This is a direct copy of the (revisited) post, made by Lokim - Original written by Maledictos.

The previous thread (linked below) has hit it's post limit and is dropping off the main page. As I feel this is a well thought out and well written topic I'm reposting the original post in it's entirety in a new thread so further signitures can be added. I realize that technically this violates the forum guidelines against spamming, and only wish for this topic to stay near the top of the boards in either this thread or in the original with it's post count expanded. I also must disclose that I am not the original author of this post, I only wish to keep the post from fading to obscurity before a blue responds to it (not likely considering it sat on page 1 for 300 replies, none of them from blue)

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=79172827&sid=1&pageNo=1


Open Letter to Blizzard PART 1

Blizzard Entertainment:
I have purchased and played Blizzard games for a number of years (Warcraft, Starcraft, Diablo) and had always been impressed by the overall quality, attention to detail, and playability of your products. Accordingly, as a mmorpg player, I awaited the release of World of Warcraft with great eagerness. I was not disappointed. The world of Azeroth was large, richly detailed, and for a gaming environment of such size and scope, surprisingly free of bugs; the classes had connection to the Warcraft game line and had diverse and interesting play-styles associated with them. Consequently, I was not at all surprised by the unprecedented success of World of Warcraft.

It is therefore with great disappointment that I am forced to conclude that Blizzard has been a victim of its own success. Having worked in organizations experiencing dramatic growth, I am aware of the tremendous organizational stresses which are generated by a rapid scale up including institutional inertia and resistance to the devolution of decision making authority which must accompany such growth. In this case, however, I believe that Blizzard Entertainment has fallen prey to the most pernicious of the rapid-growth pitfalls, arrogance bordering on outright contempt for its customers.

Such strong language might seem to be merely another emotional response to the changes to the Priest class which have engulfed this forum recently, and while those recent changes have certainly brought some issues into clearer focus, I assure you this is not written in anger or without thoughtful consideration. Rather, this letter is written in response to the gradual accumulation of evidence that, because of its enormous subscriber base, Blizzard Entertainment now views its World of Warcraft customers as no more than grains of sand on the desert floor: collectively significant but individually meaningless.

(Note to Forum Readers: The next four paragraphs may seem off-topic, but I do have a point)

I first became aroused to this suspicion after a friend of mine in Arizona was the victim of a security breach which Blizzard had been aware of for some time. He had over the course of almost two years of fairly regular playing managed to equip his character with a set of tier three epic (purple) gear. He had logged off in the afternoon, and logged back on that evening to find that his account had been hacked and all of his gear, along with the entire contents of his inventory had been stolen. He immediately completed a customer service ticket and attempted to contact a GM. A day after not receiving and response, he attempted to contact Blizzard by telephone. He was told that they would not discuss in-game issues over the telephone and just to wait for an electronic response. By way of comparison, it is worth noting that even those paragons of efficient, customer-friendly service the U.S. Post Office, the NJ Division of Motor Vehicles, and the Internal Revenue Service, will allow one to address problems, in-person, by e-mail, or over the telephone: not so Blizzard Entertainment.

When, some time later (and being unable to participate in raids or level appropriate content in any meaningful way during this time), a response from the GM was finally received, it indicated that although they could confirm his loss, they were “very sorry” but could not restore the lost items and instead sent him a set of level 40’ish green (inferior) gear. The response concluded with a line no one who knows anything about the game could utter with any sincerity, “We hope this experience does not diminish your enjoyment of the game.”

Any definition of respect with which I am familiar, includes, at a minimum, crediting the recipient with a modicum of intelligence and treating that person with some basic level of honesty. Blizzard Entertainment failed outright on both counts. First, Blizzard most certainly COULD restore his lost items, it is clear to anyone familiar with the game, that this was not beyond their power, it was beyond their interest level. While I certainly can understand policies being developed to prevent people from utilizing customer service features to unfairly profit in-game, I do not believe that anyone (including the staff at Blizzard) believes that a US resident (a fact which is easily confirmable from billing information) would spend hundreds of hours accumulating gear for the scanty gold that would be received from selling it to vendors (as this bind on pick-up gear had to be).

Consequently, Blizzard was aware that this was a legitimate loss and that this represented the loss of a substantial portion of the benefit from hundreds of hours of playing World of Warcraft (an activity that Blizzard not only actively encourages, but handsomely profits from). However, when notified of the loss, Blizzard refused to expend any effort to assist their customer, but instead decided to cash the check and tell him, in effect, “too bad.” Even in this brush-off, Blizzard could not summon sufficient respect for a long term customer to discuss the matter honestly; Blizzard in fact COULD have restored the lost items, Blizzard clearly was not “very sorry” or else they WOULD have restored the lost items, and lastly Blizzard could not seriously expect that any player just having lost the end result of two years of effort could not have his “enjoyment of the game” diminished.

Sadly, it is, I believe, this complete lack of respect for individual customers, manifested by a disregard for their individual playing experiences, the failure to credit them with minimal intelligence, and lack of honesty behind motivations and circumstances, that largely informed the decision making process for the most recent changes to the Priest class.

Specifically, regarding Blizzard’s attitude about individual playing experiences, I believe that the Blizzard development team is aware of the altogether pitiful state of Priests in player versus player (PvP) situations and further is aware that this situation has been greatly worsened by a number of recent changes to the game including reductions in damage rates for Priest spells, an exceptionally poor (and poorly thought out) expansion of the Priest talent tree (though retracted, how much thought went into a 41 point shadow heal?), as well as the inclusion of a number of powers granted to other classes, which, while not necessarily aimed at Priests, included them as collateral damage by substantially degrading the utility of Priest abilities (such as unstable affliction, cloak of shadows, etc.). I also believe that these changes, like the changes to prayer of mending and vampiric embrace were made to address perceived imbalances in very specific settings, but because of Blizzard’s disregard for the playing experiences of individual customers, these changes were made without meaningful evaluation of the substantial impact they would have on the affected players in other settings. In this I am referring primarily to PvP in all of its settings (arena, battlegrounds, and in the territories) and while I appreciate that Blizzard has put substantial effort into player versus environment (PvE) content, it cannot simply pretend that the impact on PvP experiences are unimportant when it maintains entire servers dedicated to this pursuit.

Specifically, regarding Blizzard’s failure to credit customers (in this case Priest players) with minimal intelligence, the constant denial of the existence of any substantial problems with the class is simply at odds with even minimal evaluation of the facts and, more to the point, the playing experiences of virtually all of Blizzard’s Priest playing customers. I do not need, in this setting, to fully catalogue the litany of substantial long-term issues such as itemization, spell scaling, near meaningless crowd control, the wide availability of counters to Priest abilities, the absence of a snare/root ability (mind-flay immobilizes the Priest more than the target), staggeringly poorly thought out talent trees, and a DPS build without burst damage which when combined with a Priest’s terrible survivability renders the class completely disadvantaged in PvP. On this point it is sufficient to say that Priests primary function is becoming, and shortly will become, to absorb two seconds of focus fire or ten seconds of a rogue’s attention.

continued from initial post, still not me.

While I understand that balance issues in a mmorpg are complex and delicate, and that, consequently, evaluation of the relative abilities of different classes cannot be based solely on dissatisfied customer’s comments in the forums, some credence to the well thought out and clearly articulated customer feed-back contained on the forums is due. Specifically, posters from Blizzard have asked for constructive input from the customers on this forum. More than in virtually any other class forum this request has been complied with, and complied with for years. The feedback provided by the customers playing Priests has been fact based, clearly communicated, and regarding issues of real substance. Yet rather than seriously engage the customers on the specific points they raise, instead Blizzard’s posters offer us vague generalities and emotional platitudes such as “how satisfying it is to watch my team win because I heal them,” (which indeed would be satisfying if my Priest were not dead seconds after the fight begins and I wasn’t getting out healed by a guy in plate-mail), or “we (the developers) play Priests too!” (except that unlike you, I am PAYING to get killed helplessly). Again, Blizzard treats its customers like imbeciles rather than thoughtful people who, collectively, have more experience actually playing World of Warcraft than their entire development staff combined.

Open Letter to Blizzard PART 2

Lastly, and most troublingly, there is the matter of honesty. While also appropriate to this topic, since it has already been discussed herein, I will not reiterate the points about the outright denial of the manifestly obvious problems of the Priest class. Rather, I will begin with the fundamental dishonesty that pervades the entire tenor of the discussions of Priest issues with Blizzard representatives over the last two years.

As previously indicated, Blizzard had asked for constructive input from its Priest playing customer base. Implicit in this request was the assumption that by providing such input, players would help the developers focus their attentions on the most pressing issues in useful and productive ways thereby, helping to improve their class. Actual experience belies this. During two years of some of the most constructive, thoughtful, fact-based, balanced and articulate input on virtually any of the class forums, Priest playing customers have stood witness to not only the continuous neglect of virtually all of the issues raised, but a near unrelenting series of changes with the effect (if not the intent) of exacerbating the problems of the class (nerf after nerf).

Accompanying and compounding this has been the unending series of broken promises that a fix is “just around the corner” or coming in the next patch. If these unfulfilled promises were occasional, they might be forgiven as simple error, but the frequency, and near complete failure to ever deliver is simply more consistent with an effort to simply “say anything” to make Blizzard’s customers be quiet for a little longer (read as “a few more billing cycles”). Further, at each turn, Priest playing customers are offered condolences which are as obsequious as they are insincere (“we are so very sorry that our most recent actions made a bad situation worse, and we will get right on fixing it right after we complete work on your next nerf.”) At what point does a thinking person begin to doubt the veracity of these apologies and Blizzard’s commitment to addressing Priest playing customer’s legitimate complaints? After how many years?

As frustrating as these lapses are, fundamentally the most frustrating is the inability to ever get a straight answer, or even address anyone with real information or insight into the decision making process. In Kafkaesque fashion, Blizzard’s customers are never allowed to address tough questions to the people actually making decisions; every query must be passed through layers of sanitizing personnel or simply ignored altogether. In the spirit of futility that inspired this letter to begin with, please allow me to pose some of the questions that come to mind:

What percentage of gross revenues from World of Warcraft are spent on customer service and complaint resolution?

Why is it possible for almost every organization in the world to have a toll free customer support line which can assist with customer problems but not for Blizzard? (including in-game issues?)

Why is it not possible for customers from the forums to pose get responses to issues directly from the people within Blizzard who actually make the relevant decisions (maybe 5 questions a month, selected by poll on the forums)?

If Blizzard is being forthright with its customers, why do the answers provided never seem to discuss financial considerations when they govern almost every decision taken by corporations?

And lastly, if Blizzard actually believes that its actions to balance races and classes are even remotely effective (which I do not think even Blizzard believes), why hasn’t the functionality been added to the game to allow players to change their races/classes while retaining their level (even if it cost them their gear)? On the off chance that someone actually replies to this question, please do not bother with the “technically infeasible” or “prohibitively expensive” line; I know better (My bother-in-law and I run a software development company and know that this functionality could be added for less than $50k, which might seem like a lot until one compares it to the monthly revenue of 8,000,000 active subscriptions). Could it be that Blizzard is simply relying on the fact that its customers have invested months or years of their time in a character and will hopefully accept dilatory or incompetent balancing rather than write-off the time and effort and that allowing people to vote with their feet would expose the outright failure of the development team to address a number of long term customer issues?

I realize that Rome was not built in a day and I am NOT going to cancel my account if these issues are not addressed by lunch-time tomorrow (though game play is so frustrating I have stopped playing for now). I have no interest in spending the time and effort to make another character simply to compensate for what has been taken away (and have no guarantee that I would not find myself in similar circumstances due to more “improvements”). I will probably check back in another month’s time and see what, if any, progress has been made. If at that time I find no significant improvement, I ask you, what compelling reason could you offer me to stay? A serious and substantive reply by Blizzard is invited; my patience is nearing an end.

Sincerely,
Quentin Page

(Note to Forum Readers: If you concur with the sentiments expressed herein, please let Blizzard know)

This post is by me.

And now for something completely different:

I had an epiphany in the last few days. More or less, it's summed up here: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=102651341&sid=1

I wanted to post this here to prove a point. The point is that the problems that Priests have while healing are not at all problems with comparative numbers between classes, regen issues, mana pool issues, or whathaveyou. The pure and simple problem is that healing is a flawed, overpowered mechanic in WoW for PvE.

Note the whole phrase. Healing is not overpowered in the Arenas, as it's controllable there (I'll spare the list of CCs and just say that FF is an issue). In raid encounters, it's far easier to control who's getting hit, funnelling all heals to them in a controlled, ready fashion. This creates the 8k per swing mobs. It has nothing to do with tanking gear progression. It has everything to do with healing. The point of raid design now is to design encounters which stress the healers' mana, which causes the catastrophic raid-failure. Blizzard knows that the healing mechanic is strong, which is why encounters are based around it. Blizzard does not realize, however, all of the far-reaching problems that the strength of this mechanic causes.

Healing is the reason that Druids and Paladins are not raid-quality tanks. It's not the items or the skill-sets. If mobs weren't swinging for 8k, but 2.5k instead, it wouldn't be an issue. Unfortunately, when a single healer can take care of a mob like that for a solid minute or more, you have issues.

I'm calling for a linked cooldown to be added to all healing spells based on the cast time of the spell. Retune mob damage to compensate. Additionally, remove +healing gear from the game. Force Priests in raids to do both damage and healing, regardless of spec. Yes, this means that VE is going to have to be nerfed again to fit the new healing expectations. Yes, it's going to be a very different system. Unfortunately, it's the only good way to make the raid focus shift from the single tank + healing core paradigm to the "everyone in the raid contributes something" paradigm that allows "hybrid" (god I hate that term, as every class is a hybrid) classes to do "pure" (another term I hate, as there are zero "pure" classes) class roles, while still keeping the mechanic more or less intact.

Personally, I have little invested in the game anymore due to the fact that I cancelled my account. This doesn't mean that I want y'all to suffer the absolute garbage that the Devs seem to want to shovel down peoples' throats as they add content.

Soon the mobs will be hitting for 12k on plate. Paladins will be one-shot by raid bosses while wearing tanking gear. Warriors will have their monopoly back in full swing. Some of you will be stuck healbotting. Some of you will be doing the Shadow thang. Regardless, this affects how you play the game. It certainly affects how much I (didn't) enjoy it.

I want you to know that nerfing healing actually buffs Priests. It sounds absolutely ridiculous, but it's completely true so far as Priest healing is concerned. Healing right now is all about raw numbers. Priest healing is about having a Batman-esque utility belt. It's absolutely true that any reduction in throughput for healing (and reduction of need for throughput) is a buff to utility for healing. If you want to be healers, this is something that, while counterintuitive, you should support. Many guilds are denying spots to Priests in Holy specs because of the simple fact that Shadow is impressively better for most encounters. While I don't want to marginalize Shadow's efficacy, Holy should not be a red-headed step child tree. In my suggestion, it is, de facto, one of the most potent trees for healing. A Holy spec Priest would have a significant increase in throughput and utility for healing, which means that they could easily be "one of the best" healers available if played well.

It's a change for the better, I swear.

The following is not my authorship. It is reposted for the fact that it essentially covers 1/2 of what I wanted to say anyway.

Huzzah's Guide to Not Posting Your Inane Crap

Ok, we all know these boards are awash with inane banter and teenage angst. But occasionally there is a gem, a priceless nugget of actual information and discussion that educates us and helps us grow as human beings. Or at least kill gnomes faster. But in 30 seconds, even in the priest forums, important threads that you should read get bumped off by stupid crap. Hard numbers testing on aggro gains gets bumped by the two billionth raTE MY SPEC PLZ@! thread. But I have a plan. I have created this FAQ, and what you should do before you EVER POST ANYTHING EVER is to read back over the FAQ and make sure your topic is not addressed. If it is addressed, then immediately not post. If it isnt addressed, you still probably should not post. Because the goal of this FAQ is for you to shut up. Note that I will also take my own advice and shut up after this, unless I have something non-retarded to say. Which is not likely!


# How do I use this FAQ?
Why is this a question in FAQs? Are people this retarded? Anyways, you use this FAQ by reading over it anytime you have the unnatural desire to post. Either you will see your topic ridiculed, or be generally too embarrassed to post realizing that we dont like you, which will mean this FAQ is a success.

# What race should I
Undead.
Dwarf.
Period.

# But I picked
No. You were wrong. I wish this werent the case, but it is. There are not tradeoffs. You unknowingly picked the wrong race. This means racial trait questions, race questions, anything with the words night elf, should not be posted. Dont ask me, ask the assweasels that coded racial traits/spells. If you feel the need to justify your poor choice, please do so here and get it allllll out, so the no more posts ever have to be mislead by your choices.

# OMG I can't be a gnome priest?! Petition time!
Shut. Up.

Even if we did give a crap (which we don't), there are 2 priest races for horde, and 3 for alliance. They won't be adding a 4th priest race to alliance just because you have some lame ass gnome guild idea. Just be a dwarf and take my initial advice on this subject.

# Staff/dagger/mace?
Ahh another daily thread favorite. Seriously you need your feeding tube removed if you ask this. You likely have a staff... and have a dagger/mace... use which is better. How hard is that? If you are worried about keeping up weaponskills then reroll a warrior, and make sure to post in the warrior forums so they can tell you how to play your character... If you deeply in your heart require an answer, then here it is:
Staff
There you go problem solved, no need for any more threads about that. Youre welcome. If you find a better weapon combo thats not a staff You can just go ahead and use it without getting forum approval

# Where do I
Thunder Bluff.

# Rate my spec!
FIRSTLY, AND LISTEN UP!
Do not cut and paste your spec as some 50 line piece of garbage with a space after every line that takes 3 pages to read. Even in an instance where people feign interest in your dumb spec:
FROM NOW ON, USE A 5 LINE MAXIMUM TO DESCRIBE YOUR SPEC
Your absolute laziness to use copy/paste instead of typing 10 words makes everyone else scroll past the spam of crap and not read it. Here is an example of a good way:
22 Shadow, mindflay/VE, Blackout over spirit Tap
10 Holy, renew and healing
19 Disc, focused casting and imp. mana burn
You read that, because it was less than 50 lines. Lets stick to that format in the future.

OK, now onto why we don't want to hear about your spec ideas. I want this to be very clear. Your spec is not original. It is not creative. It is not a beautiful and unique snowflake. It is not only plainly obvious, but 200,000 people have already tried it and specced out of it. Going disc! or Tri-spec! is not cutting edge or unique. There are tradeoffs to specs sort of but seeing as you can switch specs for virtually nothing who cares? Your spec might be the exact worst possible combination of talents that you could possibly pick (meaning you probably have a lot in holy) just respec. But whatever you do, do this without letting us know about it. Because we dont care.

# Holy or Shadow?
Shadow.
Ok really, for a pre-50 priest there is no excuse not to be at least like ~21 shadow. Your first 5 points should be Spirit Tap, for any priest ever created, ever. The next 2 should be Improved Power Word: Pain, then do whatever you feel like. You do not need the 10% more efficient heals for pre-50 instances, you just need to collect 5 bear asses faster. For basically nothing you can then respec to whatever post-50. Then discipline talents for mana and holy talents for efficiency then can really pay off. But until then its not a post-worthy discussion. If you want to be Sir Healsalot, youre better off going mostly shadow so you more quickly get to a level where people give a crap about your heal efficiency. Post-50 respec into whatever your heart desires, just make doubly certain you dont post inane crap about it.

The entire Holy/Shadow endgame debate is dumb. You dont have to choose, DO BOTH! You go holy/disc you raid 212,157,032 times, battlegrounds is released over next Christmas, by the next summer its playable, you respec to Shadow and wtfpwn. Holy/disc is better for raids. There I said it. It just is. Your ability to outlast in a long boss fight is much higher than otherwise. Shadow/disc is just plain old, flat out, no holds barred, better for pvp. But group heals and efficien Shut up. Silence will heal more hp through damage prevention than anything else you can dream of. Im not saying shadowform all day long (although...), but that if all you gained was silence from shadow youd still be better for pvp than any holy spec. I can see good tri-specs for the heal crazy, because you will still be able to renew yourself before the assist train grinds your ass down.

But seriously, the debate can end: It doesnt matter, you can go respec whenever. I could be wrong, who cares? If I am Ill just go click my trainer once. I just dont want to hear about it.

# Priest is OH SO HARD at my level
No it isnt. Did you spec shadow? If not, you lose. If you did, you still lose because you suck. There are some spots where its harder, when your dot and nuke are a level from refreshing or your melee weapon is out of date. But really, WoW is so much easier across the board for leveling than any mmo ever made. Go quest, go group, go whatever. You can DO NOTHING BUT SIT ON YOUR ASS and you make exp. Having trouble leveling? Go sit on your ass watching VH-1 for 2 days, then come back. I dont remember where quests are for your level, I dont give a crap either. Go get a job and rest exp will solve your problems.

# Oh noes, I stand in the back and never get any loot!
Join a guild. Then you'll get all the silk cloth your heart desires.

# What profession should I take?
Alchemy/herbalism
Mining/Engineering
Tailoring/Enchanting
or whatever else... I don't care. You don't care enough to do your own 2 minutes of research, and no one else cares what you do. So lets just wrap up this question for good. It doesn't have that much to do with class, and more on if you want to make items or money. If you absolutely need an answer in order to shut up here you go:
Mining/Engineering
If you don't like that... then pick something else... just don't tell us about it.

# When should I cast fade?
Group with warriors.

Ok, warriors that don't suck.
That cuts about 80% of warriors out.

# Does blackout ever proc on dot/mindflay ticks?
Now this isnt a dumb question. The dumb part are the fifty guys that post OMG I totally saw my friend once cast and it totally looked like it stunned on the 3rd tick, I swear! (like Fangtooth.. muhaha) and they misinform the public. Blackout does not proc on ticks. Ever. Its not a debate, it simply does not happen. It procs on the initial cast, so not even the first tick 3 seconds later but the application of a dot can trigger blackout. If you swear to Jebus that you saw it proc on the third tick at 4am one night then please dont ever post about your unique experience. Unfortunately if you check your combat log, you will see the error of your lagged ways. Any shadow spell that causes damage, including weird crap like touch of weakness, can trigger blackout on the initial application only. Note that I said shadow spell that cause damage, not just shadow damage, which brings us to the weekly thread on:

# Vampiric Embrace and Shadow wands??!?1
When you discover the vast right-wing conspiracy that shut down your beautiful pipe dreams of getting heals off using a shadow wand, keep the secret info to yourself. Keep it on the down low, because discovering this deep dark secret and keeping it quiet on the streets separates the something from the something Anyways, wands are considering melee attacks just like ranged bow and gun attacks, they just get reduced by resists rather than AC, and Vampiric Embrace clearly says spell damage. Shooting crap from a stick != spells, shooting crap from your fingers = spells. Increasing your +damage to shadow spells does not effect shadow wands either, because wands are not spells. So its not a bug, its working as intended. And since it doesnt matter at freaking all, theres no need to post about it.

# GOD mind soothe/mind vision/holy fire/holy nova/spirit of redemption/the holy tree/whatever-else totally SUCKS OMG REMOVE IT!
Thanks for the insight. We all know this. Anyone who can read knows this. Apparently the spell/talent coding devs don't fall into that category, as I can't see how a grade school educated person coded holy fire without it being a joke. There's nothing to say about these abilities that doesn't violate the language rules. Except that they bite donkey... stuff.

# Int or Spirit or Mana every 5 seconds or what?
Ok this really isn't a stupid question. Just the answers get confused and unknown, and I'm tired of seeing the daily thread asking about it. It's the sort of info that would be kept on the front page if people decided not to post about itches in their personal areas or exactly which millisecond they like to cast fade, and other such things. So here is one actual non-jackass thing I can provide:
At level 60:

1 int = 15 mana to your max, 16.5 if you've got 5 in mental strength (10% more mana talent)

Mana regen every tick (2 seconds) = 13 + (Spirit/4)
So
1 spirit = 1/8 or .125 of a mana per second regen outside of the 5-second rule

1 int = 120 seconds of mana regen of 1 spirit (15 mana/.125 mana per second) or 132 seconds if you have mental strength

Under normal regen:
1 mana regen every 5 seconds (.2 per second) = 1.6 spirit (.2/.125) (Hint: this sucks, you get like 5 mana regen eq that takes the place of 20 spirit eq)

Under the 5-second rule:
1 mana regen every 5 seconds = 10.66 spirit, only if you have 5 points in meditation (.2/0.01875). If no meditation than spirit provides zero regen inside the 5 seconds. (This is awesome, as 300 spirit AND meditation is as good as having simply 30 mana regen every 5 seconds).

And finally, 1 int = 75 seconds of 1 mana regen every 5 seconds, or 82.5 seconds with mental strength.

What this boils down to is int kicks ass, and higher int is always better than higher regen (except in high end boss fights). Spirit is way better than mana gained every 5 sec for resting downtime, but during a long fight the mana regen stuff is way better than spirit even with meditation. Also keep in mind Spirit tap works off your spirit and not anything else, so if you're grinding mobs and want less downtime then go full throttle spirit.

# What's the 5-se...
After any spell is sucessfully cast, you don't regen mana for 5 seconds afterwards. So while casting a long spell you regen while waving your arms about, if you get interrupted you still regen, but once it casts you have 5 seconds of no regen. There is a talent (and epic equipment that you won't get) that lets you regen a percentage during these 5 seconds. Spirit tap gives you 50% of it's benefit under the 5-second rule.

And by the way, there is no spirit soft cap at 300. There is no spirit soft cap at 300. There is no spirit soft cap at 300. There is no spirit soft cap at 300. It existed during beta before the 5 second rule to prevent weird people from regening faster than they could heal. It was removed since it didn't work =) But the 5-second rule was added...

Ok, that was way too much writing without belittling anyone. That means the FAQ is over, so go away you trolling carebear farming ninjalooting nightelf overpowered no-life ROLEPLAYER! (buahahaha... picture the guy that just slammed his fist onto his desk)

-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~
Join the Jerk Police!
Agree with my seething hatred? Want to see our board clutter-free? Here's an idea:
When some one makes a thread pertaining to a topic I have covered, do not answer them. Instead ridicule them, and link this thread for their future reference. Since I'm such a swell and helpful dude, you can search for this thread and paste the link below:
-Huzzah

Senorhappy's Priest Class Non-Review
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=102020731&sid=1

Read it, that you might understand our problems better.

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Q u o t e:


I hate to be a prick, but please delete your post. I'm trying to get the top 5 slots for my sticky repost because this thing is hugeness.

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haha no problem -- wasn't sure how many you needed. Deleting!

As soon as you are done I will report you for stickying.

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Q u o t e:
haha no problem -- wasn't sure how many you needed. Deleting!

As soon as you are done I will report you for stickying.

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Thanks much! :-D

Count me in on the reporting. Wasn't sure if you were going to be back or not, figured I'd give it a few days before I reposted your thread.

Reported!

<3 Tarana.

Stikeeplzkthxbai.

Just a few notes on this now-complete reposting of the sticky:

Due to the new forums' length change on posts, you'll notice that several of the posts are broken up more than they used to be. The new cap on characters is approximately 2/3 what it used to be.

Thanks again to Tangent and Ekko, who removed their posts that were going to be breaking up my content. The combination of 30 second timeouts on new posts and the inevitable "WTF is he doing" led me to believe that SOMEONE was going to get posts in-between mine, and I didn't want the thread to look like the last incarnation entirely, where many of the answers were relegated to posts 15-30 due to people posting between me on a thread I hadn't expected to become as popular as it had.

Please report this thread (using the biohazard symbol near the Reply and Quote buttons) and nominate it for sticky status, as this is a repost of the original Tarana's Guide to All The Nagging Questions.

Thanks all!
-Tarana

Oh, and for sake of ease finding this, my favorite ASCII:

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.............................,-~*`¯lllllll`*~,..........................................
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I'm sure you all wanted to know that. Now you have a convenient place to look for said ASCII when you need it most, usually for posts that violate Huzzah's Guide.

Thanks for reposting all of this. Reported to (re)sticky!

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Q u o t e:
Semper Ubi, Sub Ubi.

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Always where, under where, eh?

Tarana, why you don't dance no more?

I said gimme a chance to do a night elf dance, I said gimme a chance...

Reported for Resticky <3