It's been a while since I posted, mostly because my Internet is on the fritz, but also because I wanted to 'test the waters' of new Holy Priesting in Ulduar.

At my current gear level, and with us only having downed 10 man Mimiron, mana is once again an issue. At least it is for my play-style. I don't like to sit back and wait for the perfect opportunity to cast a greater heal. I don't care about the 5SR. This is because these tools are for healers of the vanilla days; I like to cast, and cast, and cast, and cast, and cast...until either the boss, tanks, or myself are dead. If someone dies because I didn't heal them, it will not be because I waited too late.


Anywho.

Ulduar. Mana. Yeah.

On longer or more intense boss fights, like XT and assembly right now, I probably oom at around 20%. The others, I can manage to keep a bit of mana all the way through. My conclusion: when I get Ulduar gear, I can breeze through Ulduar just as Naxx. But for progression, I bring my mojo flask, my cuttlesteak, my oh-so-Holy-packed-with-spirit-and-mp5 gear. I use my Dragon trinket, my spirit world glass, and sit just below the druid on the healing charts. My overhealing is at a decent spot. I'm...ok. I'm not overpowered. I'm not in serious need of buffage. I am perfectly content with where Holy Priests are right now. Healing naxx is boring because the tanks can sit there with a PW:Shield on and maybe lose a thousand health. Healing ulduar is fun because there are upgrades and interesting boss fights and I actually have to pay attention. I am not Azeroth's best healer. But I can heal Naxx 25 while watching House and drooling over Hugh Laurie. mmmmmm hugh laurie


As for everything else.

-I love the new Renew. LOVE. The new renew. Thank you Blizzard.
-I love Holy Nova's buff. I actually use it now.
-The Prayer of Healing buff is awesome, but kind of annoying.
-WTB: Better Priest glyphs.
-I miss Imp Holy Conc.
-I miss being able to spam Flash Heal and stay alive longer in SoR.
-WTB: More healers so I can have fun being shadow and nuking things- with DoTs that freaking crit, hecks yeah.
-Oh, btw, The Ides of March on Hyjal is now recruiting DPS of all sorts to pad in some numbers for 25 man Ulduar. We've the 25 on maybe 2 nights a week, but more DPS is more DPS. Send tells to Faeris (me) or Joms. We could use a tank or two maybe, but we don't want to gear you. No lie.


♥Fae

As you may already be aware, Resto4Life- quite possibly the greatest healer blog out there, closed it's doors about a month ago. Phaelia's blogging community, including readers and colleagues alike shall miss her witty yet quite informative posts, her treeshirts, and well, allover- her.

BRK - BigRedKitty- is also locking up due to real life changes that require a bit more of his time than he had previously allowed them.

I'm writing this post because BRK is -the- blog that introduced me to the WoW blogging community. No, I have never had a Hunter main, or, even a Hunter alt, really. So how did I come across this, and why is it important to me? Because it was the first thing I ever looked at that took WoW more seriously than any other game. After I read through the first few post, I became interested in my own class - as a class rather than this thing that I push buttons and do stuff with.

My friend that introduced me to WoW was a Hunter. He loves to talk about class mechanics and changes and how awesome he is. He would constantly refer to this...BRK thing and I would have absolutely no idea what he was talking about. I would just /nod and go along with it. One day, he posted a link to a future patch note discussion thread and told me to go look at the Hunter changes. The link, as you can probably guess, was BRK. My first reaction to seeing this blog was something along the lines of..."oh, hey this is neat". And then I read his posts. And I guess it was then that I sort of realized what 'class mechanics' actually were. Different rotations are better. Different specs are better. Different gear is better for different specs. You can't just faceroll and expect to give a significant contribution to a group.

So, then I- as a fresh 70 Mage, and still a total n00b- looked up gear lists. Looked up specs. Looked up consumables, enchants, reputations...everything. I found the Elitist Jerk forums, and I read them. I found Frost is the New Black- and I loved it. Even though I wasn't raiding at the time, nor did I really plan to, I still tried to gear myself, and play to the best that I could. I farmed for hours....days...years it seemed to make the Frozen Shadowweave set. I loved the Frost spec, see, and didn't care that it wasn't the top dps spec because I wasn't in the situations that that really mattered in. When I did start raiding...I farmed for hours of days...of days...and made the Spellfire set. Which I think I used twice. Then I decided I hated the Fire spec. So I respecced back and ended up out DPSing most of the people, anyways. When I started leveling my Priest to meet the needs of the guild, I found Ego and her wonderful blog.

Whenever I begin leveling an alt, or talking to another person about healing a fight, or speccing for certain circumstances, or anything at all related to WoW, I can generally find a blog post somewhere that answers those questions.

I guess what I'm really trying to get here is...

BRK- because of you, I am no longer a complete n00b.
Good Luck in all you do.
Cheers,
Fae

Trinkets are wonderful little things that I like to keep several of handy. Seriously. I switch my trinkets out more times than...well. Er. I change them alot. Right now, my bags contain: The Egg of Mortal Essence, Majestic Dragon Figurine, Spirit World Glass, Mark of the War Prisoner, Soul of the Dead and the Forethought Talisman. If you look through this list you may notice that a few, ie- Soul of the Dead and Mark of the War Prisoner, are probably more geared towards dpsers or, at least, not Holy Priests. Mark is for MCing. Otherwise, it stays in my bag. However, I really like Soul of the Dead.

As I think I've said before, I'm weird. Haste is not my friend. I love Crit. This will probably change with 3.1, but for now it suits me pretty well. This happy little trinkets ends up giving me maybe 5% total mana regained after a Naxx run. No, it's not much, but I do feel that I benefit more from it than I would with say...the Spirit World Glass or Dragon. Yes, Spirit is wonderful. It is the foundation block for all that is Holy Priest healing. But if MP5 is not an issue for you, then the sp gained really...doesn't cut it. It a preference thing, I suppose. I prefer-crit.

So, my normal set of trinkets is Soul of the Dead and the Forethought Talisman. For Loatheb, I switch to Soul+Egg. For really long fights, Dragon+Spirit World. If I had Illustration of the Dragon Soul then I would use it...pretty much all of the time. But, as it is a much sought after item, I have yet to nab it.

Different trinkets are better for different things. That's why you have two slots, and lots of options to choose from. No single trinket is completely better than any other trinket. If you prefer one stat to the next, then use the ones that meet your needs. Most loot lists don't rank trinkets- they simply list the ones that could be beneficial. If you use a list that does, don't take it for absolute truth.


♥Fae