Dawn Moore
Washington, DC - http://www.discopriest.com
Spiritual Guidance: Holy? Disc? We're all priests
by Dawn Moore 
on Mar 14th 2010 (4 days ago)
When I first started raiding, it was in late Burning Crusade. At the time I fancied myself a PvPer, shying away from raids due to attunements, and the long gear climb I'd have to perform in order to catch up with friends doing tier 5 content. Despite this, sometime during tier 6, a friend of mine convinced me to come along to a raid. How he convinced the raid leader though, I can't imagine. I remember standing there in my resilience gear, surrounded by players in their various shiny gear sets, and asking myself over and over, "what am I doing here?" I sheepishly put my talents into the holy tree, and tried to arrange my bars to accommodate the spells I hadn't cast in months. I was out of my element.
And then I saw Baba. She was beautiful.
Filed under: Priest, (Priest) Spiritual Guidance
Breakfast topic: Stat and system changes for Basic Campfire
by Dawn Moore on Mar 13th 2010 (5 days ago)
In an effort to keep our loyal readers informed, WoW.com has been doing its best to cover every inch of blue text we find. It came to our attention that we had overlooked one important change when we discussed the effects of stat and system changes in Cataclysm the other week. So, without further ado, this morning I will be explaining how the ability Basic Campfire is affected by the upcoming expansion.
Filed under: Breakfast Topics
Spiritual Guidance: Discipline and ICC raid buffs
by Dawn Moore on Mar 7th 2010 (11 days ago)
Last week, Blizzard activated the first stage of the scaling raid buffs in Icecrown Citadel. When entering ICC now, you'll see either Varian Wrynn's hair (and the rest of him, attached) or the conglomeration of cliches we refer to as Garrosh Hellscream. Each NPC grants a faction specific buff to your raid party which increases your health, healing done, and damage done by 5%. Periodically, the strength of these buffs will be raised a notch by Blizzard, thus allowing guilds of various commitment levels to see all of Icecrown Citadel.
So, what does this little news item have to do with priests any more than the next other class? Well, if you're a discipline priest and your
Don't have a panic attack, disco priests. In this article I will be addressing the issue, particularly for non-priests who might have misconceptions about the validity of a disc priest. I'll also be rehashing some older arguments. That's right folks: it's that time again! When all of Azeroth asks! *Cue game show music* What good is a disc priest?
Update: Blizz has announced in the notes for patch 3.3.3 that Power Word: Shield will now benefit from the ICC zone buff. While that makes portions of this article obsolete, keep reading to learn more about the benefits of bringing a discipline priest to your raid.
Filed under: Priest, Raiding, (Priest) Spiritual Guidance
Patch 3.3.3 PTR: Celestial steed video
by Dawn Moore on Mar 4th 2010 (14 days ago)
We just received this mouth-gaping footage of the celestial steed mount in action. The model for the mount was uncovered in the latest patch 3.3.3 PTR but as of now no one knows where it will come from or when.
The video shows what looks like an orc warlock flying over Icecrown, then swooping down to the steps of Icecrown Citadel into a gallop. At around 2:30, the steed rears and you can see a small galaxy of particles that have accumulated from the mount idling.
The celestial steed is certainly drool-inducing, and the music in the video adds an extra "oomph" to its beauty. (Or hamminess, depending on how you look at it.)
The video shows what looks like an orc warlock flying over Icecrown, then swooping down to the steps of Icecrown Citadel into a gallop. At around 2:30, the steed rears and you can see a small galaxy of particles that have accumulated from the mount idling.
The celestial steed is certainly drool-inducing, and the music in the video adds an extra "oomph" to its beauty. (Or hamminess, depending on how you look at it.)
Filed under: News items
Cataclysm: Stat and system changes for healing priests
by Dawn Moore on Mar 3rd 2010 (15 days ago)
That's not to say nothing good is coming to us though...
Filed under: Priest, Analysis / Opinion, Cataclysm
Patch 3.3.3 PTR: Priest healing tier 10 4-piece bonus changed
by Dawn Moore on Mar 2nd 2010 (16 days ago)
Zarhym -- PTR Patch 3.3.3 Notes Priest Tier-10 4-Piece Healing Set Bonus: Redesigned. This bonus now increases the effectiveness of the caster's Power Word: Shield and Renew spells by 5%.
Priests all over have been ragging on the strength and utility of our Tier-10 4-piece bonus for months, and now our pleas have finally been answered in the latest PTR patch notes for patch 3.3.3. The bonus just got
Still, the buff is exceptionally good. The only problem with it is that so many priests who turned their back on the tier gear for other badge items (such as shadow's tier gear) with better itemization are now going to be screaming bloody murder.
Filed under: Priest
Spiritual Guidance: Ghostcrawler on priests
by Dawn Moore on Feb 28th 2010 (18 days ago)
There was a great priest thread on the official World of Warcraft healing forums late last week. The thread caps at 30 pages, then spills into another thread for further discussion. The original post is from a priest who also heals as a druid, and is currently unhappy with the state of priests in Icecrown Citadel. The poster asks for in-depth feedback from other priests with healing alts who are happy with the priest class in ICC.
The thread remains on topic and doesn't get too trolly before Ghostcrawler steps in on page 7 and gives a simple breakdown of how he plays priest. He remains in the thread for quite some time and provides readers with a good insight on how he and Blizzard feel about various aspects of priests at this time. If you missed this thread, I will be summarizing the highlights of what Ghostcrawler said and providing some of my own thoughts and analysis.
Filed under: Priest, (Priest) Spiritual Guidance
Spiritual Guidance: Macros for priests
by Dawn Moore on Feb 21st 2010 (25 days ago)
There. I love a captive audience.
This week I'll be writing about macros for priests. I will touch on why and how to use them, then provide a few useful ones that readers sent in during the past week. This article will not be an introductory guide for the use of macros because... WoW.com already had one of those. Hit the jump for the link.
Filed under: Priest, Raiding, (Priest) Spiritual Guidance
Patch 3.3.3 PTR: Priests
by Dawn Moore on Feb 21st 2010 (25 days ago)
Renewed Hope: now has a 60-second duration, up from 20 seconds, but a 20-second cooldown.
Seems a bit strange, doesn't it? Is it a buff, a nerf? What would be the point of adding a cooldown to an ability that has a duration exceeding the cooldown? Well, after kicking the Blizzard downloader all night and day, I've finally tested it for myself and as it currently functions on PTR it appears to have no negative impact on discipline priests. That said, I do not believe it is currently working entirely as Blizzard intends it to. For more information on what I observed, hit the jump.
Spiritual Guidance: Assessing yourself
by Dawn Moore on Feb 14th 2010 (1 month ago)
Last week, I had a bad day. More specifically, I had a bad raid day. I logged in, prepared, researched, and with high hopes of downing 25-man Sindragosa that evening. My guild had plenty of attempts, and many members had the weekend to explore the fight on 10-man or at least watch a video; I was certain we'd succeed, even with the initial difficulty of the ice block gimmick. For whatever reason though, it didn't go as planned, and with our attempts on the line, a small debate would break out after every pull. Tension between guild members rose quick and appropriately, my own focus and abilities deteriorated. What started out as an occasional mistake on my part turned into frequent and reoccurring disasters. I did keep trying hard, even though I failed, but there was no amount of effort to change how awfully I was playing.
Despite everything, I understood everything that was happening as it exploded around me. I could source each mistake I made to some bad step, wrong guess, or mistakenly pressed button. Past the mistakes, as I looked over my output on each attempt I could see it was suffering tremendously as well. This is what we'll be talking about today; how do we assess ourselves as players, and as healers?
Filed under: Priest, (Priest) Spiritual Guidance
