OMG! 2 posts in 1 day!

My dear baer friend (He is one of the best Feral tanks I know)
Karthis Quoted me in this post Where we were talking about the removal of swipe and other AoE type tanking methods such as swipe, no longer breaking CC. I simply stated that Blizzard is working to systematically take skill out of the equation. It makes sense. People want balance in the game, PVE and PVP. The only real ways to balance anything is to take out the variable stats such as a player's ability and knowledge. Anyone can tank. It takes talent to tank well. Anyone can DPS, it takes talent to optimize DPS and threat gen. Anyone can heal, but only great healers can heal bad situations.

If you can't fight a boss in Gruuls you have no reason to be in SSC/TK same goes for Hija and BT.

I am starting the "Pride in raiding" petition. If you take pride in knowing that you have worked hard to beat something where others are just skipping past for phat lewts, /sign away! Not like blizzard cares anyhow!

Renew and flash heals...

I am tired of reading the priest forums. Lately its all been about how this spell and that spell is useless in raiding. The big things are how renew is useless in end game raiding and flash heal is too mana inefficient to use. I say bull kaka! Yeah you can quote me on that!

Sure, Greaterheals heal fro more for a less amount of mana, but if your tank needs to be kept topped off, and other raiders as well, a GH will not cut it. The cast is long, and if you are only healing for 2-3k, will overheal wasting that mana. "Well why not use lesser heal then?" Well during a boss encounter where crushing blows and burst damage on tanks and raid members can happen, it important to get them topped off fast. FLash heal is the fastest heal we have that isn't instant. I am a raid healer, I have also healed MTs. I flash heal. I am not a Pally.

Now for renews, renews technically overheal as when the target is full, its not actually healing them until they take damage against, but you still spend the mana. This is why people feel its stupid and useless. People who say this watch meters too much. Healing is not a game of catchup but a game of staying ahead. Renews, Shields, and PoM are things that help mitigate damage bursts that people will take. If you spend your whole healing career catching up, you will be prone to more wipes because of bad combinations of damage or bad pulls. You will also run out of mana spamming those big heals.

Don't get me wrong, if you are a big heal spammer, and it works for you, great! I am not saying it wont work. Just understand whats good for one healer, might not be good for another.

Me and my shaaaaaaadow....fiend....

Tips for your Shadow Fiend.

This was an added feature for priests to help maintain their mana more. It is indeed a very useful thing during long boss fights. If the boss fight is under 6-7 minutes, I wait until about mid fight to pop him out. I usually go Mana pot, SF, mana pot. I also us inner focus when ever it is up. Now if the fight is a long one, I change it up abit. I will pop innerfocus right at the beginning for a free cast, and so its up again later when I am running out of tricks. When I get to 70% mana I will toss out my shadow fiend. He normally gets me right back to full. I will then potpotpot until its back up. 3 minutes cooldown on an 8 minute fight you should get 2 uses out of him.
I also use my SF when chain pulling to reduce drinking time.

Hi!

Welcome to Bernerd's Banter. I am a Dorf priest in World of warcraft and I make my home on Garona (US) in the Rampage battle group. I am by no means an expert in healing, nor DPS. I have been told I heal well and I used to DPS well but lost my zone with it and just couldn't break into the higher DPS of a shadow priest. I have an odd PoV with raids. I have seen it both pre and post TBC as healing and as DPS. I have a 70mage named Doohicky and a 70 Hunter named Ferwinn, though Ferwinn is more of a mule now, he used to be my main and was good at what he did, pulling off pulls that amazed the guild I was with and have tought many a hunter to pull in some endgame content. I just lost my interest in my Hunter after awhile. Hunters are a dime a dozen, good hunters are taken. At the time, people wanted my Dorf more, for fear ward. It was that that really got me into raiding. I made friends with someone, they needed a healer and they asked me to come in. I did well considering I was in crappy gear, but I listened and did my job and that got me an invite to join Omni. From there it was healhealhealhealheal. When we got into Naxx, I found great joy to be a primary tank, as a holy priest, for the instructor Razuvious fight.

I went shadow come TBC and did ok there, but like I said, just hit a block and saw others surpass me, so I wanted to go back to what I knew.

I hope to share what I know. Feel free to tell me I am right or wrong, as long as you can back up what you say.