Hello again, and welcome to another rousing edition of “The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly”. Here with us today is the Gavel of Naaru Blessings. Go ahead and say hello to the folks!

*silence*

…bah. Stupid inanimate guests. They always make me do all the work.

What’s this? A priesting article? Be still, my heart!

I know, I know. It’s been a while. It’s been a while since I’ve played Vonya, too, so at least it’s consistently inconsistent.

So! For my glorious and triumphant return to the fertile healing fields of priesting, let’s talk about weapons.

(That’s irony, folks, fresh for the picking)

As a priest, you have a lot of options when it comes to weaponry. And by “a lot of options”, I mean that you’ve really only got two. Hammers/offhand, and staves.

Staves generally have higher stats - int, spirit, stam - whereas hammer/offhand combos tend to have higher specials - mana regen, +heal.

That’s a general rule, you’ll see it broken a lot as you level up. For those leveling, my advice is to take whatever your playing gives you and upgrade to whatever is actually an upgrade. New staff drop that’s an improvement over your hammer/offhand combo? Take it. Maybe keep one of them (the hammer or the offhand) in case you upgrade the other and thus negate the use of the staff you just picked up.

But for those sitting at level 70 and staring into the skies, waiting for snow (that’s a Wrath of the Lich King reference. Just so’s you don’t miss it) - what should you be carrying?

The answer depends on multiple things.

Where in progression are you? What kind of playgroup do you have? What does the rest of your gear look like?

The “where in progression are you” really sort of encompasses both of the other questions. For anyone raiding beyond Kara - hope you’re having fun. *winks*

Everyone else, listen up. You’ve got a lot of options out there, and it’s good to make sure you know what they are and understand your stats and how important they are.

If you’ve got the tailoring setup, then you already know it’s got incredible specials, but not so great base stats. Stamina, in particular. You’re the squishiest of the squishy, my little jelly donuts. You’ll want to focus on staves and other weaponry that has a lot of stam on it. Keep a really good hammer as a backup, because you WILL be leveling out of that gear soon, assuming you’re still progressing and getting badges.

When the “new” badge gear came out, Vonya was using the hammer from Prince - Light’s Justice.

Light’s Justice
+16 Stamina
+21 Intellect
+20 Spirit
+382 Healing

She immediately spent her first round of badges on the badge hammer - the Gavel of Naaru Blessings. Let’s discuss why.

Gavel of Naaru Blessings
+42 Stamina
+28 Intellect
+464 Healing

The Good

Net gain from the trade? +26 stam, +7 int, +82 Healing.

That’s…that’s pretty incredible, no matter which way you shake it. Most “upgrades” are a handful of points here, a handful of points there. The stam gain in particular was especially useful, since raiding more also means getting hit more by random (non-aggro) attacks, and by AOE. For raiding, gone are the days when the priest getting hit means that the tank is doing something wrong. Unfortunately, it seems more and more like if the tank is able to hold aggro at all, he’s worthy of being draped in medals and given ticker tape parades.

Regardless of your tank’s ability, however, you WILL be taking damage in raiding. Having a high stam is important, and the stam on this puppy isn’t just high, it’s phenominal. And you can buy it with badges earned from raiding and from heroics (and from dailies, though I daresay it’d take a ton of dailies to get that many badges).

The int is minimal, but never really hurts, now does it? A little extra mana, a little extra crit, a little extra bonus to your spirit gains through Meditation…no complaints here.

The Healing is a giant upgrade as well. Once you get endgame content, you just don’t see jumps like that. And since healing is definitely one of the primary priest healing stats, I don’t think there’s a way to find a negative in an extra 82 healing, I surely don’t.

The Bad

Spirit. Oh where, oh where has my spirit gone? We lose 20 spirit on this trade, and gone are the days when that was just a tiny, miniscule hit. Now that Meditation has been buffed all nice and shiny, this is actually a pretty solid hit to the gut.

I would not recommend making this trade if your spirit is lagging. If you’ve already got 8k (ish) health, then maybe the extra stamina isn’t all that awesome for you. And maybe your +heal is already cracking 2k…then how is this helping you?

You have to evaluate your gear to decide whether the bad outweighs the good here. It wasn’t an easy decision for me, as Vonya was already pretty well balanced in her stats.

In the end, I decided to go with the hammer because her mana regen was actually in really good shape, and I felt like her stamina needed the boost.

And no, I can’t give you numbers for “in really good shape” or “needed the boost”. Partially because I didn’t write them down (go me) but also because it’s situational. How are YOU doing? Do YOU get two-shotted on AOE encounters? Do YOU run out of mana halfway through important fights?

Bolster the stats you need in order to play your game - not the ones some arbitrary raider who maybe never even set foot in a heroic as a solo-healer tells you that you need. Do you PVP primarily? Good on you - but I can’t even begin to give you numbers that you’ll find useful. YOU know how you play and where you feel your toon needs improvement.

I wish I could give numbers, because that’d be easier on you, but in the end, it really is just misleading.

The Ugly

The mace has sort of a “gothic” feel to it. And by “gothic”, I don’t mean it wears extra makeup and hangs out at the mall, contemplating razorblade earrings or the ones with the cute pink bunny adorably insulting the world. I mean it in the way that architecture means it. It’s very…”gothic”.

Some people like that, others don’t.

Me, I’d like a hammer that had a warlock imp stuck inside it, so I could shake him roughly and laugh when he swears at me.

(Vonya does not like demons)

Aside from the graphic used, there’s another, more alarming problem.

The +healing enchant doesn’t show up. No shiny glow for me, it just looks like a dead lump of metal at my side. I’m almost embarrassed to run around Shattrath with it - I’d hate people to think I didn’t know how to enchant my healing weapons!

Blizz. Seriously. You’re dropping the ball here. A mace that was obviously intended for a healing weapon, and you didn’t think to have someone test enchanting the bugger to make sure the glow showed up? Tsk, tsk.

The Summary

There are a lot of options out there for healing weapons. This detailed a choice that I made between prince’s hammer and the badge hammer, and why I did it. I’m including below the cut a list of other popular high-end hammers and where they come from, so you can make your own comparisons.

Note that the list is not intended to be comprehensive, only contains hammers, and is in no particular order. If you want more stuff like this, check out wowhead’s incredible advanced search tool.

Happy hunting!

Gavel of Naaru Blessings
Binds when picked up
Main Hand Mace
+42 Stamina
+28 Intellect
Requires Level 70
Equip: Increases healing done by up to 464 and damage done by up to 155 for all magical spells and effects.

PVP - Vengeful Gladiator’s Salvation 3150 arena points to purchase it Rating needed of 1850
Binds when picked up
Main Hand Mace
+35 Stamina
+23 Intellect
Requires Level 70
Requires personal and team arena rating of 1850Equip: Improves your resilience rating by 21 (0.53% @ L70).
Equip: Increases healing done by up to 464 and damage done by up to 155 for all magical spells and effects.

Lightfathom Scepter - Early/Mid 25 man raiding Drops from Vashj, end of SSC
Binds when picked up
Unique
Main Hand Mace
+28 Stamina
+20 Intellect
Requires Level 70
Equip: Increases spell power by 236.
Equip: Restores 11 mana per 5 sec.

Dark Blessing - the only ZA healing 1h, drops from the last boss Zul’jin late 10 man
Binds when picked up
Unique
Main Hand Mace
+19 Intellect
Requires Level 70
Equip: Improves spell haste rating by 30 (1.9% @ L70).
Equip: Increases healing done by up to 431 and damage done by up to 144 for all magical spells and effects.

Light’s Justice - Drops from Prince in Kara Early 10 man
Binds when picked up
Main Hand Mace
+16 Stamina
+21 Intellect
+20 Spirit
Requires Level 70
Equip: Increases healing done by up to 382 and damage done by up to 128 for all magical spells and effects.

Battle-mace of the High Priestess - Magisters, 5 man option possibly considered late pre heroic 5 man? Drops from the “PVP” boss
Binds when picked up
Main Hand Mace
+9 Stamina
+13 Intellect
Red Socket
Socket Bonus: 1 Mana per 5 sec.
Requires Level 70
Equip: Improves spell haste rating by 15 (0.95% @ L70).
Equip: Increases healing done by up to 228 and damage done by up to 76 for all magical spells and effects.

Hammer of the Penitent - from The Mechanar first boss
Binds when picked up
Main Hand Mace
+16 Intellect
+13 Spirit
Requires Level 70
Equip: Increases spell power by 121.
Equip: Restores 6 mana per 5 sec.

Gavel of Pure Light - sha’tar rep (exalted)
Binds when picked up
Unique
Mace
+12 Stamina
+12 Intellect
Requires The Sha’tar - Exalted
Requires Level 70
Equip: Increases healing done by up to 299 and damage done by up to 100 for all magical spells and effects.
Equip: Restores 8 mana per 5 sec.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 25th, 2008 and is filed under Healers, Item Review, ~ Vonya. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.