Elowyn, Momentum's guild master

I introduced Johannah’s server, Kalecgos, last Friday; this Friday I’ll be diving into a bit more background by taking a look at Johannah’s guild and how a smite priest fits in with a group of endgame raiders.

About Momentum

Momentum is a smaller, casual player guild that has gone through all of the WotLK raids, including Naxxramas, Sartharion, Eye of Eternity, Ulduar, and Trial of the Crusader. While Momentum has done 25-man raids in the past in conjunction with other smaller guilds, raiding has focused mainly on the 10-man setup, with one or two 10-man groups per week depending on attendance. We’re really pushing to increase the 25-man experience more. Most Momentum members are either full-time students or full-time workers–and some, like myself, are both!–so raiding is generally kept to one to three nights a week. Consistent raids are rotated every other Friday and Saturday.

Momentum’s history

The founders of Momentum originally came from the guild N E M E S I S. We broke off into our own guild way back in the days of early Karahzan runs and, for a very long time, had a friends-only recruiting policy (which has since evolved into a “friendly” policy that we uphold during recruitment and throughout the member’s [hopefully long-term] stay.) We based our foundation off of fair leadership and main-before-alternate mentality and continue to uphold this idea. We handled our loot for over a year with a unique Loot List concept developed by the guild master, but as time progressed and Momentum became larger, we inevitably switched over to NRP (Naked Raid Points, which is basically DKP.) Our DKP system honors fair leadership (officers do not get any advantages over other members for loot) and main-before-alternate (alts do not get NRP.)

Momentum raiders having fun.

Why does Momentum have a smite priest?

Because our player base changes drastically week-to-week, it’s common for us to have an overflow of heals for two groups one week and not enough heals for even one raiding group the next. Johannah’s role as a smite priest in Momentum is to fill the vacancy for the fights that could be done with 2 healers, but are more comfortable with 3; smite priests give the 2.5 role that is more advantageous in fights with drastically different healing requirements depending on the fight’s phase. In weeks where there is healer overflow, the smite priest spec grants additional DPS to the raid, and in weeks where healers are sparse, a deeper holy spec is used for full-time healing.

I’ve developed a personal belief that while smite priests cannot do nearly as much DPS as Shadow priests–and never should–they can provide a continuous amount of healing and DPSing that is much more difficult when dropping and taking on Shadowform, such as Prayer of Mending and occasional Renews, that can help casual endgame guilds push through things like Faction Champions chaos. (And oh boy, were they something else the first week they came out!) Having that extra Pain Suppression during Hard Mode Beasts of Northrend or Mimiron might not be as much of an advantage to “big guilds” that bring the beefy players out of many, many 25-mans, but the hybrid smite priest role has worked for Momentum and has continued to act as a refreshing “half heals” alternative since Burning Crusade and Mount Hyjal.

Momentum raiding nekked.

Does Momentum have other priests?

We have Discipline priests, Shadow priests, and Holy priests. I am currently the only smite spec priest (and I am actually “officially” Holy heals; see healing-overabundance issue above to explain this giant smite blog/experience.) We’re all hearts with each other.

I’m a level 80 Alliance on the Kalecgos server. Can I join Momentum?

Johannah is/I am an officer in Momentum. Feel free to whisper at any time to discuss recruitment. There is no application process; instead, we typically recruit based off of PuG performance in a raid or a 5-man. We’re a very friendly and slightly demented bunch of people that like to make sure we don’t recruit anyone too immature or too stand-offish. We’ve been around for a long time and plan to continue being around well through Cataclysm, so if you’re a casual player that’s interested in seeing if you mesh well, feel free to contact me or another officer!

I understand that there are many guilds that are not accepting of smite priests. That’s cool. Thankfully, Momentum is not one of them.