Getting on My PVP Pants

With the arena season starting up, I wanted an advantage. OK, It's probably not much, considering the addons available to announce your opponents, but anything has to help.

I transmogrified my chest piece into a shirt. This has the net effect of making this priest look like a melee class. I am hoping this provides me an additional second or two before those dreaded "healer must die" addons tag me.. ha ha

Over all, I was working towards an outfit of mostly black (or red). Torn between the ruby shades for the head piece, but settled on the archmage headband.

Ex of Ninja

• Ruthless Gladiator's Mooncloth Helm -> Archmage Headpiece
• Ruthless Gladiator's Mooncloth Mantle -> Archmage Mantle
• Vicious Gladiator's Drape of Meditation -> Spiked Chain Cloak 
• Ruthless Gladiator's Mooncloth Robe -> Demonweave Raiment
• Ruthless Gladiator's Cord of Meditation -> Mystic's Belt
• Vicious Gladiator's Mooncloth Pants -> Flame-Ascended Pantaloons (I liked the plates on the legs).
• Ruthless Gladiator's Energy Staff -> Tapered Staff 

12-19-2011

It sort of reminds me of the ninja outfit, except for missing the face mask. Maybe need to run some crypts? Nope, it's leather. and so is this and this. There's a fishing drop in Moonglade that is cloth, but it's blue.

I see on a RP site, that they made a ninja costume out of the Ebon Mask, which is leather, but a similar model, the Shadoweave mask (purple?) is cloth, and a tailoring item, but the pattern has been removed. One person in Guild has the pattern, so I'll check into the mats! :) Or the Outlanders Facewrap (red) which drops in Hellfire Peninsula and Hellfire Ramparts. I like the red as it goes decently with the red top.

Discouraging Valor, Encouraging PVP

4.3 is coming, and so are the currency changes. The biggest change that I see coming down the pipe is the PVP change to conquest points.

In patch 4.3 we’re changing the daily battleground (BG) to reward 100 conquest for a win (up from 25). In addition, every non-rated BG that you win will also give you 50 conquest. There is no limit to how many BGs you can run this way, up to the normal conquest cap [1350].

This means, gearing up a fresh 85, is going to favor PVP. 25 battlegrounds WINS later, and you could be sporting your first piece of iLevel 403 gear. ("Cataclysmic Gladiator" lol.. ) This sounds a lot easier than running   tons of pugs to get valor points, or even raiding end-game content in your greens..

Weekend Wrap-up

This weekend, happily was a great weekend for PVP. I ran around 10 BGs and we won about 8 of them. This brought in a good 1000 honor points, bringing my season total to 18000 (so far). The wins, also bought me 2 new pieces of gear (feet and back). Based on advice from my arena partner, I am buying items that I can enchant, before replacing my PVE gear. (i.e. back before trinket). So far, saved up 1150 conquest points towards the Ruthless belt (belt can be enchanted with a buckle). The remaining 500 conquest should come quickly, just need to win approximately 3 arena fights.

Healer got the most damage done.. 

Speaking of battlegrounds, I absolutely love Strand. Sure, we had a good crew this fight, but it was a fun close fight. When On defense, I started at the blue gate's cannon. Once the alliance had broken through the green gate, I ran up to Yellow and stationed on a cannon there. We slowed them down, but they had the rune in 4 minutes. On attack, I jumped on a demolisher and managed to get all the way to the rune gate before my demo was broken. Unfortunately we didn't have the graveyards, so I almost rez'd  at the beach, gy hop at 2 seconds left. Grab another demo and raced for the rune. Had to break down the red gate. In the last 5 seconds, we grabbed the rune and won.

My demo-driving trick? Easy mouse drive. I hold down both buttons to do the forward movement, then constantly spam 1 and 2 attack buttons. The combined attack of both weapons has the gate down in only a few seconds. Could have had the rune quicker, IF we grabbed graveyards on the way up the hill.

Finally, I am test driving a new Disc priest build. This one get's away from the atonement healing and focuses on straight healing. I still need to get used to using Desperate prayer when I am being attacked, but so far, it seems to easier to heal when being attacked.

PVP and Hallows Eve

Last night was fun! 

1. Maxed out my conquest points for the week. 'de rezz' now has a 729 arena rating, which isn't great, but is improving (last week score was 95). Followed quickly by a grand-slam 5:0 win in Arathi Basin for 25 more conquest. By end of next week, I hope to have my season 10 conquest chest piece replacing my raiding Tier-11 chest. 
2. Ran through 3 Headless Horseman dungeons (after 1AM local), this awarded 2 hallow's eve achieves (horseman and mask) plus picked up the caster ring for epic and cataclysmic epic. Plan to keep running the dungeon until I pickup the healer ring, plus the squashling for the achieves. At least now, if I don't see it by the end, I'll just buy it. 

Off to trick or treat tonight. Need to finish Outlands for the achievements. After Outlands, I should have enough GNERDS for the PVP achievements and then enough Tricky Treats to spill them out. 

Which Brewfest Trinket for Disc?

Pickled Egg proc glows

Brewfest is over and it's time to start clearing out the bags of all the trinkets from Coren. Over the two dozen runs through this mini-dungeons, I picked up all three of the 'caster' friendly trinkets.

Now, right off, the easy selection seems to be the Petrified Pickled Egg. It has high INT and procs Haste. Both seem great. Unfortunately it procs off healing spells and playing an Atonement Disc Priest, my key spell is not a heal, but smite, a DPS spell.

By Grifters (206 – 3) 16 days ago (Patch 4.2.2)Sadly Atonement do not proc it. :(

So, now do I run the strict STAM trinket, or do I run the CRIT trinket? I know the Balebrew charm is definitely going into my PVP set. Nothing better in PVP than having more life for the opposing team to take away. Unfortunately, according to those nifty stat weights on AskMrRobot, Crit is the least useful stat for disc, followed close by haste.

I guess the answer is none of them. Before next raid night, going to spend some JP and pick up the Core of Ripeness.

Stepping into the Arena

Last night my guild was on the last boss of BOT. Yeah, we're a little behind, but very, very casual. They were short a healer, so I got to step in for our typical druid healer. After a few attempts, we had Cho'gall down and I picked up a wonder new weapon, replacing my 316 Biting Wind.

With that, we called the night and I went back to battlegrounds. With the win last night in Eye, I had enough Honor points (>7250) to qualify for the Season 9 weapons, namely a new wand and the related cheese. Whew average i359 gear score!

not us.

OK, so I had been bugging an avid PVP player in guild about running a few arenas. He was interested. He stated that priests look to be top contenders in the arenas right now, it would be a good match. I wanted to do it, so I could pick up a big handful of conquest points. Running Battlegrounds for 25 points a day, is DREADFULLY slow.

Step 1. Form an Arena team. Go to the PVP menu (H), click on the Arena tab on bottom and then click on the 2v2 banner. Up comes the team banner interface, (color, icon and name). Populate the info, invite my 'tank' and save it.

Step 2. Fight! Now we're a team, invite him to join this little party and fire off the arena finder. Queue, accept, apply buffs and everything during the 45 seconds, then die once the gates open.

Step 3. Buy shiny new gear!. Unfortunately after a dreadful 1:7 run last night, I didn't rake in the conquest points that I envisioned. I got just around 100 last night for both the fight and the random battleground. At the moment I have about 1000 resilience. My team member suggests that I stack around the magic "3500" resilience.

Next steps. Going forward, I need to pick up more PVP gear. ATM, I have 5 pieces (shoulders, gloves, neck, trinket 1 and wand). The shoulders have the PVE enchant, not PVP. The gems are all PVE raiding, as well. With 4.3 coming soon (November I hear), buying up Vicious gear might be pointless. I need the gear, or else it will continue to be 10 seconds to death for me. Can't leave my druid fending off everyone all the time...

Healers Have to Live!

Check out this post by Cynwise about a feature in Healers Have to Die that highlights the friendly healers. It makes wonderful sense to highlight that your friendly healer is being hurt in a BG, but one commenter mentioned he uses the addon in raiding, as well, to pinpoint when they have healer aggro.

Bounty of Drops

During the raid last Wednesday, not 1, not 2, not 3, but 4 upgrades dropped during our run through BoT. OK, one of the drops, the pants, are an off-spec, DPS set upgrade, but still a nice change.

1. Bracers of the Dark Pool - replacing the PVP  Bloodthirsty Firewave Bracers
2. Wyrmbreaker's Amulet - replacing the PVP Vicious Gladiator's Pendant of Meditation. Of course, after the raid, I then completed the 40-ish quests to open the Fireland's dailies and picked up the i365 neck from there. 
3. Flame Pillar Leggings - didn't end up using, because I already had the crafted Flame-Ascended Pantaloons
4. Power Generator Hood - replacing Mercury-Coated Hood.

Finally, the Jar of Ancient Remedies also dropped off Maloriak, but I passed rolling on it, due to my other 4 wins. It WOULD have been a nice upgrade for my non-heroic Witching Hourglass. Of course, my raid leaders don't have an iPhone, otherwise the new changes to the AskMrRobot applet might have alerted them to the discrepancy. :)

Raiding Priorities

I've been told tonight, I'll get to heal for the raid group! They are going to reset all of the raids and run one of the starting environments. For most of the group, this will be old content. Seen and killed Magmaw a few times already. Hopefully this means that all the wonderful caster gear will be MINE!

To get prepared, I've been researching on AskMrRobot and LootRank. To be exact, I am taking the stat scale provided by MrRobot and using it on the LootRank website. The reason being, that LootRank has one option that I love, te All-in-One view. This helps me see what upgrades would be my biggest and best upgrades. Considering, I have 4 items that are iLevel 300 - 316, I think I know which to watch for, but still like the view.

LR Priority:

1. Weapon - Crafted, Nefarion then Magmaw
2. Trinkets - Crafted, Cho'gall then JP Vendor
3. Wand - VP Vendor or Chimaeron

Personal Priorities (low, or replacing PVP gear)

1. Helm - Magmaw
2. Shoulder - Altramedes
3. Neck - VP Vendor or Halfus
4. Bracers - VP Vendor, or Altramedes

I'll let you know if anything drops tonight. Or if I get kicked and replaced with a DPS toon.

PVP Bug? Or healing NPCs?

I just finished a BG, Alterac Valley, where we won. I was just overwhelmingly surprised, when I saw this warrior did so much healing!

Today I reached a 348 iLevel by equipping a PVP trinket. This replaced the mediocre (i316) Rainsong. I also picked bought off the AH a Mercury-coated Hood ro replace my Aurelian Mitre.

With these two replacements, I ran a totally pugged Lost City. First boss, all but the rogue died. Nice because he actually res'd us all. No drops that I could use, but very frantic fights. Got the heart racing, for sure.

First Heroic Success

Last night when the guild's raid failed due to lack of attendance, I bit the bullet and ran a 80%-guild heroic dungeon. We pulled Heroic Throne.

Everything went smooth, only 1 wipe and 1 additional death. Wipe on the Lady Naz'jar, I kept getting hit by the waterspout, which is basically a silence. So the tank died, bringing us all down.

Next death was on the gauntlet before Neptulon. I got tagged a few too many times with the curse, causing a quick death.

This was a bit of a cushy run. Besides being 80% guild, so we could all chat on Vent. I had 2 DPS that also self-healed; shaman and shadow priest. On the last fight, the shadow priest healed herself more than I healed the tank. Nice, but have to run another to get a better idea.

No drops from the dungeon, the heroic helm would have been nice. I did get the crafted pants, and the tank also created a sparkly 346 ring for me. Wow-Heroes has the heroic dungeons as on the 'difficult' side, maybe need to run a few more normal dungeons and upgrade to the jp helm?? Rather grab one from a raid. Magmaw has 2 upgrades that would be excellent drops.

Afraid of Heroics

70 levels of regular pugged dungeons, now that I have the gear score to enter a Heroic Cata dungeon, I am nervous to try. It's a pug, I really shouldn't care what people think. I've stacked enough spirit that mana shouldn't be an issue. Average iLevel 340 gear. Sure half my pieces are ilevel 333 and below, but the rest are i358 (crafted PVP), or above.

Why am I afraid of running heroic? Most groups running the early Cata dungeons are either new-85s (so they don't mind a few wipes) or they are raid epic'd, so they won't wipe in these dungeons. I know how to heal, and  I am working hard to improve my skills. PVP/BG for worry-free practice.

Maybe later this week.. The guild tailor should have finished the crafted pants. I'd really like to run a few Heroic SFK, there are a good number of healer upgrades in there.. LootRank thinks my next upgrades should be my weapon, and then trinket. For the weapon, I'd like to sit in on a Magmaw run, and hope to grab Incineratus. 900 JP would get me the 346 offhand. Another 1650 would get the Core of Ripeness trinket.

Grabbing PVP Fillers

Looking at my existing gear last Friday, I found that I had three i306 items that I could fill in with i358 crafted PVP items. For 60 embersilk and a dozen elementals (6 fire, 3 water, and 3 air) I was able to replace my green i306 shoulders and wrists with fairly appropraite gear (Bloodthirsty Embersilk Shoulders and Bloodthirsty Firewave Bracers). I could have also done the pvp neck and head, but plan to get the justice point head and the Firelands neck.

Anhuur

With these two upgrades and a quick reforge, I was ready for a run through normal Halls of Origination. Now at 2250 spirit, I didn't run out of mana, as fast. When I was out, I regenerated it quicker. I only had two deaths (no wipes), both the mage who seemed to like to lead the group. To my defense, both on boss fights (and there are a lot of boss fights in this dungeon), Anhuur and Rajh.

In my opinion, the hardest boss fight was Anhuur. This is the fight where the tank must jump down and hit the trigger and run back up. This creates two issues, distance and los. If I jumped I took massive fall damage and would need to self-heal. If I stayed up top, I couldn't heal the tank because of the distance/los issues. I'll need to try this again and see what works best. Maybe run down the stairs on the opposite side the tank runs down?

On with my questing in Hyjal. I picked up the pre-quest for Firelands, Call of the Ancients, off the message board in town. This quest sets the requirements for me to start those Firelands dailies. Of the 84 quests needed to complete it, I am at #49. Next stop Deepholm, so that I can get the shoulder enchants.. Wonder if there's a shortcut?? How quickly can I pickup a tabard? (Sending my alt to get some shoulder enchants from the Hodir. )

Atonement Healing!

I wanted to share with you this great post on Atonement healing on World of Matticus.

[Atonement] healing during slow and steady periods and then activating Archangel to begin casting standard healing spells (Prayer of Healing, Shields and Penance) during intense moments.

85!

Right around Cata-Beta, I started leveling up again. Last night around 1AM local time, I saw the wonderful achievement ding.

I had completed another episode of Stonecore. This one started out odd. Somehow, Blizzard had the great idea of allowing Disc Priest to play DPS roles. So, without paying attention, I sat in the 20 min DPS queue, and found myself a seat on a dungeon run. Happily the healer of the dungeon totally understood and went DPS. (I don't have a DPS spec to flip to). Completing this dungeon dropped me at 1 1/2 bubbles from 85.

Thinking back to my shopping list, I realized, I should probably working on questing in Hyjal. The neck and back both will be nice upgrades for my gear. Speaking of..

With reaching 85, I was able to finally spend the Justice Points I have been saving up since 70 and running wrath dungeons. At about 4 dungeons ago, I reached 3966 jp. Seeing this, I flew to Dalaran and bought 3 gems (2 purple and 1 red) from the jewelcrafting vendor at 220 jp each. This brought me down low enough to complete the last three dungeons and only hit cap with last dungeon.

photographer got me before
I could change my belt.

I now sport 4 items at i359.

1. Mercurial Robes
2. Mercurial Handwraps
3. Belt of the Depths (crafted belt)
4. Slippers of Moving Waters (justice point item, but also BOE from vendor)

Replaced my BOA back, with a Thousand Bandage Drape that I got off the AH; bringing my gear score from i315 to i326.

Now, where did all my money go??
Upgrade Priorities..

• Head - Aurelian Mitre (308)
• Shoulders - Krystal Mantle (308)
• Wrist - Mystral Wristwraps (306)
• Trinket - Witching Hourglass (308)

I am trying to figure out when I'll be able to pickup the Firelands opener quests. I've heard from guildies, it's around 30 quests into the chain, after you attempt to save the world tree. Lorewise, I need to save, or attempt to save all of the various bosses, (aviana, Lythogar(?), etc.). I am 49 quests into the Hyjal achievement. But I believe it will be soon.

Reviewing my Vuhdu Settings

Since I started healing, I've been using the healers best friend, Vuhdu. This addon presents me with a clickable grid for each member of my party. For each of the combinations of buttons on my 5 button mouse, I have tied different healing spells.

This works great. Unfortunately, now that I am running dungeons like Vortex Pennacle, I am regularly running out of  mana either by the end of the fight, or soon after. I have slowly been reforging and enchanting for spirit where ever possible, plus attempting to use mana regeneration spells. Unfortunately I don't think that is enough.

Reading through Narilka's guide over on Manaflask, I think I see a few problems.

1. I have spec'd into Atonement, so fights where I don't use Smite (combined with Archangel/Evangelism), I run out of mana.
2. I need to quit using Renew. Only time this spell has done enough healing for me, is when I pop it on someone wearing cloth, who's also shielded. Mage, lock, myself.. We don't typically take a bunch of damage, so I can slow heal. In fact, I need to take it off a mouse key. I currently have it mapped to my middle button. That I think should be Penance.
3. I need to use Penance (and Pain Suppresion) in more instances than just emergency situations. What happens is, I tend to forget it is there on the button bar, until the person is already dead.. 

Considering my mana issues, I've also got to start stacking more spirit and/or Int. I am not jumping on this too much, yet. No point in gemming or enchanting for spirit until I hit 85 (20% left) and pickup the 2 tier pieces. Happily at 85, I should have four i359 pieces waiting for me (tier chest, hands, crafted belt and boe boots). This alone should make for some interesting changes to my game play.

Healing Priest Level 85 Shopping List

After another run through Stonecore, again, I realized that I was now at 3.800 justice points. One could say that I've almost fully charged my credit card and now can do a little shopping. Unfortunately, the stores in Orgrimmar that take that form of credit, still won't let me shop there...  What is a girl to do??

Let's take a look at the Justice catalog! Skimming down, I see 4 items that are a number of BOE gear items that I could potentially post to the AH. Prices range from a few hundred Justice, to 1650 for level 85 items. Looking in bags already, I see a few of these items that just aren't reselling well. At 80, people would smartly be dressed in Cata greens, instead of Wrath purples. ("Green is the new black, ya know").

In fact, a girl would do better selling gems and orbs. These are needed while leveling professions of all types. Think I am going to have to buy a gem before each run to prevent hitting the cap of 4,000. Six more available runs this week, but by then I should be 85.



When I do reach 85, there are a bunch of options. Looking at the catalog of options and comparing my current gear, I believe my best options are going to be the tier chest and hands. This will give me the 2 piece set bonus, and 3 new gems slots. Next would be legs, feet, trinkets and rings.

Shopping List:

already got shiny new i359.

1. Chest & Hands (bought) - Mercurial Robes & Mercurial Handwraps (3850 Justice Points)
2. Legs - Mecurial Legwraps (2200)
3. Ring 1 - Twined Band of Flowers (1250)
4. Trinket 1 - Core of Ripeness (1650)
5. Feet (bought)- Slippers of Moving Waters(1650) <<= These boots are BOE. You can find them on the AH (as I did for 800g) or have a generous guildie (or alt) purchase them for you.. 

Dungeons Priorities:

• Heroic SFK - Wrists, shoulders
• Heroic ZA  - Helm?? Wand? 

Quest:

1. Back (completed) - Mantle of Desire - "The Vow"
2. Ring - Spirit Fragment Band - "Calling the Ancients"
3. Neck - Nightweaver's Amulet - "Through the Gates"

Crafted:

1. Waist (completed) - Belt of Depths (4 dreamcloth = 120 volatiles).
2. Mainhand weapon - Lightforged Elementium Hammer - Not sure, have to look into this one.. 8 true gold, 30 vol water, and 5 orbs. Since the orbs are BOP, I'll have to woo a blacksmith in guild... The other options, include Incineratus, which my guild has on farm.

Reviewing AskMrRobot, I see upgrade options for my remaining upgrades come from, none other than, more dungeons. Looks like I may need to check out the Hyjal zone one last time so that I can pickup the entry quest into Firelands. My Justice card is paid up and I am ready to go shopping!!

When to Call It?

Last night, I was running a normal Stonecore. The pug group was going along and one of the DPS kept falling behind. Eventually in chat, he called out, "wait, mom". Corebus downed and he did an average of 1300 dps. (As the healer, spamming Smite, I did 900). Something a little bit off about this guy, sure. Someone inspects his gear, and he has ilevel 90 trinkets. Sure, I've done that, but not in awhile.

Now this DPS is just a little miffed. He goes and pulls the boss. (nope I didn't let him die). We move on, and he starts pulling trash. He's grumpy, tank starts making rude remarks... As the healer, we're headed down the worst portion for a non-cohesive group. Trash that pulls from everywhere. I am really scared, because I don't want my little duckies to die. At least not commit suicide like they were!!

I made a rash decision; I dropped. This seemed like a good idea, but I feel bad leaving the group in the lurch. The rude comments, I think, pushed me over the top. I almost requeued, I didn't see a deserter buff as in a BG,  but didn't.

When would you call it? When is a pug too much to deal with?

Hello World!

Thank you for checking out my blog. I am Eride (air-i-day), a level 84 85! Blood Elf Discipline Priest, making my home on the Malfurion server. The purpose of this document is to track and detail my growth as a Discipline Priest. I began life around the start of the Burning Crusades as a simple Priest; working my way up to level 9 in the starting areas. At that time, I was frustrated with trying to kill things with very little DPS dealing spells. Too many death runs back from the graveyard make a girl sad. I decided to take up high-finance. I found a comfortable place in Silvermoon, near the Bank and the Bazaar and started making gold. Lots of it. Well, in my hey-day I made around 40,000 gold. That was sufficient to buy virtually anything that I wanted, even though I could never use them. I did this for almost 3 years. Then came the Shattering. By pure accident, I had reached level 15. Mostly grabbing up those candies around Halloween and helping tend the fires around Mid-summer festival. With this, I picked up the bug. The bug was to actually heal people. I wanted to help, to be important, to the society. Darkwing had a major effect on me. Over the last few months, I have gone from that simple priest, in basic vanity gear, to a level 84 discipline priest, ready to start taking on heroics. During this time, I have leveled almost solely via pugs using the Looking For Group (LFG) tool. This has helped me learn the spells available to me. Helped me to deal with surprises and how to keep complete strangers alive. Now as I roll into 85 in a few days, my guild has expressed interest in another raid healer. I think I am ready. Running dungeons and playing the auction house, I have the currency to pickup a few items from the vendors. More so, when I can start hitting the Heroics. I hope you check back. I'll try to share gear selections, strategies for keeping a group alive and maybe even bits of gossip.