Today, my gentle snowflakes, we’re going to delve into one of the most intriguing, unique, and wonderful shaman healing abilities.

Meatballs.

Oh, they don’t call it Meatballs. No, they call it Earthshield.

But let’s be realistic. When cast, it surrounds the target with tiny, orbiting meatballs.

Meatballs = Earthshield. I can’t even imagine why they call it Earthshield - it looks neither like dirt nor like a shield. It DOES have a really incredible sound effect - a bit like overtaxed branches cracking and popping under pressure. But again, that’s not earth.

Meatballs it is.

So let’s take a look at the tooltip :

Protects the target with an earthen shield, giving a 30% chance of ignoring spell interruption when damaged and causing attacks to heal the shielded target for 270. This effect can only occur once every few seconds. 6 charges. Lasts 10 min. Earth Shield can only be placed on one target at a time and only one Elemental Shield can be active on a target at a time.

The tooltip is, specifically, for Rank 3. As always, I’m pretty much going to ignore the numbers - anything that changes with rank I’ll be sure to mention.

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Today, my gentle snowflakes, we’re going to discuss the shaman healing ability “Chain Heal.”

No, I don’t have a cute and catchy nickname for this one (I’ve got a GREAT one for Earth Shield though, which should more than make up for the lack here) - I think Blizz did a really good job naming it, and I can’t think of anything shorter that’s as apt.

Let’s take a look at the tooltip:
Heals the friendly target for X to Y, then jumps to heal additional nearby targets. Each jump reduces the effectiveness of the heal by 50%. Heals 3 total targets.

It’s got a 2.5 second cast time and only the normal global cooldown. 40 yard range.

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Today, my gentle snowflakes*, we are going to discuss the priest spell Binding Heal.

Unfortunately I don’t have a clever renaming for this puppy. It’s not that I call it “Binding Heal” in my head whenever I need to use it. Far from it. I think my brain would explode if I used the correct nominative for any spell. Rather than “Oh, crap, I need to use Binding Heal!” my brain will say “Oh, crap, I need to use the Heal-myself-and-someone-else-thingy!”

Which…well, it doesn’t quite roll off the tongue, does it?

So we’ll avoid awkward acronyms and just call it Binding Heal. HMASET is too long. You can call it whatever you like.

So what are the vital stats on this spell?

It’s holy, so obviously isn’t intended for shadowform synergy. Cast time is 1.5 seconds. Range is 40 yards. So far, I may as well be describing a Flash Heal, right?

We don’t get it till level 64. And if you’re anything like me, you wrinkled your nose and snorted as soon as you trained it. What kind of lame excuse for a shiny new BC talent is this, any way?

Well, let’s take a look at the tooltip text.

Heals a friendly target and the caster for XX to XX. Low threat.

Not terribly complex, is it? Don’t worry, I’ve got plenty to say (as if there was ever any doubt. I could turn a fortune cookie into a novel).

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First thing’s first. It’s not Power Word : Shield, it’s not even PW:S.

It’s bubble.

Jello bubble, to be more specific, but I’m satisfied just calling it a bubble. Sure, paladins have a bubble too, but this is the only priest bubble we’ve got.

It’s a bubble. A bubble.

Now that we’ve got the most important detail out of the way, we can move on to the actual spell review.

Today, my gentle snowflakes, we are going to discuss the priest bubble.

The tooltip says, Draws on the soul of the party member to shield them, absorbing XX damage. Lasts 30 sec. While the shield holds, spellcasting will not be interrupted by damage. Once shielded, the target cannot be shielded again for 15 sec.
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This is quite possibly one of the most important posts I’ll ever do, so let’s see if I can’t get it right.

If you want to play with other people, you MUST understand how aggro and threat work, and how to manage them properly.

Heck, if you’re a hunter, you have to understand it to play with your pet, so I could even make a pretty solid argument that if you don’t understand this, you’re running around in this game with blinders on.

Yes, it’s THAT important.

Let’s go over some vocabulary first. You’ll be tested on this after.

Mob
A mob is any creature/animal/thing in the game which might attack you.

Threat
Threat is a measurable value which indicates how much a mob hates you. Threat can actually be calculated numerically. As a matter of fact, it frequently IS numerically calculated and displayed on addon threatmeters such as Omen and KLH.

The way to use “threat” in a sentence is to say things such as “Careful, you’re gaining a lot of threat!” or “My tank is amazing, he can generate over 1k threat per second!” or “Wow, the boomkin was really high on threat in that fight!”

Threat is often used interchangeably with other words such as “hate” and “aggro”. As you’ll see in a moment, it doesn’t have the same MEANING as “aggro”, but 99% of the population will use “aggro” for everything, and never use “threat”.

That’s fine, but since the two are logically different, I’m going to try and shape up my vocabulary for the purposes of this entry. In real life, I’m probably more likely to yell out “Watch it, you’re gaining a lot of aggro!” than “Watch it, you’re gaining a lot of threat!” because I’m an old school gamer, and “aggro” is what we called it back in the golden days of Everquest.

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Today, my gentle snowflakes, we will discuss the priest ability Prayer of Mending.

I don’t call it “Prayer of Mending” as that name doesn’t have any useful or meaningful verbiage in it whatsoever. Instead, I shall call it “Frisbee”. I hope to infect all of the WoW playerbase with this term. Not only is it easier to remember and say, it actually indicates something of the purpose of the spell.

This is actually one of my favorite priest spells, because it’s something of a game.

Priests learn Frisbee from their trainer at level 68.

The tooltip says :

Places a spell on the target that heals them for XXX the next time they take damage. When the heal occurs, Prayer of Mending jumps to a raid member within 20 yards. Jumps up to 5 times and lasts until cancelled after each jump. This spell can only be placed on one target at a time.

This particular spell actually has some subtle gotchas that aren’t covered by the tooltip - I’ll cover those in just a moment. As always, let’s dissect the tooltip a bit first.

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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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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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