And then hell froze over.

I’ve been busy.

LFR has been kind of me–even while the loot gods extract their payment in simply not dropping the transmog gear I want. Woe.  At least I match. I also leveled my druid to 85 and got her to LFR level…and she is yet another healer, ladies and gentlemen.  WILD GROWTH ALL THE THINGS. We’ll see if she inherits the LFR loot luck or must flail around being That Healer in PvP Gear for awhile. I seem to be doing much better with my under geared druid than I did my priest at the same gear level–the other day I healed Well with a  full guild group where the tank was in DPS gear for giggles. In my pvp blues. What?

Anyway. Lyr. I had her transmogged into t9 but liked this set enough to strip the transmog from it–except for my helm, of course. Halo forever. I think I need a new weapon to really match it, but…well, later. I remain frustrated in my ability to play Word of Dresscraft because the loot gods are just NOT dropping my PRETTY gear.

Except for the druid, who got lucky in Ulduar and landed a lot of the transmog gear I wanted in one shot.

So…by that logic, she is probably screwed for actual gear. Fuck.

Anyway. Hi. I live. Doing LFR as much as I am, surely I’ll have blog fodder…at some point…right?

 

What is this I don’t even

I left Lyr in the image so that you can appreciate this happening when I’m on my priest and not my DK.

Coming Soon to an LFR Near You

Coming soon to a LFR near you: that mother fucking disc priest in PVP shoulders, a +hit chest (albeit reforged), and a fucking blue weapon.

Fuck yeah, baby. Lyrandre’s back in town. You know you missed me. I sure as hell missed you.

Don’t look at me like that, internet. I promise I will gem and enchant ALL THE THINGS before I hit LFR.  Even if they’re PVP and +hit things. Except maybe the weapon. I’m just going to have to replace that piece of shit.

The healing reflexes were pretty rusty when I started this project, but I think I’ve got them mostly working now. I haven’t wiped a 5 man in awhile–just that one time, when the tank and I ran in opposite directions by accident. I’m excited to get Lyrandre back into a raid situation–even just LFR–just to see how it flows.

When all else fails, retreat to what you know best.

Smote

I’ve been doing my best to level Lyrandre with something resembling haste, which has lead to me being terribly bored of smiting.

I mean sure, it’s entertaining at first–but by the time you hit 83/84, suddenly your mana bar seems to have sprung a leak, and holy fire/smite/smite/smite turns into holy fire/smite/smite/smite/smite/holy fire/smite/SW:D/fuck I misjudged, smite.

This is where you’d say Amber, isn’t Lyr dual specced?

Yes, yes she is.  Disc and nothing.

…what do you mean I should use that second spec for shadow?  Pffft. 

I’ve hit 84 and the dreaded Twilight Highlands, which means that I will be a paper armored smear on the ground several times from here on out. Woe.

My pugging experiences have been mostly good, until I got one of Those Tanks the other day. He was in partial casting gear (BARE tank, I’m guessing moonkin otherwise) and at one point–after I nearly died on the first trash pull–I made him aware that hey, untanked caster mobs tend to eat the healer.

He said that was fine. He was invincible!

No really, he said that he didn’t care if I died because he was invincible.

By the time I hit 85 the rust should be completely, brutally knocked off my healing skills…

Bringing Back the Bubbles: The Disc Priest Journey from 80 Onwards

I was perusing through my search terms today (you people are fucking disturbing) and along with many many searches about how fucking STUPID Rhyo is, there were a LOT of searches for leveling disc priests.

So, hi.  First off, leveling disc priests is awesome. I leveled Lyrandre entirely disc, but I started her off in BC.  Things are so different now that I don’t dare touch the lower level stuff, but I can talk a wee bit about going from 80 on up.

Step One: Spec smite heal.
Step Two: Bubble thyself.
Step Three: Holy Fire!
Step Four: SMITE ALL THE THINGS.
Step Five: Pop wings for the pretty graphic/if you actually need mana.

If I managed to pull multiple mobs then I’ll toss around SWP and DP. Penance doesn’t really get used for questing unless I feel like seeing the pretty graphic, but it’s handy in case something actually manages to hurt you.

I can pull for quite awhile without drinking, but I’m also in ICC gear, so make of that what you will. So far I can quest and dungeon heal effectively with the same spec (my second spec currently sits empty).  I’m well-nigh indestructable questing because I do a pretty good job of healing myself with smite. I just have to make sure I don’t let people die in dungeons while smiting. >.>

And now, to actually comment on anything past level 81 for these posts, I’m going to have to go level my priest…

In ur bubblez, reducin ur dmgz by 100%

Hi guys! I’m hijacking this blog! So we’ll start by BoP’ing the hunter Amber so she’ll not be able to shoot me before the 10 seconds are up.

Alright, ten seconds, go.

Today I’d like to talk about healer utility! I’ll break it down by class, and in the case of priest, spec.

Paladin

Fantastic cooldowns here. Hand of Protection, colloquially known as BoP (for its old name, Blessing of Protection), is 10 seconds of hax on any raid member. They’re completely immune to physical attacks, so if the target is limited to physical attacks, they pick a new target. In some cases, they’ll pick a new target anyway. Current Cata encounters where this is extremely powerful are Chimaeron’s phase 2 and Atramedes’s air phase, where it will force a target change. Because of the hefty 5 minute cooldown, you can only use it once or twice per fight, but man will it break certain mechanics. The biggest drawback of BoP is that it prevents the target from using physical attacks as well, but if you have an overeager mage or warlock you can BoP them with impunity as it won’t hurt their dps. For our trolladins, BoP the rogue or fury warrior as soon as they use their cooldowns and you’re sure to make friends with them– You were just trying to keep them from pulling aggro!

Which brings us to Hand of Salvation, or HoSalv. For many of you right now tank threat isn’t an issue, but in those cases where it could, this 2 minute cooldown comes in handy. It’s approximately a 20% threat drop, but it’s slow-going over 10 seconds– You’ll want to use it preemptively. HoSalv is best used on classes that lack a natural threat drop, such as warriors, DKs, and boomkins, with the “second tier” being classes that lack a large threat wipe, like feral druids, shamans, priests, and perhaps even a retadin that got carried away with wings. It’s also probably best used at least a minute into the fight, since very early on it will clear maybe one attack’s worth of threat– Unless you know ahead of time that a dps likes to blow all his cooldowns off the bat, and you think you can save him from his own stupidity.

Another way to save a dps from their own stupidity is Hand of Sacrifice, or HoSac. Don’t let the nickname scare you. HoSac will redirect 30% of the damage that target takes to you, up to a maximum of your full health bar, for 12 seconds. This not only helps in briefly “tankifying” a dps when things go horribly, horribly wrong, but more importantly it’s a bizarre mitigation cooldown to use on a tank! With Paragon of Virtue, it’s down to a 90 second cooldown, and with Protector of the Innocent all of your heals will be healing you too. In many cases this is actually one of the best ways to keep PotI from going to waste. HoSac is an almost deceptively strong cooldown and will save your group member’s lives more times than I care to keep track of.

Also on the list of things I can’t keep track of, auras! Pony aura is not for raid. Unless you have someone else bringing the right elemental resistances, you’ll probably want to run with resistance aura, which will be about a 24.92% reduction in damage of that type (10.75% over the buff-caused resistance of MotW/BoK). Using Aura Mastery in anticipation of damage will further boost that to 39.90%– Wow! Devotion Aura is a good second choice, providing 4,076 armor (Roughly a 10% boost for a tank). Concentration aura is the archtypical holy aura, but in many fights it doesn’t get put to good use, and in those that it does, resistance plays a bigger role. It plays a bigger role in PvP, though. And ret aura… Well, you’re nice against rogues? It’s not you, it’s me. I have too high standards for my auras.

Oh, let’s not forget that utility is sometimes focused on yourself. Divine Protection has been revamped to reduce damage taken by 20%, and can be reduced down to a 40 second cooldown. It’s a fantastic ability on heavy AoE fights, and you can glyph it to be 40% magic. Really, seriously, oh my god this is something you want to use. It’s win. I can’t express enough how amazing it is for seeming so weak.

And finally, Rebuke. Thank you, Blizzard, for Rebuke. Ever been on a priest or druid and begged the dps to interrupt something? Maybe those nerubians back in heroic old kingdom, that could one-shot an undergeared tank with their shadow blast? Now you can stop yelling at them and go face-punching yourself! Paladins still lack an offensive dispel, so in many cases this is our best bet. And from a PvP perspective, my god, it’s like a game of chicken amongst healers. In the average BG, one rebuke and they’re terrified of you.

Shaman— Wait, what’s a shaman?

Totems, totems, totems! Unfortunately, outside of totems you don’t have much utility at all, and you’re limited to four totems at a time, and a 30 yard range for most of them. At 18 totems available to a resto shaman (and soon to be 19), I won’t talk about them all, just the ones I really think fit the “utility” definition.

Contrary to what I just said, the first example is a non-totem example: Purge. Offensive dispels are fantastic and can effectively neuter some enemies. Always be on the look out for dispellable magic effects, and once you get to know them you can decide if they’re worth dispelling or not. Probably the best trash example are the Twilight Shifters before Cho’gall, who will tear people a new one unless your purge their shift. Maloriak is probably the best boss example, thanks to his Remedy. You can also frequently prevent the need to purge at all by using Wind Shear, which is arguably the best PvE interrupt available.

Tremor Totem, an earth totem, though a long fall from what it once was, is a fantastic anti-fear. Most importantly, rumor has it that it can break Cho’gall’s worship, though if you’re worshipping you can’t drop it [Citation needed]. It’s six seconds on a one minute cooldown, so it’ll be frequently up when you need it.

Grounding Totem, an air totem, is a pretty amazing thing when it works. I have heard that it will block Blackout in Valiona and Theralion, cutting down dramatically on raid damage. It also works against Arcanotron’s Arcane Annihilator (No word on if it will fail Achieve-o-tron), and presumably any other single target spell cast by raid bosses. Please note that Grounding Totem is specifically party-wide and requires the target to be “nearby” (Personal experiences say <15 yards, but shaman is not my kind of class– No offense to your spiritwalkers out there).

As discussed with paladin, resistance totem is a pretty sweet deal, but you should be glyphed into healing stream totem, which you should be using anyway. Please note that the difference between this is that it does not protect against shadow damage, but it DOES protect against nature (electrical– Hi Neffy). As usual for totems, the range is 30 yards and it does not move with you, so be mindful of positioning.

Earthbind totem is a rare jewel, and really shines on Magmaw and Maloriak. If there’s kiting to be done, you can always help with an earthbind totem. Remember that its range is a meager 10 yards!

I’m hesitant to include regen as utility, but Mana Tide is a special case. It’s a fantastic thing to offer other healers, as well as keep your own mana up. While it doesn’t affect short term spirit boosts like trinkets, there is a rumor that Tsunami’s spirit-boosting stacks are affected. I don’t know if this is a bug or even true, but if intentional it makes the trinket look even more appealing to shamans. Don’t forget to reuse your healing stream totem once mana tide’s done!

Spirit Link Totem, an air totem coming in 4.1, is a rather unique take on mitigation. For 6 seconds it reduces damage taken by everyone within 10 yards by 10%, which, so far, sounds like a gimp discobubble. But here’s where it gets interesting: Each second, everyone’s health is redistributed so that everyone is at the same percentage. Note that the redistribution won’t create or destroy health– It adds up all the current health pools compared to all the max health pools and figures the goal percentage. This is especially potent since very rarely will AoE outright kill someone– Frequently, it’s when one person is low and they get hit by something. I could see it being put to especially good use on Chimaeron’s feuding. It’ll be on a 3 minute cooldown, further mimicking Barrier.

Oh and, I guess you guys have something called Heroism or Bloodlust? I dunno, it’s like that mage ability Time Warp, but you can’t settle on a name for it. The timing for Hero/BL is usually best discussed amongst your group, but a well-timed one can save a wipe. If you think you’ve got a good eye for it, consider using it early– I’d rather use hero at the wrong time than to wipe and not use it at all!

Druid

Can come back when it has utility. I kid! Druid’s utility is a little trickier though. Soothe can be used to dispel enrage effects, and if any druids could use Soothe on the shamans for the way I treated their signature cooldown above? Much appreciate it. Enrage effects aren’t all that common, but when they show up, they can be pretty make or break. Double damage and 50% faster attack? Haha, no can do!

Roots are also in the same category of enemy denial. When it Soultree form, your roots become instant cast, so if you have a spare GCD on a fight that involves kiting, you can throw a root out.

If there’s two druids glyphed for innervate, they can innervate each other and get more back than if they did it to themselves.

Like paladin’s Divine Protection, druids have Barkskin, which has an added benefit of preventing cast bar pushback. Much like DP, use this. The only time you shouldn’t use this is when you literally will take 0 damage, or if you know there will be a time before it’s up again with heavy damage. Don’t go more than a minute without barkskinning.

Editing in battle res here. As it stands now the ability can be used once per encounter (three times in 25 man), regardless of how many druids, warlocks, or soon death knights you have. It’s funny to me that I forgot this ability, because no druid is ever allowed to forget it. If anyone dies for any reason a minimum of 20% of the group is obligated to call for a battle res,  regardless of if it’s been used or if it’s on cooldown. Unfortunately there really isn’t much to say about it– If someone dies, you res them. If you reasonably expect them to quickly die again, as in a bad pug, you can reserve your right to pass over them and save their durability and your cooldown. Do be mindful, though, that if you bres in what’s soon to be bad, you might inadvertently kill them again.

Priests – All

Leap of Fuck Priests is a new ability at 85, and one many priests have had great fun with. But did you know that it can be used for purposes other than annoying raid members and killing them? If you have a head start on movement, it can be used to help a straggler, or someone that was a bit behind through no fault of their own. For example, on Cho’gall, LoF is up for virtually every add’s death, and a timely grip on the tank will get him back to Cho’gall in no time. It’s also useful when you can see horribly bad things on the horizon, but worry that they can’t or won’t get out in time, such as Atramedes’s air phase, phase 2 of Chimaeron (You can add seconds to their life!), and pillars of parasitic flame on Magmaw. Seriously, the number of good uses for this ability are so plentiful that it shouldn’t be off cooldown when you want to fuck around with it. Also, you can have a group of 38 priests and 2 death knights set up a line (The roads in Durotar and Elwynn Forest are fantastic for this), lining up 19 priests in each direction and chain-gripping the death knights together in an attempt at finding Higgs-Boson (Amber edit: Fuck you, James.  Fuck.  You.)

Divine Hymn is another one I’m hesitant to include, because it’s first and foremost a throughput ability. However, it also increases healing taken by 10% for 8 seconds, so you can theoretically use it to buff up someone else’s heals. Of course, that’s a bit of a stretch because most priests I’ve talked to tend to hit it the moment they feel panicky without regard of what else is going on. Similarly, Hymn of Hope boosts max mana by 15%, briefly buffing percentage returns such as innervate, shadowfiend, and divine plea.

In Cata, magic debuffs are the majority by far, and magic is the realm of priests (Bwah?). Dispel removes two afflictions (or buffs from enemies) per use, and mass dispel is a large area dispel. A rule of thumb is that if you’ll get three or more people, go ahead and do mass. It becomes technically more cost efficient at 4 people, but considering you’ll pay for delaying it, three will usually save you mana in the long run.

Mostly on trash, psychic scream provides the closest you’ll get to an interrupt. If you’re running a lot of 5 mans, consider glyphing it, because it makes fantastic panic CC.

Priests – Disc

Congratulations, your bubbles are worth a damn! And there’s one bubble in particular that everyone loves, and that’s barrier. This is a 30% damage reduction (soon to be 25%) for 10 seconds on a 2 (soon 3) minute cooldown. You can also glyph it to increase healing done by 10% for the duration.

Pain Suppression is a single target mitigation, and a fairly strong one at that. Try to use it at least twice per boss, you’ll find plenty of opportunities. Plenty. There is a lot of pain from bosses that can be suppressed. Be mindful that it also reduces their threat by 5%, which can cause wacky hijinx I mean, occasional trouble with threat.

Now, a rare case for you is power infusion. This is a fantastic self-buff for throughput, what with the haste and mana cost reduction and all. However, if you find yourself running oom, it won’t do you much good to spam smite faster. In this case and probably this case alone, consider casting it on another healer or (In phase 2 Chimaeron) a caster dps.

Priest – Holy

Body and Soul, or as I like to call it, speed bubbles. This is basically a half-sprint every time you bubble or life grip, which mostly serves to make bubble into a movement spell. Its uses are countless and in my opinion, is what keeps Holy from being a total waste of a tree (I kid! <3). Be careful when paired with a disc priest, as they might get angry at you for causing the shared weakened soul debuff.

Guardian Angel has two major uses. The first is a healing boost, which is a roundabout imitation of mitigation. Like with most mitigation abilities, it’s a good thing to use on the tank early and often, or when expecting large damage. However, if the target of GA would die, GA ends and heals them up to 50% health. While I wouldn’t normally advise letting a teammate die, I can think of a number of cases where a person was low on health, so I popped GA and stopped trying to heal them for a second to focus elsewhere. Every healer knows the frustration of a target dying with a tenth of a second left on their heal, and GA is a bit of life insurance in that regard. If you know for certain you won’t be able to bring them up to survivable amounts in time, it’s a great way to buy a couple seconds.

Overall, I’m sure many of you have a few questions right now, like “Did he just list off a bunch of cooldowns?” “Why did he miss this?” “Wait, we’re talking about healers on what’s theoretically a healer blog?” “Where’s the flowchart?” “Who the fuck is this person?” “How does a wall of text crit for that much?”

To answer them in order, mostly, yes! However, a lot of people I’ve met will say they always forget about their cooldowns, and a quick look through WoL will seem them using something like HoSac or Barrier once a raid night. It’s nice to be reminded that these things exist, to bring them to the front of your mind when you can potentially use them. If I missed any, especially in druid, I apologize, feel free to comment and I’ll edit in a correction. And yes, yes we are. Check the link for your fucking flowchart. I’m James, or as many of you first saw me, Temnyi. In a horrible lapse of judgement Amber has given me access to this blog. And by my count the wall of text crit for 2,935 damage, mostly by having that many words. I apologize if you were one-shot, but I advise you to level up, as that damage stops being lethal in vanilla content.

Also, I’m pretty sure my ten seconds are up. Thankfully, I can still divine shield, and my tier bonus reduces the casting time of my hearthstone. See you next time!

Bringing Back The Bubbles

Hi, folks. Arrens here from that other site that hasn’t been updated regularly in far too long. Blame work. And work filters. And whatever else pops into my Sudofed-addled brain this morning.
 
Anyways, I asked my arch-nemesis if I could provide a guest post here. See, I’ve been leveling a priest for the better part of this year. Theodious is my dwarven disc priest, the dispenser of bubbles and all-around cad. (Seriously. I play on an RP server. If you happen upon Feathermoon-Alliance and engage in an in-character discussion with Theo AND you’re playing a female toon, run. Fast.) 
 
Theo isn’t my first attempt at a priest. He’s actually my 6th. (Amber in: it’s a disease; Lyr was 5th or 6th) The previous 5 never made it to level 20 before finding the delete button. They were tedious and boring and GODDAMMIT WHY WASN’T THE LFD SYSTEM OUT A LOT EARLIER?!
 
Ahem. Sorry. But Theo sat at level 12 for months. Seriously. For nearly 6 months, he gathered dust as I couldn’t be arsed to go out and smite my way through gnolls and spiders and the odd troll/yeti hiding in caves. But something happened along the way. I got the itch to level him, something I never could have foreseen. And I did. With great gusto. Full use of heirlooms and the LFD system had me tossing bubbles out left and right. I learned about spamming Flash Heal and have been laughed at time and again for my overuse of Renew as a non-holy priest. But you know what? It worked and I kept my groups mostly alive. (Except mages, who I still let die because my inner warlock chortles.) (FYI: you are supposed to let ROGUES and WARLOCKS die, not mages.  Mages give you noms.  Arrens is doin’ it wrong.)

 

This picture isn't relevent to anything. I'm just breaking up Arren's wall of text. You're welcome.

 
Then along comes patch 4.0.1 and everything gets flip-turned upside down. New talents, new spells, and SWEET BABY ZOMBIE JESUS MY MANA POOL JUST TRIPLED! So I have that going for me, which is nice.
 
Yesterday, Theo hit level 70. He’s been through Utgarde Keep (So.  Tired.  Of that instance.)  about a dozen times now and I’m thankful to largely be away from the new DK tanks who don’t know what threat generation is. (Seriously, guys. Use Blood Presence now if you’re tanking. This is non-negotiable and will cause me to drop group if you pull the first group in anything else.)  (If only it was just the DK tanks.  Oh my god.  Something about UK brings out the fail in tanks.)
 
“But Arrens,” I can hear you say. “What’s the fucking point of this post aside from telling us that you’ve done what everyone and their goddamn brother has done in leveling another toon?” To which I respond, Relax, skippy. I’m getting to that.
 
See, Amber’s blog is titled “For The Bubbles.” Yet, when’s the last time she talked anything about bubbles? She hasn’t in a long, long time. No, she’s almost all hunter, all the time. (Do you know how many disc priests you can have in a raid?!  THE ANSWER IS NOT THREE.)  Which is great and all, but the snark’s gone. (Gone my ass.  Wit’s as sharp as ever, baby.) She’s lost her bluster. (LOL) The fight between my arch-nemesis and I isn’t so much a fight anymore as it is a roflstomp on my part. (LOLOLOLOL.  Delusions!  So cute!) So as a means to get back to our roots, I’m going to provide her with some snark on this here blog and give the leveling tips from a Disc Priest’s perspective in the post-4.0 universe. Some of these are obvious no-brainers. They’ve been around since the dawn of WoW. But others? Well…some folks need could use a smack to the back of the head when they queue in the LFD. This is for them.
 
1.) I need mana. No, really. I need mana. Tanks, if I sit down for a drink because I’ve only got 1/4 of my mana left after you opted to pull the entire bloody instance, please let me fill it up before going back for more. I know you’re sadistic sonsabitches taking whacks to the head for the greater good, but I can’t heal you unless you see blue under my green health bar. If you continue to run all willy-nilly and we wipe due to your impatience, I will leave. (Sidenote: Priests need Life Tap. Serious.)

2.) Power Word: Barrier is a pretty cool mechanic. It’s like a giant bubble for the whole group. You stand under it, you don’t get hurt and any heals I cast on you are increased by 3%. So melee? STOP RUNNING OUT FROM UNDER IT, YOU FUCKTARDS! I have two level 80 rogues. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many inappropriate uses of Sprint as when I cast PW: Barrier. You’re all giving my second favorite class a bad name. I hate you.  (I’d say that it’s because we’ve trained them SO WELL to not stand in things, but anyone who heals knows that no, they haven’t absorbed that lesson, either.   So really they have…no excuse.  Except not understanding the AWESOME that is PW: Barrier.)

 
3.) Prot Pallys, I don’t know what’s happened to you since 4.0. You used to be my favorite class to heal, what with your awesome AOE threat generation and your, what I can only guess was, fantastic dodging and parrying abilities. But that’s all changed. Every pally I’ve healed in the past week has been taking some pretty incredible damage. Stop that. Please. You make me go into an anaphylactic shock all the damn time now.
 
4.) Warrior tanks, you have replaced Prot Pallys as my favorite tanks to heal. Keep it up, guys and gals. 
 
5.) This one isn’t so much a tip or even an observation I’ve seen happening frequently as it is just (what I hope was) a singular event that occurred yesterday in UK. I’m in a group with one of those aforementioned prot pallys that couldn’t keep threat on more than two mobs at a time. We had a rogue, a fury warrior, a frost mage and myself filling out the group. All the DPS were pretty decently geared for upper-60’s, low-70’s toons and were constantly pulling threat. The frost mage, on several occasions, kept pulling entire groups off the pally and would proceed to run. Not to the tank. Not to me, the healer. No, he would start running backwards as fast as his gnomish feet would carry him. Well out of LOS of me and way to far for the pally to lay down a consecrate. When he died for the sixth time in that run, I was laughing so hard I had tears streaming down my face. Nothing makes me giddier with glee than seeing a mage die. Make it a gnome? Well hell. It’s like my birthday and Christmas all rolled into one.  (Isn’t it DELIGHTFUL when they do that?  Their repair bills are like a stupidity tax.)
 
So there ya have it, folks. My tales of leveling as Disc in the post-4.0 apocalypse. Any tales to share of your own? Toss ’em in the comments.

Disc Priests and Paladin Tanks

I play a disc priest.  I also play a paladin tank.  I still sigh inwardly whenever a paladin asks me to please not bubble them.

I can not bubble you, sure.  I have so much SP that my bubbles are officially Srs Bzns.  I’m a raider, though, and bubbling is part of my routine.  The muscle memory is there.  Even if I don’t want to bubble you I probably will sometimes anyway, becuase god damn it, it’s a habit!  Just ask Bingle, our other disc priest.  Whenever we’re both in a raid we’re bubbling each other’s target(s) all the time, even though we don’t mean to, just because it’s how we’re used to doing things.

What’s the paladin tank to do?  Deal with it.

It is easier to change your behavior than to change someone else’s.

Sure you can ask your healer to not bubble you.  They may or may not happily go along with it.  But why don’t you learn to adjust to the situation?  When I’m on my paladin I’m typically taking off 1 or 2 pieces of gear.  I might pull a little more as well.   I’m usually still over defense cap, but I have some more mana to work with. 

Treat it as an exercise.  Alright, I don’t have much mana.  What do I do? 
How can I create the most threat with the least mana usage? 
Can I take off three pieces of gear?  How about wearing a holiday hat*? 
Can I try a different seal?  How about another Judgement?

Maybe it is easier to just ask the disc priest to not bubble you.   “It gives mana when it pops” is all well and good, except for those of us rocking 4k+ SP.  But trying to modify your own behavior is worth looking at, too.

*I’ve done it.  No one said a word.  :(

So You Rolled a Priest – 2nd Edition

Now slightly updated.  Still planning to revist the specs when WoWhead isn’t down for the count.  I also should links to “advanced stuff” shouldn’t I?

So You Rolled a Priest, 2nd Edition
A Priest Leveling Guide

So you rolled a priest. Maybe, like me, you just wanted to try something else. Maybe your raid needs a healer. Maybe this is your first character! Now you’re level ten and staring at your talent trees.  Now it is time for THE DECISION: what spec are you going to be? 

This is intended as a leveling guide, not an end-game guide.  Spell rotations and specs will reflect that.

Priest Specs-The Basics
Ask yourself several questions.
Do I mostly want to heal? Do I mostly want to DPS?
-Do I want to PvP, or focus on PvE?
-Am I going to be soloing, duoing, or instancing my way to 80?
-How crazy am I?

Shadow
Before the advent of Looking for Douchebags, shadow was considered by many to be the ‘default’ leveling spec.  If you plan on mostly DPSing and/or mostly soloing, this is likely the route you’ll take. It’s also a respectable PvP spec.  You will likely get asked to heal even as shadow, because people are silly like that, and it can make for a faster queue time. If you don’t mind, it’s entirely possible to heal as shadow until fairly close to end game (with some gear concessions).

Holy
Holy is a (raid) healing spec. If you plan on soloing/questing, this is…probably not the way to go. If you want to level primarily through instance groups or with a friend, holy is fine.  Several people who planned to go holy end game leveled disc anyway because they felt it was less gear dependent, but I tend to favor ‘learn as you go’.

Disc
Disc is another healing spec, and my personal favorite (warning: bias ahead!). It’s good for healing in PvE, and with some different talents it’s also great for healing in PvP. I leveled as disc on a PvP server and not only was I durable, I was dangerous! If you want to heal instances but know you’ll be doing a lot of questing on your own, disc might be for you. And you get to heal with pew pew lazers later on. :D

Disc Spec: Here is one leveling path… I put all my points into disc to start and only went into holy later.  I personally skipped the standard spirit tap because I’m a nutcase.  You may want to be smarter than me.
Holy Spec: How about this one? I don’t know, the mere idea of a holy leveling spec kind of broke my mind.
Shadow Spec: I recreated my own shadow spec as best I could here.  It’s PvE biased, not PvP.  I am a PvPnub.

Spell Rotations
As Disc, my DPS rotation while questing was as follows:
Shield > Holy Fire > Shadow Word:Pain > Devouring Plague > Mind Blast
If mob was at less than 50% health, then I’d wand them to death for mana conservation. If it was not, then I’d bust out the smite until it was. At higher levels, PW: Death is great to finish things off as long as you’re careful (keep yourself bubbled!). It might seem a little slower to wand things to death, but you save time drinking, so it evens out.

While duoing, I holy smite everything I can just because it’s funny (hell, in raids I holy fire things because it’s funny).  My tank is less amused, but tossing dots up on whatever he’s aoe tanking does help things go faster.

Can you lolsmite DPS in groups? Yes. Are you going to do awesome DPS? No. Does it matter in Maraudon? Not really.  It sure does eat your mana bar, though.

Holy would switch up the disc rotation a bit. Or more than a bit, I suppose. Er. Here!:
Shield > Holy Fire > SW:P >  Smite > Smite > Smite
Toss Devouring Plague up for tougher mobs that will live long enough for the DoTs to be worth it.  The wand to death below 50% health strat applies here, too.

For shadow leveling:
Shield > Vampiric Touch > Mind Blast > SW:P > Devouring Plague> Mind Flay
Like the other two specs, for grinding you want to wand things to death sub 50% health.   For DPSing in groups, you obviously won’t be doing that.  Your group rotation would be more like this:
Vampiric Touch > Mind Blast > SW:P > Mind Flay
Renew VT when it drops, and use MF when MB is on cooldown. 

VE is now an Inner Fire like “aura” –don’t forget to keep them up!

Gear
Leveling gear is generally whatever the hell you can grab. With today’s quicker leveling until 70, the gear you get before hand isn’t terribly important.

Holy: Spellpower, Int, Spirit, Crit/Haste/Mp5
Disc: Spellpower, Int, Crit, Haste
Shadow: Hit*, Spellpower, Int, Crit/Haste

*I consider hit to be like defense on a leveling tank.  You want some, sure, but the “cap” is ever-changing.  So don’t worry too much about the hit cap and just pick it up where you find it, at least until in your 70s. 

If you get a piece with gem sockets, look at what gear you have now. What are you missing? If you have a lot of mp5 pieces, consider crit or SP gems, etc.  Don’t spend too much money on gems sub 70, because you’re likely to replace the gear soon. On your way to 80 the gear replacement slows down…a little. That said, Lyr had three different weapons in 2 levels.  I don’t bother with enchants at all for the same reason.