Changes To My Chars

I've now officially added Solidstar to this site, his picture-signature is now added to my other chars. It's true he's only level 68 but he's already in Northrend and I've had so much fun leveling him so far, I don't see myself stopping till he's level 80.

Blood spec has worked great for me so far and I intend to continue leveling with it till 80, at which point I'll respec to a Frost-tanking build. Thanks to the self-healing from Blood talents I've managed to solo every 3-man group quest in Terokkar Forest that I've come across and so my leveling has been very quick. Last night I finally dinged 68 and made my way to my new home, Borean Tundra. I did a few of the quests in the immediate area of Valiance Keep before going to sleep and already managed to replace 3 of my pieces of gear. Of course this is not surprising as I'm basically wearing low level Outland greens, not even level 70 ones so it would be surprising if I could not find upgrades from Northrend starter quests.

Another big change to my characters is for Solidfaith. I've specced Solidfaith as a holy priest ever since he dinged max level and I've never looked back. However WoW changes and so must we who play it. At level 80 as a holy priest life is very different for me than as a level 70 holy priest. Mana effiency is a major concern for one thing, no more ability to chug mana pots. Add to this the fact that CoH, one of our best spells, is going to get nerfed soon. Finally other healers have gotten serious boosts to their healing while at the same time having much less mana worries, for various reasons. This means that it is much harder for me to compete in pure healing output, which was my strong point as a level 70 holy priest.

However... a Discipline priest, a.k.a. disc-priest, brings much more to the table at level 80 as compared to a level 70 priest. So while still not able to compete in the pure healing department, at least I can much more strongly complement and enchance the raid.

Based on my performance as a holy priest in initial Naxx raids I've currently respecced to this mixed 36/35/0 disc/holy build. My intention was to still keep a strong holy tree but get as many int/spi enhancements from disc. This actually worked pretty well in the sense that I now have, with raid buffs, a much larger mana pool and mana regen while still having a large amount of spell-power. At my current gear level, this build makes a lot of sense if I want to be able to put out large healing numbers while being able to sustain myself in longer fights.

However I've talked to a raider from a 25-Naxx raiding guild who swore by a full disc build, especially for 10-man groups. So taking a closer look at a possible disc priest I think this 55/16/0 build looks very interesting. Huge PW:S damage reductions, more damage reductions from talents like Grace and Inspiration, yet more shielding from Divine Aegis... as wowhead comments say, such a disc priest should make an uber MT-healer. I'll miss the group healing abilites of full holy build though... :(