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.

(more…)

As a follow-up for my previous post on the Seaspray Albatross visuals compared to the Talasite Owl, I whipped up some screenshots for your viewing pleasure.

Those of you who know me know that I don’t usually like to spend much time talking about upcoming patches until they become a reality.

Things keep changing and getting nerfed and renerfed right up to the point of deployment, so I don’t generally see much value in speculation and preparation for things that may never even come to pass.

Keeps me from getting my fragile little hopes up too high.

HOWEVER.

However, 2.4 looks like it’s got some stuff that - if it makes it all the way to live - we’re all gonna wish we’d spent a little time preparing for. (And oddly enough, all three add up to very good reasons to run Heroic Botanica)

(more…)

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…)

There are exactly two reasons to go through the hell that is leveling up Jewelcrafting, in my opinion.

1) It’s really nice to feel needed, and I love having people ask me to cut gems for them. (Though funnily enough, when I admit that I do not have a particular JC design and point them to the prices in the AH, they aren’t willing to buy the thing so I can make it for them. I wonder why that is…oh. Right. It’s because they’re ABSURDLY expensive!!!!!!!! )

2) The [Talasite Owl]

In my opinion, the Talasite Owl is one of the best trinkets in the game for a healer.

It is a BoP trinket (so yes, you have to level up Jewelcrafting to get it) that has both an Equip and a Use effect. As a reminder, you have to have 270 Jewelcrafting and be Revered with the Sha’atar to get the design. So…go ask some friends for a few more Botanica runs. You need the [Prismatic Mittens of Mending] anyway, right?

Equip : Restores 14 mana per 4 sec

Some of you will say that’s not a huge number, and you’re right. Debating against that or an extra +70 heal is up to you and your gear. Personally, I try to keep my mana regen as high as possible.

The Use effect, however, is why I love this trinket so much I want to marry it and make tiny little trinkets.

Use : Restores 900 mana over 12 sec.

Go ahead, drool a little bit. What is that? That’s a baby innervate is what that is.

No, it’s not as good as innervate, but will those priests in the audience with an innervate please raise your hand?

That’s what I thought. Now simmer down.

You can pop that baby every 5 minutes. If you do it preemptively, then you can use it twice in some boss fights.

The alternative Use effects on other trinkets involve giving you a big +heal bonus for 15 seconds (ish), or giving you a spirit boost for 15 seconds, or lowering the cost of some of your spells for 15 seconds…

I don’t like those Use effects as much because I don’t spam heals for most fights. So I may only get to take advantage of the trinket’s use 2…maaaybe 3 times before it wears off.

If I were a paladin healer, they DO spam heals. Or a druid healer - they also do a lot of chain casting to keep HoTs up.

But I’m not. I’m a priest. And I like to give my tank a greater heal followed by an HoT, pat them on the head, give them a peanut butter and jelly sammich, and send them into battle for a while before I need to bandage them again.

Assuming that I’m low on mana, I get the full use of this trinket. It’s not a phantom buff that drops off and does nothing if I don’t use it - it uses itself, giving me back the thing I need in order to continue healing - mana.

I love it. I love it more than any other trinket I’ve come across. That, and I don’t have a pet druid yet that when I call out “OOM” will pop out and innervate me.

As a side bonus, you get a really spiffy looking green stone flying owl vanity pet for the time that it’s active. And they took away the dying sound and animation when it wore off (because that was just heartwrenching), so now it just fades away when it’s done.

Coolest vanity pet ever, I wish they’d let the pet stay around even when it stopped giving me mana. =]