Filed under: Priest

WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore is a discipline priest by reputation, but still enjoys melting faces as shadow and bugging her raid to click the Lightwell as holy.

When you get your priest to level 90, gearing up your character will probably be one of the many things on your mind. Your first inclination may be to run heroic dungeons, but what if your item level isn't high enough to use the dungeon finder? Maybe you're looking beyond that, and wondering what you'll need to queue for the raid finder when it becomes available in the next two weeks.

Or, if you're like me, you're probably scouring Pandaria, trying to find all the best possible items outside of raids, so that your raid leader likes you when you start running normal mode raids in the near future.

Well, whether you're a shadow priest or a holy priest, this is the guide for you.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore is a discipline priest by reputation, but still enjoys melting faces as shadow and bugging her raid to click the Lightwell as holy.

If you plan on healing as a discipline priest in Mists of Pandaria, you're going to be met with a lot of changes this expansion. Fortunately, most of the changes are good and the spec's unique playstyle remains intact. Actually, if anything, discipline is better at doing everything it did before, from dishing out absorbs to Smite healing.

Today's guide will show you how discipline has changed, and how to approach it in the new expansion. We'll examine ways to use the spec's new abilities and talents, as well as stat priorities and gearing your character. To get started, let's look at some new abilities and changes made to old ones.

• Archangel and Evangelism When using Archangel, the spell will no longer restore a percentage of mana per stack of Evangelism. The healing buff Archangel grants, however, is much bigger and can be incorporated into play whenever additional throughput is needed. Something to know: Penance, when used on an enemy target, will now grant a stack of Evangelism just as Smite and Holy Fire already do.
• Dispel Magic and Purify Dispel Magic is now only for offensive dispelling on enemy targets. To dispel debuffs on an ally, you'll be using a new spell called Purify, which removes all harmful magic and disease effects. Purify has an 8-second cooldown.
• Inner Focus This cooldown ability was once used to save mana, now it's a throughput cooldown instead. Use it before casting Flash Heal, Greater Heal, or Prayer of Healing and that spell will automatically strike for critical healing.
• Mass Dispel This spell can no longer be spammed continuously due to a newly added 15-second cooldown, but it now removes all harmful magical effects from allies when cast. It will only remove one beneficial effect from an enemy.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore is a discipline priest by reputation, but still enjoys melting faces as shadow and bugging her raid to click the Lightwell as holy.

"I have a bad feeling about this."

That's what you should be saying to yourself after reading my name in the byline. (If you're smart, that is.) Anyway, if you missed the news, your beloved Fox Van Allen has stepped down from his position as WoW Insider's resident shadow priest columnist. He's moved on to writing about iPods or something, which means you're stuck with me for now. I will do my best to make this as painless as possible.

So Mists of Pandaria is just two weeks away now, and while I'm far from considering myself an expert shadow priest (more on that later) I've leveled a few shadow priests to 90 on the beta in preparation for the race to level 90. In the process I think I've figured out some of the nuance, so I thought I'd share it so you can start thinking about how you'll get your own 85 shadow priest to level cap.

In the interest of providing a fast, easy-to-use resource for every class, we've gathered up our favorite guides, best lists, and most relevant posts into a convenient list. Check back often, because we'll keep these resources up to date throughout the last days of the Cataclysm and deep into the Mists of Pandaria.

Check back as we add more guides, more resources, and the best links. If your favorite is missing, we'll be adding it soon.

Death knight

• Glyphs round-up (and more!)
• PvE frost knights in Mists of Pandaria
• PvE blood death knights
• Unholy death knights by Icy Veins

Druid

• Cat and moonkin talent walk-through
• Cat and moonkin talent walk-through, part 2
• Guardian druid enchants, mods, gems, and buff items
• Restoration druid enchants, mods, gems, and buff items
• Resto druids by Icy Veins
• Patch 5.0.4 for balance and feral druids
• Patch 5.0.4 for guardian and restoration druids
• Video guide for PvP Boomkin and more (warning: language)

When the new 5.0 patch flips over on Aug. 28, will you be ready with glyphs? Blizzard is recycling old glyphs instead of making new spell IDs and charring old ones. Some glyphs are staying the same, some are new, but some share IDs with old Cataclysm glyphs.

Below is our list of new or changing glyphs for priests. This is not a list of changing tooltips, just which glyphs you ought to have if you want to automatically have the new glyphs when the patch flips over.

Priest glyphs are confusing. Priests are getting some brand new glyphs and also some switched-around glyphs, such that old glyphs will need to be rediscovered.

Completely new glyphs include:

• Glyph of Confession
• Glyph of the Heavens
• Glyph of Holy Resurrection
• Glyph of Lightspring
• Mind Flay needs to be rediscovered
• Glyph of Shadowy Friends
• Glyph of the Val'kyr
• Glyph of Vampiric Embrace

Glyphs that are changing into new majors:

• Spirit Tap becomes Dark Binding
• Mind Flay becomes Dispel Magic
• Shadow Word: Pain becomes Holy Fire
• Power Word: Barrier becomes Inner Focus
• Flash Heal becomes Inner Sanctum
• Guardian Spirit becomes Leap of Faith
• Shadow Word: Death becomes Mind Blast
• Divine Accuracy becomes Mind Spike
• Dispel Magic becomes Purify
• Shadow Protection becomes Reflective Shield
• Prayer of Healing becomes Spirit of Redemption

Glyphs that are changing into new minors:

• Fortitude becomes Borrowed Time
• Shadowfiend becomes Dark Archangel
• Fading becomes Shadow Ravens

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It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!

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Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers healing for discipline and holy priests.

I'll admit that I got a bit spoiled using Angelic Feather on the beta. It just makes questing on foot so much quicker. Whoosh! Whoosh! It's great fun and makes errands between the mailbox and auction house so much more efficient. I have another priest to level to 85 before Mists of Pandaria comes out, so I've been anxiously awaiting patch 5.0.4 to go live so I could level in style. Whoosh!

Anyway, with the existing talent system getting tossed out the window, many of your favorite priest talents are moving around or undergoing changes. Many talents will now take the form of passive abilities granted by your specialization. Some talents will actually remain talents but will now be accessible to all three priest specializations instead of restricted to certain trees. The list after the jump will tell you where many of your talents will have gone after patch 5.0.4 hits. If you don't see a favorite talent of yours, keep reading! It's probably one of the new (well, sort of new) talents.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers healing for discipline and holy priests, while her archenemy Fox Van Allen dabbles in shadow.

Since its introduction, the new level 45 priest talent, Power Word: Solace, has undergone several changes. First, it had the percentage of mana it returned per cast reduced from 2% to 1.5%. A little over a week after that, the percentage was buffed back up to 2% while the cast time was simultaneously nerfed from 1.5 seconds to 2 seconds. Then just last week, the cast time was lowered back to 1.5 seconds, while the amount of mana returned was lowered to a mere .7% per cast. Pretty crazy for one little spell, right?

As you'd expect, a lot of discussion has come up over the changes, with one thread on the official forums leading it all. In it, the original poster asks for an explanation behind the nerfs, saying that even though he hated using Power Word: Solace with a fiery passion, the talent was necessary for healing priests. Ghostcrawler (Lead Systems Developer Greg Street) responded soon after, explaining that the developers don't want Power Word: Solace to feel like the only option healing priests have, and they will nerf it until priests consider Mindbender and From Darkness, Comes Light viable alternatives.

Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand poohbah of World of Matticus and a founder of Plus Heal, a discussion community for healers of all experience levels and interests.

Imagine my delight when I realized that the raid finder in the Mists of Pandaria beta was available for testing. The only instance available at the moment is Mogu'shan Vaults, but heck, who cares? I've been dying to get more practice in. I must've waited around 50 or so minutes before we had enough players to jump in. There were times where we had two tanks, six healers, and 11 DPSers. Other times we had 17 DPSers, 6 healers, and no tanks!

The raid finder for Mogu'shan Vaults has been split into two parts. You can't access the second half of it until you clear out the first three bosses in the first half.

There are some spoilers after the cut. Consider yourself warned!

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers the healing side of things for discipline and holy priests. She also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast.

I've decided that playing a healing priest is a lot like being a pregnant woman. No, really, let me explain! OK, so admittedly I don't know what it's like to be pregnant, but I've observed enough friends and family going through the process to have come up with this analogy. Here it goes ...

So you know how when a woman is pregnant, people will start inviting themselves into awkward and personal conversations with her, or they'll randomly put their hands all over her stomach as though it had been declared a national park? Well, that's what it's like to play a healing priest. Here's how it happens.

You'll be healing away in a raid or a 5-man, minding your own business, when someone will invite themselves into a one-sided conversation with you where they tell you what spec you should be playing and why. If you're disc, they'll tell you to go holy; if you're holy, well, you get the idea. In these conversations, your reasoning and expertise will always be deemed irrelevant because you're clearly in the wrong spec to begin with and because this random person has a really, really good reason for suggesting you change specs. (Never mind that it's almost always based on some broad generalization or the performance of the spec five tiers ago.)

Try to tell them no, and you'll get accusations of being selfish or stubborn. Don't you know that if you change specs, every single problem the group is having (including the fact that everyone is standing in fire) will cease to happen and the boss will immediately drop dead and explode in a shower of epics?

Anyway, the reason for telling you all that is because I want to start talking about how disc and holy have been playing in the Mists of Pandaria beta right now. I've had a lot of outstanding thoughts about both specs during the past month and a half, and it's time we discussed them. There's a lot to talk about, though, so I'm going to break it up over two parts. This week, we'll talk about discipline, then holy in two weeks. Holy priests shouldn't feel completely left out, though, as I also have some news items to go over for them.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers the healing side of things for discipline and holy priests. She also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast.

It's just my luck that two days after I wrote my last installment of Spiritual Guidance, a brand new level 45 priest talent appeared on the Mists of Pandaria beta. The new talent, called Power Word: Solace, is a damage-for-mana ability that players can cast on enemy targets to receive 6,000 mana in return. It has a 1.5-second cast time, costs no mana to cast, doesn't have a cooldown, and always returns mana, even if the damage portion of the spell misses its target.

The arrival of a new talent like this always raises a lot of questions. How does Power Word: Solace stand up to the other level 45 talents, Mindbender and From Darkness, Comes Light? Is it better or worse than either of those two talents? As a healing priest, what talent will I want to choose?

Well, first off, it's important to remember that the new talent system is specifically designed to put an end to cookie-cutter talent specs. Talents will now be balanced with one another in such a way that no one talent is better than the others overall. One talent might end up being better than another in a specific scenario where the mechanics of the situation complement it or just clash with the other two options. In that sense, Blizzard is right on mark with Power Word: Solace. Let's compare it to Mindbender so you can see how.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. On alternate Wednesdays, shadow priesting expert Fox Van Allen comes from out of the shadows to bask in your loving adoration.

Ladies and gentleman, I have returned! I know the wait was absolutely excruciating, and though Dawn Moore was an apt replacement for a week, it's like getting a hit of methadone instead of your pure Fox Van Heroin.

This week, I hope you'll bear with me, because I'd like to tell you a bit of a story: the story of how one Fox Van Allen found a game called World of Warcraft and of how his approach to the game changed throughout the year. There's a message buried in there somewhere, I promise.

Anyway, think back to it -- your first day of WoW. Maybe you played a priest since the very beginning, but for me, it was a warrior. Priests, so far as I was concerned, were a healing class. And I wanted to break stuff.

So, there me were. Me Fox. Me smash! But me no happy. Warrior make Fox sad. No like fight boomchicken close up. Want ranged attack! Control chicken mind! Make fall off cliff! Boomkin sadness fun for Fox!

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers the healing side of things for discipline and holy priests. She also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast.

On my journey to level 90, the new priest talent Divine Star was what I found myself looking forward to the most. When the ability had first been announced at BlizzCon 2012, a few commenters suggested that the spell would probably behave just like Prismatic Barrier, an ability from League of Legends. Prismatic Barrier allows your character (specifically the character Lux) to throw her wand to a targeted location, shielding any allies standing in the wands path, then return to your character. When the wand returns, it returns to Lux's current location, as opposed to the location where she was standing when she first threw it, thus allowing you the potential to heal several different players in the two paths of the wand.

The prospect of being able to do this in WoW had a huge appeal to me because it required a certain degree of raid awareness that went beyond just staying out of the fire. Using it to its full potential would mean knowing where everyone in your raid was and positioning yourself in optimal locations to get the best of it. In League of Legends, these types of abilities are called skillshots because they require good aim and timing to be effective. I loved the idea of having that in WoW.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. On alternate Wednesdays, shadow priesting expert Fox Van Allen comes from out of the shadows to bask in your loving adoration.

I had just zoned into the instance when the rogue died.

I was running Temple of the Jade Serpent on the Mists of Pandaria beta as a promise to a friend who hadn't had the foresight to invite a tank or DPS. We were two healers and an enhancement shaman, organized enough to be on Vent but still ultimately at the mercy of the Dungeon Finder. My expectations were low.

All the same, six minutes later, we drew a warrior tank and a rogue. Now all we had to do was decide which healer was healing. The resto druid didn't want to DPS; rather, he "couldn't" because he only knew how to play feral and lacked a suitable weapon to actually do so. That meant by default I would have to go shadow, so I started readjusting my bars to do so.

When the druid finished resurrecting the rogue, we set right to work on our next trash pack. I found myself fumbling about, unsure why Vampiric Embrace was on cooldown and where Devouring Plague had gone. My friend, the enhancement shaman, took notice.

"When was the last time you played shadow?" he asked.

"Well, I have my rotation written on the back of an envelope I had on my desk," I replied.

Immediately he laughed, but from the way it awkwardly trailed off, I knew he was losing faith.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers the healing side of things for discipline and holy priests. She also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast.

The latest build on the Mists of Pandaria beta allowed players to purchase the newly implemented major and minor glyphs we spoke about two weeks ago. In the video above, you'll find animations for Glyph of Shadowy Friends, Glyph of Lightspring, Glyph of the Heavens, Glyph of Holy Resurrection, and Glyph of the Val'kyr. Is it just me, or does it look like Lightspring is casting mini Penance balls at its target? Perhaps there is a tiny disc priest trapped inside every Lightspring ... Hmm.

While we're on the topic of Lightspring, there has been an interesting development since the glyph was first announced. Originally, it looked like Lightspring would heal players for less than Lightwell, a sort of toll for the fact that Lightspring was automated. In the latest beta build, however, it now looks like the HoTs from both Lightwell and Lightspring will heal for the same amount over time.

I'm guessing the developers decided there wasn't much reason to reduce the amount of healing Lightspring does per tick since the 5 seconds of downtime between each heal is a limitation in itself. By only allowing the Lightspring to heal once every 5 seconds, the heal isn't any better than a single-target heal from another player, save for the fact that it will work while you're doing other things.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. On alternate Wednesdays, shadow priesting expert Fox Van Allen comes from out of the shadows to bask in your loving adoration.

I spent a long time trying to come up with the perfect word for what's happening to shadow priests on the beta right now. At first I thought up déjà vu, but that didn't seem quite right (and shut up, I know that's a phrase, not a word). Then I got bored and played Civilization 5 for a while. Then I made a sandwich.

I don't know where I'm going with any of that, but I did eventually settle on a word: backtracking. That's what happening with shadow priests -- Blizzard is revising the class and hastily making a retreat on just about every unpopular decision it's made over the last few months in the beta. Two weeks ago, Blizz did it by backing down on its decision to axe Devouring Plague. This week, it's backtracking again, giving us back yet another thing it had axed going into MoP.

Is that a good thing or a bad thing? In a sense, both. But we'll get into that shortly.