild members its a bit easier to not be selfish but for some as I’ve seen its all about them if friends aren’t with them as they sometimes feel they won’t get another chance(especially most PUGs I’ve been with). Sometimes it’ll even occur between friends but not as often. Other times it occurs because of the maturity level of those you are playing with. Regardless, well you make good points when it comes down to it some of those same selfish people will still sneak into your group to hurt the play experience for the rest sad as it is.

I agree - you see a lot of friends-only runs and cliques. Sometimes those are because of playtime compatibility but they’re also usually done in self-defense, to avoid the people who haven’t matured past the “me me me” stage of selfishness that everyone starts out with. The best solution is to prove to them that you’re not that way, and become a friend yourself. I’ll bet most people are just tired of getting burned by inviting strange people to join…it may be a long battle to prove your worthiness, but it’s worth it in the end.

Kruncs also mentioned something that made me think, and was excellently put :

By closed, I meant those who see it only as a game, not as a community [...] I consider the guild I did join extended family… you have your brothers, sisters, the old timers who will still smack you around when you deserve it, and of course red-headed step-children.

The game versus community is the biggest stickler. I’ve seen people that I know in real life to be very nice people pull some mob-stealing stunts that just took my breath away. Maybe to them there’s no difference between WoW and a console game where your toon is the only player character, but I’d rather be with people who realize that every player in the game is a human being. The WoW universe does not revolve around you.

Halabar says something which needs no response :

The “must get to Kara leave everyone else behind” players (who seem to be the major portion of players right now, and thus are destroying just about every guild on my server). These types will hack off anyone who can’t play the same # of hours, or who don’t have the same skills yet, and even though they’ve played with the same folks for 6 months, will dump them once they have a chance to get keyed.

I wonder what they all will do when they have defeated Illiadan, but have burned hundreds of bridges along the way to do it?..

There were a ton more, I just chose these because they spoke to me personally. Just a reminder that the comments are often more useful than the original post, so even though it’s a daunting wall of text, it’s very much worth it to spend some time going through the comment list.

I’ll leave you with one that sums up my feelings on the matter quite succinctly, from Conspiracy :

I haven’t even been playing that long and I’m already tired of the stupid people. I just want to play, with friends and have fun, I don’t really care what level everyone is, or how fast we clear the instance, just have fun.

Of course, if your “fun” ruins everyone else’s fun, then fucking quit it.

Egotistical Reader Sephran writes :

Hello. Found your blog through the great and all powerful BRK. So i’m hoping your as good as him.

I’ve joined a new guild as of a few weeks ago. I was finally invited to do 25mans. Its been a blast and I love it every time.

The raid leaders constantly bring up dps meters to find out who has the lowest dps. Then privately talks to that person to try and figure out what went wrong. I really like that system. However.. i’m a Resto Druid.

I have dmg meters as well but those meters also have healing meters.

I know that my hots could never catch up to a pallys massive heals. I’ve taken that as fact after this time. I am always in top 4 usually the top 2 are pallys and 3rd is either a pally or me. When I look at the numbers priests are generally 30-50k underneath me and same with other resto druids.

My questions are as follows

Do priests ever out heal pallys in your experience?
Should priests be doing that bad?
I know healing is all about keeping people alive so how much you heal doesn’t matter a hill of beans.. but is healing meters useful in anyway?

PS: The pallys are a bit better geared then the other healers in our raid. But the druids and priests all have around the same +healing and intellect.

Thx for your time. Hopefully you can help me out

Firstly, thanks for the email, Sephran, I’m no BRK, but I get by. Sounds like you’ve got a good solid guild there, and I commend both the leadership AND the members for being willing to work to better themselves. It takes courage to be on both ends of that.

I will say that I’ve not yet done a 25-man, so the advice and thoughts I’ve got here are based on research and experience in ten-mans. It’s possible you’ll find someone whose healed 25-mans that may give you different advice, but I’ll bet the bulk of what I say will still be true and applicable.

The key to all of these questions lies in talents and healing differences between the two classes. In many cases, comparing the different healing classes is like comparing apples to oranges. Sure, they’re all fruit, but they’re not all apples.

(more…)

Some of you may or may not have noticed that I keep fiddling and tweaking with my sidebar there - adding things and changing them when necessary.

As I was going through my super-secret-people-who-have-linked-to-me reports and doing some follow-ups, I came across a fabulous priest blog.

Priestly Endeavors

I am amazed at the wealth of information there (and how often it gets updated!)

I honestly wish I’d found it back when I was a wee toddler - course, I’d probably be shadow now if that were the case. *winks*

Seriously - go there and take a look around. Some excellent advice in there, and some really great articles.

Examples :

How to Use Your Shadowfiend
How to Make Money (and stop begging me for it)
and, my personal favorite,
Smart Spellcasting, or why you shouldn’t be OOM for every fight as a shadowpriest

and those are just on the first page.

So the United States government approached me last week and said they’d been monitoring my blog and had, after much deliberation, decided to make me the new symbol of the country.

I said I was flattered and honored, and somewhat surprised that it had taken them this long to get around to it. But sure, why not? I had some extra free time the following week, so I accepted and penciled them into my busy schedule.

They said they would need to take a picture of me to put on the dollar bill and on quarters and whatnot, so I decided to go ahead and splurge. I got my hair done at that new orc joint in Shattrath. She gives me this “experimental” leave-in conditioner treatment, tells me that when I wake up in the morning I’ll feel like a new woman.

I wake up the next morning and my hair’s lying there on the pillow next to me. My dome is smooth and round as a baby’s bottom. I was furious, but there wasn’t much I could do. I still looked that way when they took the picture.

Anyway, next month you should start seeing the familiar bird of prey on most currency replaced by a Bald Ego.

Badumche.

Get it? Because EGO sounds kinda like EAGLE. Work with me here, people.

Once upon a time, many years ago, a retnoob pally and a sour-faced warlock met a Night Elf warrior in Stranglethorn Vale.

The three joined forces for quests, and talked, and became friends. It wasn’t long before they realized that by working together, they were able to do quests and take down mobs that were far beyond their capabilities solo. “I wonder if we could do that instance thing we hear so many people talking about!” they cried.

Joyfully, they sought a few more brave adventurers to join them. That, my friends, is where their story turns sour.

Though they sought and tried, verily did they fail at finding others of a similar mind to join them for instancing. “We cannot do it alone!” they cried, but the only one who listened was a Boomkin who haughtily declared that he would do the tanking, despite the fact that one of the three was a practiced warrior.

Sadly, the three met in Booty Bay and discussed their options. “Now that we are powerful, quests are boring! We need to instance.”

So they decided to reroll. Thus were born the characters that would forever after be known as the Holy Trinity. All dwarves, they were warrior, priestess, and rogue. Together, they researched and strategized and managed to take down every single instance in their way as a trio alone. No fourth or fifth had they, and without these other slots, they learned to become a well-oiled machine, a team that knew the strength of each other as though it were their own. Bosses trembled before the awesome might of their teamwork, and the loot flowed like bad ale on a Friday night in Kharanos.

“We should tell other people what we’ve learned!” they cried.
(more…)

Whew! Well, I’ve got a few things to say before we kick this day off. Bear with me.

1. No, this doesn’t count as today’s post.
2. Thank you to everyone who came, saw, commented, or linked to Tuesday’s soapbox. Ya’ll made the graph on my google analytics bust a gasket, which amuses me greatly.
3. I was sick yesterday and am still not quite fully functional today, so I’m way behind on responding to comments. My heartfelt apologies for the wait, but never fear - I will have all the comments replied to by the end of the week. By the end of the day if I’m lucky, but I know better than to promise what I can’t deliver.
4. Today’s post is going to be a smidge late - but don’t worry, it will be up today. I know what I want to say, but it’s not been written yet, and it’s a long one.
5. Today’s post is going to be another soapbox semi-ranty one. That being said, I don’t want people to assume that I’m just going to fly off the handle for all of my posts. This is a World of Warcraft priest blog, and though there will be plenty of place for me to rant, next week’s posts could just as easily be about the [Ribbon of Sacrifice] and I don’t want people to think I gave some kind of false advertising when I return us to our regularly scheduled programming. Really good rants are like Andouille sausage - you don’t want to use too much or you’ll overpower the gumbo. And I’m a southern gal - ruining gumbo is a hangable offense.

More coming up! Stay tuned for more daring deeds. Same Ego Time, Same Ego Channel.

A discussion over at PriestPower got me fired up enough that I’m going to lay another true soapbox post on you.

This is for the rogue, decked out in raid purples and kicked from the guild because he’s so far down on the damage meters that it’s obvious he’s just turning on auto-attack and then watching tv.

This is for the shaman who never varies what totems she lays down - pops the same ones whether she’s soloing or raiding, whether the healers are out of mana or the mob currently being faced hits for Texas and the tank needs an extra armor boost.

This is for the Boomkin so dedicated to topping the damage charts and chain-critting that he never trades a SINGLE point of damage for gear with more stamina, despite the fact that he has no way to shed aggro.

This is for everyone who ever sent up an unholy outcry when the paladin gave them Blessing of Salvation instead of something to boost the damage that they’re already pulling aggro on.

This is for every priest who ever healed themselves when the tank was nearly dead.

This is for every snot-nosed, jackrabbit of a selfish hunter who still tab-targets in instances and starts their damage cycle with a not-misdirected aimed shot before even looking to see who they’ve got targeted.

This is for every warrior who never switches targets and doesn’t know what Sunder Armor does.

This is for everyone who refuses to actually read the tooltips on their spells and abilities, who gets their accounts banned for using Bots and somehow still feels as though they’ve personally been insulted by it.

This is for you, and for me, and for everyone who’s ever given less than 100%

THE WORLD OWES YOU NOTHING.
(more…)

Some of you may not be aware of it, but there is a part of me which disdains the usage of sarcasm and biting wit. Which dreams of standing before a congregation in the temple, of raising the good book and preaching the Light to the poor sinners and swine that make up the average man.

Hard to believe, I know. Generally I am able to quash my evangelistic side, that deviant part of me that longs for the pulpit….

….

….this, of course, is my Altar Ego.

Badumche

*runs away*

Well, as a consequence to striving towards better google search rankings, I’ve been found by spambots.

The Wordpress software I use is pretty good at tagging bad comments for me to look at, but a few have gotten through. If you see anything that looks suspicious, let me remind you to be smart and don’t click on the links.

I’m deleting them as quick as I can, but I don’t want any of you to get spyware on your machine just because some jerks somewhere think it’s fun to spam blogs with garbage comments.

*fistshake*

Don’t trust any links that are obviously garbage - spotty english with no reference to the game, for example. (My english is spotty enough, this stuff is just shameful).

Be safe.