With all the preliminary work laid out, this week we’ll be finally be getting started on the actual leveling aspect of my multi-part leveling guide. This week we’ll be covering abilities, rotations, talent builds, and gear upgrades for the first 40 levels of the priest class. So if you dream of smiting your enemies with divine fire, and giving yourself a small tan in the process, hit the jump!
Before I get started, I want to provide a few disclaimers that should be considered while using this guide. This is not a speed leveling guide. It will not tell you what quests to do, what zones to go to, nor will it attempt to calculate the most effective way to level as a priest. Frankly, unless you’re being power leveled by a higher level character, I don’t believe that one method of leveling is superior to another. My own personal experience tells me that, in terms of experience per hour, using the random dungeon finder is abysmal in comparison to questing. Yet I have had many people tell me their experience is the opposite, and they find RDF faster than questing. Who’s right? It doesn’t matter. Whatever holds your attention is what you should do. This guide will try to accommodate that.
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Castille World of Warcraft
I want to take a spot of a breather from Cataclysm information just for this week. Mostly because I’m slightly frothy at the mouth, which I’ve been told isn’t a good health sign, but more so due to the fact that so much is in the process of being changed right now that going into an in-depth discussion on a topic that’s likely to have every scrap completely altered tomorrow is silly. Perhaps silly is the wrong word, after all that’s never been something to stop me before, so let’s just consider this to be an isolated case — promises that next week will be a real Cataclysm discussion. In light of that, if there’s anything specific that you’d like to see covered, shoot me an email and I’ll see what I can do for you.
Focusing on the here and now, which is actually what this article is about, I’d like to quickly go over the more recent raiding addition Ruby Sanctum. Although I’ve seen mixed reviews of the instance from others, I at least think the instance is a nice little dash of refreshing. It doesn’t hold the same sense of urgency, the same notion that you’re going to be stuck in here for hours upon hours, days upon days (even though many guilds, particularly those working on hard mode, will be) that I get from going into ICC. RS is a nice little cooldown raid; it’s light, fun and refreshing like a cool glass of lemonade. To start us off, we’ll take a quick look at the shiny loots, since that’s what everyone really wants, and then we’ll look into a brief little guide on how to slay the giant purple/pink dragon at the end.
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Castro World of Warcraft
The Care and Feeding of Warriors is about warriors, who hurl themselves into the fray, into the very teeth of danger, armed with nothing more than the biggest weapons and armored with the absolutely heaviest armor we can find. Hey, we’re not stupid, we’re just crazy.
This week, we look at the Cataclysm beta from the inside. If that’s not something that interests you or you’re looking to avoid spoilers, boy howdy, is this not the column for you. Seriously, you probably shouldn’t even look at that screenshot, really.
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Cephalonie World of Warcraft
The new 31-point talent trees are now in the beta! More information incoming tonight as we get it in …
Update: The patch is now available to download for beta testers. Just fire up the client and wait for 300 megs of new talent goodness.
BlizzardA first pass on new talent trees has been implemented.
Each specialization has been reduced to a 31-point talent tree.
Players will now get a total of 41 talent points to spend.
31 points must be spent in the primary specialization tree before any points can be placed in additional trees.
Players will be asked to choose a specialization at level 10. Doing so will result in the unlocking of a spell or ability unique to that specialization, as well as one or more passive bonuses.
While this is a first pass on all of the talent trees, death knight, druid, paladin, warlock, Arcane mage, and Assassination rogue trees are not as far along as other specializations.
More information regarding our plans for talent trees can be found on our Cataclysm forum.
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Castres World of Warcraft
With the state of pretty much every class on beta in limbo thanks to the forthcoming talent revamp, we’re taking a break from beta stuff to ransack the Ruby Sanctum. Hopefully, we’ll see the new trees on beta in the next week or so, so we have more to work with than speculating on exactly what “signature abilities” everyone will get. In the meantime, we have shiny new loot and a new boss to tackle in the here and now.
The Ruby Sanctum is ostensibly the last major raid of the Wrath expansion, and as such, ostensibly your last chance to get a few extra pieces of gear and uber yourself out before Cataclysm comes along and replaces everything with level 81 quest rewards. There are definitely some pretty prime upgrades to be had here, including a few straight-up best in slot drops, so let’s get going and check out what you can grab.
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Castro World of Warcraft
Every weekend, Dawn Moore enjoys drinking her tea English style and writing Spiritual Guidance to the pleasant sound of birds (this is quite fortunate, since she lives in an aviary.) This weekend however, Dawn’s soundtrack is being interrupted by the sound of explosives. What could be the root of this?! Fox Van Allen must have finally teamed up with goblin engineers to foil Dawn’s Sunday column. How will she write for healing priests with that incessant racket?!
This week I’ll be writing about how to traverse the Ruby Sanctum as a healing priest. I know, I know, I promised you all a leveling guide, but for the sake of being timely we’ll have to push it back a week. Forgive me, please?
In the guide I’ll be covering Halion, as well as the three mini-bosses you’ll have to defeat before you can face him. I will also examine priest appropriate loot in the instance and compare it to a few pieces we’ve seen in Icecrown Citadel. Hit the jump and we’ll get started.
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Castro World of Warcraft
Well, we finally have some insight into how warrior talents and abilities are changing in Cataclysm. While it’s fair to say that we’re not getting a ton of new abilities, what we are getting are worth discussing, and some of the talents have changed pretty dramatically from their current implementation.
Just one example to start us: Shield Slam no longer uses block value in any way, shape or form, since block value is going away. Now, Shield Slam is purely dependent on attack power, which is of course derived from strength. The stronger your warrior is, the harder he or she hits things with a shield. In other words, if you want to hit hard with your Shield Slams? Stack strength. It really shouldn’t be all that hard to do. Frankly, removing the whole shield block value conversion to this ability is welcome from my perspective.
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Mustapha World of Warcraft
Cataclysm is the word on everyone’s lips right now, and with good reason. On June 30, Blizzard announced officially that the closed beta was starting. The excitement can be seen almost everywhere as new information becomes available. There has been a deluge of information since then with everything from the official patch notes on the current build, new spells, talents and skills, new maps for the zones we will be seeing, to new emotes for each of the new races and everything in between.
We have discussed the talent tree changes a little bit already, back when they were leaked from the alpha client and again with the official preview. At both of those times, however, we saw only a fleeting mention of the new shaman spells and abilities to coincide with these talents. Much of what we saw was left to mere speculation as we had yet to see it first hand through a beta.
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Kanghi World of Warcraft
We’ve all been soaking up all the newly released Cataclysm info from this morning. I was so busy drooling (and hammering) on my keyboard about the hunter changes that I only got around to thinking about the profession and guild changes after my fourth coffee.
Here’s what we know:
All professions seem to have a new cap of 525.
You will be able to learn the next level of crafting skills at level 75. Well, alchemy works that way, and I assume that at least the other crafting skills will be the same level. No word on gathering skills yet.
Guild perks are programmed into the client and have been data-mined; however, the more complex leveling system has been abandoned. No precise writeup about how guilds gain perks, but I hear they still work for experience.
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Castres World of Warcraft
Well, even if you’re a raiding player clearing heroic mode ICC 25 there will be some really tempting items for you as you level from 80 to 85 in Cataclysm. Items like this Obsidian Executioner, usable at level 81, will certainly be of interest to your 2h melee DPS, while the Decapitator’s Razor will draw attention from enhancement shamans, rogues, and perhaps even death knights and fury warriors with the new Single-Minded Fury talent.
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Castille World of Warcraft
If you’ve been thinking about rolling one of the new class/race combinations, but haven’t really been impressed by the ones they announced a ways back, you may be in luck. Lead systems designer Ghostcrawler has confirmed that troll and dwarf warlocks will be coming with Cataclysm.
There’s no word yet on the lore behind this change, but between Zalazane on the troll side and the Dark Irons on the dwarf side, it seems likely there’s good enough reason to unlock the class. Now if only we could get them to give us Worgen paladins, we’d really be cooking. Stay tuned to WoW.com, there’s more juicy Cataclysm info to come.
Kocherberg World of Warcraft
Step aside, class changes. Back off, world revamp. Now it’s time to put what everyone really wants to see into the spotlight: trade skills. MMO-Champion, which is having some difficulty staying up and stable this evening, has what you’re looking for amongst its Cataclysm information.
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Catelet World of Warcraft
While guild talents may have been scrapped in Cataclysm, the bonuses you would have gotten from them appear to have survived the culling fairly intact — as of this beta build, guild perks (as they’re called) are active and awesome. This list is by no means exhaustive, as chances are good there’ll be plenty more in the game.
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Kiuperli World of Warcraft
The patch notes for the newly-opened Cataclysm beta test have been updated as of build 12319. Full notes are available after the break.
Cataclysm Beta Patch Notes 6.30.10World of Warcraft: Cataclysm Beta Patch Notes
Welcome to the World of Warcraft: Cataclysm beta test! Patch notes listed here are not comprehensive and will be changed throughout the testing process.
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Castro World of Warcraft
The Midsummer Fire Festival is pretty decent for a WoW holiday — good experience and gold from extinguishing and honoring fires, fun cosmetic rewards and occasionally mind-numbing achievements. Wait, what was that last one?
Torch Juggler has become notorious this year, as the achievement is not only difficult for people who are unable to click their mouses and buttons fast enough, but it is also part of the meta-achievement for completing the Midsummer Fire Festival and gaining the title “Flame Keeper.” So, here’s how to get Torch Juggler in three easy steps.
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Castres World of Warcraft