Life Tap: This spell now has only 3 ranks. Each now costs a fixed percentage of maximum health to cast, and grants the same fixed percentage of maximum mana: Rank 1 is 5%, Rank 2 is 12%, and Rank 3 is 20%.

If you don’t pay attention to warlocks other than to curse at or about them, this is huge. Currently, Life Tap converts a fixed quantity of health into mana (e.g. 580 health lifetaps into 580 mana), ergo, warlocks have geared heavily for high hitpoints (+ stamina gear and enchants, donchaknow) and mana pools be damned, they just swap their health into mana and eat babies’ souls. Indeed, even their class armor reflects this fascination with stamina over intellect and mana regeneration — cuz what care they for regen, lifetap isn’t at the mercy of out-of-combat mana rules or potion cooldowns.

It WAS what made warlocks so very deadly, and, so very valuable to raid DPS.

Of course. If that nerf goes live. Not so much. At least for a while until the ‘locks can regear for intellect over stamina. ENJOY!!

It’s like a minigame within the game, just like bag space. Regear for this, regear for that, resist sets are nice too, plus carry all that around in your tiny backpacks of suck.

So I’ve been watching the warlock venom on the Test Realm forums as Blizzard has cycled through multiple adjustments to the nerf because the ‘locks, they be LIVID, and the other classes are enjoying the show, and really … you should not relish another class’ nerf. The Wheel of Nerfs: round and round she goes, where she’ll stop, nobody knows.

Witness: Forum thread – LOCKS DESERVE EVERY SINGLE NERF THEY GET by Naitsirhc, level 64 shadow priest, suspected mage alt, of the Eldre’Thalas realm.

Any class that can drain life and mana is insanely OP, and you guys know it. It was not your fault that this game mechanic continues to exist, but I think every single nerf is warranted and should be applied to BALANCE this crap. And yes I am talking about PvP, I can care less about PvE. I’m sorry to be blunt, but this has gone on for far too freakin long.

The accusation: Reply #2 by Thromgal, level 70 warlock of Kil’jaeden.

You can go ahead and post on your mage.

Which sums up that thread very nicely.

And speaking of a mass exodus, where have all the healers gone?? Long time passing. Long time ago.

That’s rhetorical, I know very well where the healers have gone — away.

I did some faux research on the Healer Exodus of my own WoW realm by reading through all the recruitment threads on the first page — these would be all the recruitment threads that have been /bumped in the last few days, i.e. active recruitment threads.

The Results of my ten-minute research project:

Alliance
10 total recruitment threads
8 seeking healers only, 1 seeking healers + DPS
1 seeking DPS only (lucky dogs)

Horde
5 total recruitment threads
1 seeking healers + DPS
4 seeking DPS only (also lucky)

Some interesting faux facts from my own guild:

Of our raid healing core, only 2 are pre-Burning Crusade healing mains — 1 paladin, 1 priest. A week ago, the count would have been 3 — 2 paladins + that one very dedicated priest, but the one paladin … you might remember him as our paladin man-whore … he left our guild last week.

Quick drama debriefing: Our paladin man-whore left because his latest imaginary game girlfriend abandoned him and started hanging with our other pre-BC paladin (also a man-whore as we discovered), which drove the first man-whore into another emo phase for a few weeks, then he decided “fuck this” and left. Probably to seek other imaginary game girlfriends, who knows. Anyways, this relationship with ManWhore02 and the aforementioned imaginary game girlfriend is really distracting because they are usually fighting, and she’s usually threatening to LEAVE THE SERVER and what do we care if she leaves, she’s not a healer, then ManWhore02 gets upset with the guildmates cuz goddamit we should care but I just want to /gkick the both of them and be done with it. And further, it’s this kind of shit which tempts me to call for a moratorium on guilding female players, my apologies to all the drama-averse female players out there, but can’t people keep their personal lives out of the game and just kill stuff? Crimony!

Anyhow. Except for those two pre-BC healers, the rest of the raid healing core are post-BC healers. I’m hoping they have at least a few months in them before they burn out too.

Ya, I have a lot of hope. I don’t have any resto shaman, but I have a whole lot of hope.

Flash, level 6 posting alt of the Shattered Halls realm wrote:

I started playing this game around 2 years ago, my fiance was always !@@%%ing about it. till one day I she finally sat down to play (on my account, sorry blizz)
She loved it so much that she went out and got a new computer, and the game.

We started playing together, joined the same guild. then we had a disagrement about an item. (we are both warriors)

She went as far as transfering servers and changing names. . “We are cool and all, and I love you” she said, “but Idont want to play with you”

She is having “to much” fun chatting with her new guildies.

She plays around 16 hours a day on her days off. I dont see her anymore.
and she has gained a few pounds, her hair is a mess, and she dresses in sweats now?

Damn I feel like crying

any advice?

Today’s winner of the Internet, Reply #11 by Listen, level 6 posting alt of Kul Tiras:

Do what thousands of women have done when their man chooses WoW over a healthy relationship.

Roll a priest, join her guild, and create drama.

That actually explains alot about some of the healers in my guild.

In other news, there have been rumblings about Priests receiving a magical new ability that will fix all of their problems. Knowing Blizzard, my guess is that “buff” will be the removal of the holy tree (Sorry to Priests everywhere).

Do enough multiplayer online gaming, say ten minutes or more, and you’re bound to run into assholes. These five, although entertaining in their own way, really went above and beyond the behavior of a typical jackass.

Five 2006 Assholes to Remember — so we can keep a close watch on them — three from me, two from Raster:

1. The Priest who would be queen. Of drama, that is. I haven’t told this story yet because it only wrapped up this week. (Months in the making, however.)

This woman was a long-time guildmember of ours — married, with small children, and a decent priest, truth be told. Over the past year, she’d been linked romantically with a few guildmembers — a couple several years her junior, and a couple around her age. (Not judging, just saying, how young before I step in and remind her that this might be approaching ILLEGAL? It was getting close to that point with a few of them.) At least one of these kids guys left the guild because she dumped him; the others just moped around as she frolicked with the new love interest. So far, not really any of my business … except for the possible legal ramifications of guild complicity.

Meanwhile, she’s denying a few priest applicants here and there, mostly for no reason at all. We’d ask the other priests, “what do you think?”, they’re all fine with the app’s she hated. But, what can ya do? Guildmember hates a new guy, that’s too bad for the new guy. I prefer the evil I know to the evil I don’t yet know.

Oh ya, did I mention she was an officer? Ummm yaaaa. That was another problem.

One week this summer she told the guild that she was sleeping with one of our mages who lived in a neighboring state. I didn’t really need quite that level of detail, “we’re in love”, “we’re a couple”, either of those would have been suitable, but there was no misunderstanding after her description of his particulars. They continued making the beast with two backs for about a month and then she announced that she had left her husband over the weekend, moved into an apartment and the happy couple would be living together soon, in paradise, as she sought a divorce.

Fucking great, cuz I knew that was doomed to fail. Eventually Mr. Mage is going to wake up and realize he signed on for a whole lot more than paradise and then there’s going to be trouble.

Another few weeks passed and she announced that she was stepping down from officership, and so was Mr. Mage. (Did I forget to mention that he was an officer too? Oops.) They were far too happy spending time together to retain their officer positions, or to raid or play Warcraft anymore.

No problem, our guildleader demoted her down to member and demoted her offline boyfriend to member also. We wished them well.

The next night, Mr. Mage logged on and All Emo broke loose when he saw he wasn’t an officer anymore. “YTF did we demote him???” “What were we thinking??” He was seriously ticked.

This was us: What. In. The. Fuck?

Someone explained that his girlfriend had told us they weren’t going to play anymore and please demote them. “WTF, she doesn’t speak for (him)!”

Ya, we should have known that. Somehow. I guess. All I knew was, there’s trouble in paradise. Maybe Mr. Mage had woken up and smelled the peanut butter on the Lil Tykes toys, I dunno.

Then this week, which is a month-ish since the “demotion incident”, she left the guild, after saying her goodbyes to a select few. She didn’t say goodbye to me, cuz I never respected their love or some shit, I forget the exact second-hand explanation. Whatever.

Someone asked Loverboy what was up with that and turns out, they had broken up that week (shocking!) and the guild wasn’t big enough for the two of them (equally shocking!)

FOR ONCE, we got the best part of a deal! Hallelujah, it’s gonna be a good week.

Hey, maybe she can sell her priest like she did her other character that we equipped in Tier 2 armor. Oops, did I forget to mention that too? (Foton)

2. Emo Tank #2 of 3. (Story: The Emo Tanks 1, 2 and 3) Our second Emo Tank tortured me for many, many, months. His whining was unrivaled (until the 3rd Emo Tank appeared), his excuses legendary, and his connection was the worst I’ve seen. Twenty or more crashes per Blackwing Lair was a good day, and I was bombarded with a minimum of 1-2 hours worth of tells somehow related to him. “Sorry Boss” was uttered about 40 times per raid night for his multitude of screw ups and it quickly turned into a guildwide joke. He was also one of the biggest loot whores in the history of gaming (only his girlfriend, also a guildmate, was worse). He’d harass other warriors until they would pass on things just to shut him up, always felt entitled to everything because he ran a couple of 20-man raids, and would roll on every single item to drop that wasn’t DKP-based whether he needed it or not. While reading the stories may be entertaining, it was truly hell at times for those of us who lived through it. I never want to forget that solely for the reason that I do not let it happen again. (Raster)

3. The Battleground Leader who couldn’t read a map to save his life. (Here’s the story!) Basically, the guy kept shouting at me to stop camping Honor Kills in the middle of the map. 1. I wasn’t camping HKs and 2. I wasn’t in the middle of the map. It’s not that it’s unusual to find an arguing dude in a Warcraft PVP battleground, it’s that he was so damn stupid, I made sure to get a screenshot of him so I would never forget. As I hoped, I did run into him in later battlegrounds, principally Alterac Valley. Believe me, I was excited the first few times. Oh to get a chance to stand next to him stealthed and /smile when a roving band of horde would challenge his flag position! Sadly, I never got that opportunity cuz the fucker was ALWAYS AFK up in the entrance cave. Well damn. We could have had a very special PVP relationship if he would just poke his head out of the cave every once in a while. (Foton)

4. The former guildmate who couldn’t move on until we shoved her out the door. (Story: Razing BabbleOn) Currently reigning as the biggest twat I have ever met in WoW. She has the insatiable need to be at the center of all things drama. When there was not enough floating about, she would simply create her own. She was also incapable of remaining quiet for more than 3 seconds and I was her second favorite /whisper target. Thankfully, most of the problem was removed when (I suspect) her husband caught her unable to keep her cyber legs shut, as they were out of the guild five minutes later. Now all I need is a bus to finish off the job. (Raster)

5. The guildbank thief. (Story: Part I and Part II) Briefly, this rogue had applied to our guild, we had passed on his application because of his shady history, he formed his own guild then walked away from our server with their guildbank. Other than being a dick, his theft didn’t affect us in any way, but here’s why I want to remember him forever: the moron keeps applying to our guild with different characters. He’s not very smart about it either (so far) — he’ll use a character whose Warcraft forum signature includes his other characters or he’ll TELL someone in our guild who he really is. Three times now, he’s app’d since the bank theft — WTF man, how many times do we have to say denied?? (Foton)

Friday, the finale: My Favorite Stories of 2006.

1. Let’s rethink this whole healing gig. Personally, I’d like to see the primary healer role eliminated completely. I realize there must be some people who enjoy the primary healer role, the pure defense character, but crimony, every goddamn game it’s the same issues … faster burnout, repetitive play, short supply, limited solo’ing options. I’d like to see multi-player gaming either move to a model where every class has minimal healing/recovery abilities or, at least, something like Guild Wars with a primary/secondary class choice system. I realize this would homogenize classes somewhat, but surely someone, somewhere, can figure out a better system than the current one. (Foton)

2. Let’s rethink travel. Guild Wars did this quite well and I’d love to see instant travel moved over to more games. EverQuest provided portals to a majority of zones with the Planes of Power expansion, which was better than nothing. Sixty minute hearthstones are not the answer, Blizzard. Neither are slow ass griffins which usually take the longest possible route to get anywhere. If I’m not in combat, I should be able to port myself to any major city on the continent, and there should also be an “express airlines” to cut down on unwanted travel time. There are enough time sinks in games already, and travel needs to be done away with as one. Don’t even get me started on bag space and inventory space … (Raster)

3. Let’s rethink loot. MMO loot is a lot of the fun of gaming, but it’s a lot of the pain as well. Two things I’d like fixed: randomness that bites you in the ass and worthless trash mobs. There’s a few ways to fix the wonky randomness, maybe a self-correcting behind-the-scenes randomizer that just gives you the damn loot you’ve been farming for 290,348 hours; or, how about meaningful faction systems? High-factioned players can just buy from NPC vendors what they didn’t loot. (Similar to EverQuest’s Lost Dungeons of Norrath and Warcraft’s Blood Elf Ghostlands area — an idea I LOVED in the beta, by the way.) And trash mobs, either they should drop useable items or equipment FAR more often, or once a group or raid of players have bested a dungeon, they should never have to clear the trash again. I know that’s unreasonable, but goddamn, I hate trash — there’s got to be more interesting, or less annoying, barriers to boss fights. (Foton)

4. Let’s rethink play styles. I don’t care if a game is classified as Massively Multiplayer, sometimes I just want to solo or do something with a friend. Forced grouping to get any worthwhile equipment is ridiculous. Raiding especially is a chore — with EQ forcing 72 people to show up (later 48) and WoW going the 40 man route (25 in the expansion). Add in PvP, and the gear difference from raiders and non raiders is just magnified. Please don’t take this as me advocating people should just be able to go kill some random easy monster and get the best gear in the game, I don’t. I just feel every style of play should be offered worthwhile rewards (no, reputation grinding to be able to purchase maybe one or two decent things does not count) and there may be hope on the horizon. The Burning Crusade promises much 5 and 10 man content with ample rewards, here’s to hoping. (Raster)

5. Let’s rethink play sessions. Sometimes I wonder if what we really need in MMO gaming is a pause button. Those of us with discretionary income have jobs, and families and mortagages and other obligations … we need fast travel and fast recoveries and fast groups and fast fun. The days of multi-hour LFGs and multi-hour experience groups and multi-hour corpse runs are over. I’d like to see better chunking of the content into shorter play sessions. Quests are ideal for that, of course, but we need raid content with easy entry and exit points. I think two hours or so should be the most time required to complete an instance. Add in group/raid formation, travel time, yap yap about loot time and that’s a solid three hours. Naturally, the first few times attempting a dungeon/instance will add to that, which is fine. Games shouldn’t require lenghthy time commitments to accomplish something. (Ya, SHOULDN’T.) (Foton)

Thursday, Five Assholes from 2006 We Want to Remember FOREVER.

Let’s back up. Few weeks ago, there’s this HUGE drama problem in the guild. I’m involved peripherally. And it’s big as it involves an officer and real lives and … let’s leave it at that. (Remember, I said I was involved peripherally, so don’t send emails asking what the hell I fucked up this time. On the periph, that’s me. I was catching fallout though, hence my problem.)

The drama news broke and the guild started creaking at the seams. The guildleader (aka Puppet #2) asked me what I thought should be done about this little mess to ensure guild tranquility and, after about two minutes consideration, I ordered the assassination of one of the directly involved parties. (I mean an assassination in the guild sense … your basic /gkick.) Instead of accepting their fate gracefully, the newly unguilded started raising a ruckus … they’re gonna bring down this guild, there’ll be nothing but ashes in a few days, we’ll all be sorry, also, Foton is a prick. Whatever. Move along, asshole.

Frankly, it was largely a business equation. I weighed the guild-worth of the involved players and who could continue to work together amicably, and they were odd man out. I mean CMON, I’m not gonna boot a priest, I’m not an idiot in matters of the guild.

(Repeating a lesson from weeks prior: Do NOT fuck, or fuck with, the guild priests. Too much fallout.)

Ok. That was a few weeks ago and we fast forward to this week … The guild is recovering nicely from that little mess, although, I’m still pissed off that we had to deal with all of it. Bright side, I’m mighty proud of myself for ordering the assassination and seeing it done before my very eyes. (Power, she be intoxicating.)

In the midst of all the drama, a tiny sliver of guild powerbrokers was trying to grab some political muscle, with some minor success I will add. In hindsight, I didn’t really notice at first because I was occupied with cleanup duty, shoring up the ranks, farming raid loot so everyone’s getting paid. Y’know, doing my game job? But, live and learn, baby. Live and learn.

Once order was restored, the powerbrokers were pushed back and rebuffed. In plain language, they were trying to wrestle control of the raids, DKP and loot distribution, (the lifeblood of an endgame guild), and after a few missteps with raiding and loot distribution, they were told to back off. Their services in this regard would no longer be required, but thank you for stepping up.

They seemed fine with this. Which should have been my first clue that they really weren’t fine with this.

What should have been my second clue? You’ll have to find out tomorrow — I’ve finished my coffee.

Recently, players expressed some concern over the use of programmable gaming peripherals while playing World of Warcraft. We want to make sure it’s clear that creating hotkeys for certain actions in the game is ok. However, if these peripherals are used to automate gameplay to the point where the player is able to conduct repeated actions in the game without paying attention, then that will constitute a violation of our game policies. The use of sustained automated play grants an unfair advantage over players who earn their achievements by actively playing through the game as it was designed. In the interest of maintaining an even playing field for all players, we will investigate reports of automated play and take action as needed to prevent this from occurring in the game.

Presumably, when he writes, “… if these peripherals are used to automate gameplay to the point where the player is able to conduct repeated actions in the game without paying attention, then that will constitute a violation of our game policies”, he isn’t referring to raid priests and flash heal.

1. Podcasts. What the fuck. I can’t think of anything less desirable to have on my iPod than a podcast, no matter the subject. I’d rather listen to Hall & Oates Greatest Hits than some guy talking about how he killed a raptor last night in MMOG_08, plus he really likes Pulp Fiction.

2. My guild’s rogues. DKP-hoarding bastards, spend some of that DKP on the rotting rogue endgame armor instead of saving up for some Weapon of the Gods that drops .0001 percent of the time, according to Thottbot, which means it NEVER DROPS.

3. Any of my guildmates’ main characters that random on Ahn’Qiraj 20 or Zul Gurub equipment, icing out somebody else’s alt that isn’t allowed into Blackwing Lair. Jeezus, check the stats. It’s CRAP.

4. World of Warcraft name changes. Unless it’s some moronic name, knock off the name changes. Players are asking for name changes to ESCAPE their poor reputations and history (duh?) and Blizzard is HELPING THEM. Gold farmers, douchebags, ninjas, the cancer operation fakers are all getting name changes which makes it difficult to vote “HELL NO” when they re-app to our guild for the 6th time.

5. Voicechat Censors. Ya, I get that you don’t want your schoolage children hearing “F this”, “F that” and “F those c’suckers” blasting from your computer’s surround sound speakers. I don’t want them to hear that either. Headphones? Ever hear of those? Extra bonus points for everyone: no more annoying-ass echo on your end of the voicechat. It’s an adult guild in an adult game using adult exclamations; I can’t play Ventrilo policeman because you’re too damn cheap to buy headphones.

6. That bitchass Warcraft priest we finally forced out of the guild. She (and it was a she, hi Ventrilo) was only in the guild two weeks, but in that short period of time, she managed to stir up no less than 20 arguments OVER NOTHING, at least one per day. Example: on about her third day in the guild, she was upset that someone had jokingly asked for a recount on her husband’s guild app. Yawn? Example 2: she was upset that another guildmate had offered to buy the AQ20 spell upgrade she had won. “Is this how the guild operates?? Trying to buy spells off a guildmate that WON IT FAIR AND SQUARE??” Err, so? Maybe he offered because he noticed that you didn’t memorize (i.e. use) the spell right away, you stupid twat, which by the way, is DEFINITELY a guild violation. P.S. Enjoy the name change. (F’ing Blizzard)

7. The DKP Haters. WTF, how can you hate math? You show up, you eventually get loot, it’s that simple. DKP is merely a tool to keep track of who’s in line and their position in the line. My experience, the only players that hate DKP are those players that rarely show up for raids and want the Gods of /Random to save them from their shit-ass equipment. Please do not think I am fooled by your rant about how corrupt DKP systems are — math is not corrupt.

Also not fooling me: the “I want, I want, I want, but loot isn’t important to me” people, the DKP Cashouts (enjoy your new guild, and btw, you’ll be leaving sooner than you think with a rather large DKP balance), and the “I have all day to PvP and I have all I want from Molten Core, but I don’t have time to help clear MC anymore” people.

8. Oh ya, I also hate Molten Core. But I still show up to help clear.

I’ll quote Eyonix’s post here as the thread is godawful slow and prone to splitends:

So the priest talent changes have been unveiled through the interactive calculator and I thought it would be a good idea to discuss what was revealed. My goal is only to outline a most of the changes, so it’s likely that I might have left out something small here or there. I encourage players to take an extensive pass using the calculator which has been linked in the news post I created on the front page of our website. After reading my comments, please feel free to use this thread to discuss of any aspect of the priest talents.

Going from left to right, I’ll start the discussion off with the Discipline tree. You’ll immediately notice that Wand Specialization has been made a first tier talent. I feel that this is great for two reasons. First, previously neither available tier 1 Discipline talents felt very exciting or rewarding when investing your points into them at early levels. I feel this is no longer the case. Second, you won’t have to compete with Improved Power Word: Shield or Fortitude to receive this talent. Moving on to tier 2 talents, Silent Resolve will now reduce the threat caused by all spells, rather than simply damage spells. You’re probably also noticing that Improved Power Word: Shield no longer reduces the duration of the weakened soul effect and I’m sure you’re freaking out.

Worry not, this is because the core ability, Power Word: Shield has been improved to only cause a weakened soul effect of 15 seconds, which previously required three talent points, hence the change detailed below.

The Improved Power Word: Shield talent will now increase the damage absorbed by 15%. The new focused casting effect of Martyrdom increases resistance to Interrupt effects by 20%, in addition to preventing the caster from losing casting time when taking damage. Inner Focus as you can see is no longer a 21-point talent, and now available by investing only a mere ten points into the tree. Also, the cooldown has been reduced to three minutes. Competing with the ability is Meditation, also previously a 21-point talent. This still offers an increase to mana regeneration while casting by 15%, however, now only costs three points.

Moving onto the 15-point talents, you can see that Improved Inner Fire remains the same. What we changed is the core ability. Next patch Inner Fire will provide 50% more armor than before. The duration will also be increased to ten minutes but now the effect will be removed when the caster endures twenty successful damaging melee or ranged hits. We’ve also increased the mana cost and removed the melee attack power boost from the ability as such offers the priest very little benefit.

The new 21-point talents are Divine Spirit and Mental Strength.

Finally, the new 31-point talent for the Discipline tree is called Power Infusion. This ability infuses the target with power, increasing spell damage and healing by 20% for 15 seconds, and can be used every three minutes. This spell is very similar to Arcane Power, however it can be cast on other players, enhances healing as well as damage, and doesn’t increase the mana cost of spells cast while under its effect.

This is a long thread, so bear with me…

I have a feeling most priests have been really curious to see what we’ve done with the Holy Tree. Well, fortunately the wait is over. You’ll notice two things right off the bat. Improved Renew offers the same level of improvement for only three points, and a brand new talent is immediately available – Healing Focus. This talent, for only two points will gives players a 70% chance of avoiding interruption caused by damage when casting any healing spell.

Next at the five-point mark you’ll notice another brand new talent – Spell Warding, which reduces all damage taken by 10%. That which was previously a 21-point talent now stands next to it, Divine Fury. In addition to being available much sooner, this talent now reduces the casting time of Smite, Holy Fire, Heal and Greater Heal spells by 0.1 sec.

Remember, with this talent (available very early in the tree) Greater Heal will cast in 2.5 seconds!

I’m actually pretty excited about what’s next. Holy Nova is now an eleven-point talent and has no cooldown whatsoever (of course universal global cooldown is still in-effect). This means that much like Improved Arcane Explosion, priests can spam small bursts of threatless holy goodness which both damages foes and heals friends. The mana cost has been increased, so it’s not as efficient as before. We actually had alot of fun testing this spell in both PvE and PvP, and I’m excited to read through player feedback when this is live on the PTRs.

Moving on to the competing eleven-point talents, another new ability is revealed, Blessed Recovery. This passive ability will heal 25% of the damage received over 6 seconds after being struck by a melee or critical ranged hit. Lastly, take a look at Inspiration. This talent now only costs three points.

Holy Reach is another new talent available to the priests. For two points, players can increases the range of their Smite and Holy Fire spells and the radius of their Prayer of Healing and Holy Nova spells by 20%. Improved Healing has the same effect and is found in the same place, however, only three points need to be invested in order to gain the 15% mana cost reduction to those healing spells. The last talent on this tier is called Searing Light which increases the damage of Holy Fire and Smite by 10%.

Don’t forget, Holy Fire is now a core ability and the casting time reduced to 3.5 seconds. Which of course becomes 3 seconds with the appropriate talent (the same talent which also benefits the casting time of Heal and Greater Heal.

Another great new passive ability talent – Spiritual Guidance, is located at the 21-point mark. This talent will permanently improve the priests spell damage and healing by up to 25% of their total spirit. Pretty nice boost, if I do say so myself.

I must admit, the next improvement has me awfully excited. Spirit of Redemption, (you know that angel that lets everyone know you’ve died and that their probably about to die as well:), will now allow the priest to become the angel, upon death. For ten seconds, the priest can cast any healing spell completely free! This allows the strategic player much better control in preventing a wipe.

As you can see the new 26-point talent is Spiritual Healing, which as before offers the priest a 10% increase to all healing spells. Placing points this far into the tree, assuming you’ve picked up Improved Renew and Spiritual Guidance will most definitely make the Holy Priest’s heals stand out.

It should be no surprise that the final rank Holy talent is brand new, seeing that Holy Nova is now an 11-point talent. This new spell, called Lightwell will create a holy lightwell near the priest. At final rank, friendly targets can click the lightwell to restore 1600 health over a period of ten seconds. The lightwell has five charges, meaning, up to five players can use the lightwell before it expires. Our testing has shown that this ability works great in both smaller dungeons and raids, often times allowing the lower maintenance party members to take advantage of the healing properties of this well, while the priest and other healing classes focused on the main tank or whomever was taking heavy damage.

One other thing I’d like to mention before moving on to the Shadow tree is the fact that Focus Casting has been removed completely. Essentially, with the improvements to Martyrdom and the new talent Healing Focus, it wasn’t as valuable a talent as before.

So, what improvements have we made to Shadow you ask? You’ll actually notice that very little changes were made, so fortunately, you’re almost done reading my post.

Shadow Affinity only costs three points now, instead of five. Improved Fade will no longer increase the duration of the spell, but rather decrease the cooldown by a total of six seconds. Shadow Weaving is available for 16-points. While Vampiric Embrace remains the same, a new talent is available called Improved Vampiric Embrace. For two points, the amount healed by Vampiric Embrace will be increased by 10%.

Well, this pretty much sums up the changes. It’s likely we’ll make some more adjustments and tweaks based upon what’s revealed through testing on the PTRs. As a priest, I’m excited. How about you guys? Post your thoughts…

Sidenote: Try not to quote my entire thread, if possible please. Threads break much sooner that way, and I’d like to get as much out of this discussion thread as possible, before creating a “part 2”.