A blue went up today about the changes to dispels in Cataclysm. My shadow priest friend claims that priests have had an OP advantage with Mass Dispel and a magic dispel that gets of both offensive and defensive magic, but I’ve always thought the whole one-sided thing with shaman Purge is strange. Apparently, though, we’re all going one-sided!

Here are the changes we’re looking at:

• Druids will be able to dispel defensive magic, curses, and poison.
• Paladins will be able to dispel defensive magic, diseases, and poison.
• Priests will be able to dispel defensive magic, offensive magic, and disease.
• Shaman will be able to dispel defensive magic, offensive magic, and curses.

What’s this mean for priests? Not a lot, really.

Druids got magic, great. I don’t play paladins, so I’m not sure what occurred there. Shamans got a boost to Purge, woot. Shamans also lost poisons and diseases… that’s a sad panda.

You could say, “But wait!–Holy priests lost the ability to remove poisons on themselves!” but they’ve already reassured that Body and Soul will remain the same. Score. Dispels also cannot be mashed anymore (they’ll go off whether there’s something to dispel or not), and this makes me excited concerning mashing is just a bad mechanic in general. I like smart dispeling.

Shadow priests lost the ability to remove diseases, and while I could complain about that, I interpreted that more as, “So now you have to have a healing paladin or priest on a boss fight with disease.” And that, to me, is just jiffy.

Except wait!

That means we’ll be interchangeable with paladins! Nooooo, don’t make me Discipline!

Very few guilds withstand the weathering of time. Players graduate college/high school, move on to more school or get jobs, and even reproduce. They transfer to play with XYZ friend, because ABC server’s economy sucks, or because player QRS made them angry. My guild has gone through this wave several times… and here are ten things you can do to combat it!

If your guild is collapsing, try:

1. Recruiting new members. Go to your server’s forum and post that you’re recruiting. Spread the news through the proper channels. For the love of all that’s Holy Nova (haha, I made a holy priest joke), don’t spam the trade channels.
2. Setting up a meeting to pick new raid times. Lots of people leave because they can’t make raid times, or because they’re more interested in 25-mans than 10-mans. (Speaking from a casual endgame guild perspective.)
3. Setting up a meeting to discuss other problems. Is there guild drama going on that’s causing the ship to sink? Address the problems and see if you can make mends.
4. Raiding with other guilds. Find another small guild and do joint raids with them! It works like a charm (for awhile.)
5. Merging with other guilds. You can have one guild swallow your guild, or the other way around.
6. Asking friends. If you can’t recruit, get a guild to raid with you, or get a guild to merge with you, ask your friends in the bigger guilds if they’d be willing to join your 10-mans. Many of them aren’t saved to 10-man dungeons and will gladly help out.
7. Shopping elsewhere. When saving the guild fails, just shop for other guilds looking for your role.
8. Transferring elsewhere. If your guild sucks and your server sucks, pack your bags and go on a journey. Hell, throw the $50 and try a different faction along with your server change.
9. Leveling a new character. If you don’t want to pay the money to transfer somewhere else, pick another server and start leveling. You’d be amazed how fun low levels can be when you’ve been away for awhile.
10. Playing a different game. I personally can’t wait to level something in the new, shattered world in Cataclysm. If waiting for Cataclysm sounds like the best move, I recommend sitting on your hands and trying out Etrian Odyssey 2. It pairs well with WoW addicts.

Just like a challenging raid boss, there’s always multiple strategies. Sometimes changing it up is the best way to get it down. As someone that has personally tried these options, I recommend them all as a band aid to fix your guild woes – in the order of desperation, even.

Just to catch everyone up to date, here’s two facts that many WoW players already know. Bear with me if it’s old news:

Ghostcrawler is the Blizzard face behind whether they buff you or nerf you; and Ghostcrawler plays a Holy / Discipline priest.

Alright, now that we’re up to speed… here’s something you might not have read before! Ghostcrawler recently replied to a priest thread on the forums about his playstyle when he’s Discing and Holy’ing. It’s a quick and helpful read that healing priests across the Interwebs can benefit from.

Disc: PoM on cooldown. PW:S as much as you can (esp. on the Arcane mage until 3.3.3). Use Penance often when you need burst. Resort to PoH if a lot of people need healing at once, especially in 10-player raids where you don’t have a lot of other healers to pick up the slack. Keep Pain Suppression and Divine Hymn for emergencies. Use Power Infusion on a mage or lock if you don’t need it.

Holy: PoM on cooldown. CoH on cooldown if there is any raid damage. Renew to handle the rest of the raid damage. Flash Heal if someone is still low after all of that. Save GS and Divine Hymn for emergencies or timed boss cooldowns. I tend to use Binding Heal a lot more than most priests because it makes me feel smart, especially when globals are in question.

What I like: Feeling smart when I mix the right tool with the right problem. Saving lives when someone thought they were dead. Sitting there at full mana halfway through a fight because I didn’t heal when I didn’t need to. Penance in general. Body and Soul. Borrowed Time. Serendipity.

What I don’t like: Using CoH so much. Dealing with Weakened Soul (esp. as Holy). Lightwell. Seeing priests die. (In all honesty I don’t die a lot, but I see Spirits of Redemption constantly. I guess as a sweeping generalization, priests have the stare-at-Grid syndrome worse than other healers.) Blowing 3 candles every wipe. Looking like a mage if I pick the wrong gear.

This is obviously meant for PvE; not PvP.

My Discipline playstyle mirrors what Ghostcrawler mentions here rather fluidly; nice parallel there. As far as Holy though, I tend to use Flash Heal over Renew for patching up a raid, just on the grounds that it gets me closer to my precious Serendipity. Renew is something I reserve for tanks. I’m not sure if that’s an inferior decision or a decision based on taste, but it’s fun nonetheless to make the comparison.

Also, he’s darn right about Binding Heal. Most priests forget they even have it, and it really makes me feel smart whenever I hit my 7 key.