by Mathew McCurley
Bati has created something that I truly appreciate: easy-to-use, easy-to-set-up, pre-made Grid healer profiles that give you everything you could ask for. The profile set even includes a DPS setup for your off spec, if needed.
An interface for every healer
Oren.1 is the paladin interface, showing all of the pertinent buffs on the target at the bottom of the Grid frame, with built-in timers from the excellent addon OmniCC. Bati is the priest Grid setup, displaying shields, Weakened Soul, Prayer of Mending and other vital priest information right on the Grid frame. Paired with a PoM counter addon, this setup proves very powerful for priests.
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by Daniel Whitcomb
With Wrath more or less winding down and only the Ruby Sanctum before us at some nebulous point in the future, a lot of us are wandering around with full PvE gear and currency tabs full of emblems looking for a place to go. One easy place to let off some of that steam is with PvP. Be it arena, battlegrounds or (admittedly pretty rare these days) world PvP, this article will give you some basic tips to get yourself squared away with the gear and spec you need to start off on the right foot.
This is by no means a complete guide to absolutely every aspect of death knight PvP. This’ll help you get your feet wet and get properly geared, but there’s always more to learn, especially in the dynamic, ever-changing world of PvP combat strategy and tactics. Still, nothing gives you a better start on the road to skill than a good foundation in stats and speccing, so let’s start this up.
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by Bethany Myers
So you’re ready to venture into the thankless realm of healing? It’s not for the faint of heart. You will be begged to heal an instance you hate and blamed for deaths that aren’t your fault, only to lose gear upgrades to DPS — all in the same run! On the other hand, healing can be a nice diversion from faceroll macro-mashing, and it’s definitely nice to have instant dungeon queues.
Whether you’re changing specs at level 80 to help your guild progression, stepping into The Deadmines as a level 18 healer or twinking out a battleground medic — here are some helpful hints as you prepare to make those health bars greener.
5-man PvE
Regular dungeons, heroics and group quests in which you are the only healer
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by Basil Berntsen
Hunter PvP is fun. It’s a lot of fun. It’s also something you can jump into any time, compared to raiding where you have to be in a guild that is managing to continue running content. A lot of people are getting into it for the first time but are having trouble getting started.
Start with the gear
The average hunter with a bit of PvE experience and gear will queue up for a random battleground and get mulched. Hunters are almost as squishy as mages, and until you get some resilience, you’re going to die a lot. The best thing you can do while you’re in this state is to use your cooldowns to extend your death, stick with healers and do as much damage as you can before you croak. Hunter damage is insanely high — the phrase “it goes to 11″ doesn’t begin to cover it. The problem is that if you can die to a single warlock DoT, you won’t be able to apply this pressure for long.
The process of getting the required resilience is fairly painless, if a little long. All the ilvl 264 non-set pieces are available for honor points. Assuming you want to start in battlegrounds, you want to aim for a balance between survivability (resilience and stamina) and offensive pressure (agility, AP, crit, int, and to a lesser extent, ArP and haste).
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by Joe Perez
This is for the healing shaman looking to get ready for rated battlegrounds and wondering what we have to offer besides healing.
The strength of a restoration shaman is its versatility in combat. They can heal and deal some damage while still offering buffs and a wide variety of support and survivability. To that end, the shaman class has a very versatile tool set for use in battle grounds from spells and talents to the various totems we have at our disposal. Let’s take a look at what we have to potentially offer besides our plethora of healing spells
Totems
Earth Bind Totem Mobility is one of the most important things in PvP. This totem allows you to slow opponents down so you can help keep them in one place to be attacked by your teammates, or so you can beat a hasty retreat and save your hide. Placement of this totem can count for a lot, such as placing the totem on a bridge or near the end of the bridge in Eye of the Storm.
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by Brian Wood
After a long and frustrating night of progression raiding, you may find yourself thinking, “You know, screw this dragon. It’s my teammates that I wanna kill.” There are few sensations in this life quite as satisfying as slaughtering other players, kiting weepy melee and glorifying in the lamentations of their menfolk (because believe me, it’s the menfolk who do the lamenting in PvP).
We’re going to start paving the road to lamentation today with a look at how our stat priorities change for PvP and an overview of how the three hunter trees look in a PvP environment. And yes, we’ll have some sample PvP specs, too.
PvP stats: not quite the same
Put simply, your stat weights change in PvP, and it’s not just about resilience and stamina. You know all that ArP that lets you pwn the meters on Festergut? Yeah, not so useful in PvP.
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by Rich Maloy
There are 28 major glyphs for shamans but of course not all apply to enhancement. Of those 28, two are considered must-haves for PvE (once you hit level at least 60). They are: Glyph of Stormstrike (level 40) and Glyph of Feral Spirit (level 60). And when it comes to PvP no other glyph beats Glyph of Stoneclaw Totem.
Standard setup
At level level 80 I’d suggest major glyphs:
The choice of minor glyphs is really up to you for PvE purposes; we’ll get into them below.
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by Rich Maloy
Being a hybrid class means there’s not a lot of wiggle room when it comes to making specs as one spec can serve us well through 10s, 25s, dungeons, and soloing. While PvE builds don’t leave much room for experimentation, I’ve seen far more variance in PvP specs, mostly depending on play-style.
Of course there are distinct PvP talents built into the trees and there are core talents for both PvE and PvP without which we’re just not enhancement shamans. But depending on your gear, team, and how your play you can customize your PvP specs for defensive, offensive, mana-rich, or anywhere in between.
Let’s start right out with the two of the more common builds right now:
PvE – 19/52/0 – this spec will serve most all enhancers well across all levels on content and is the spec I use on Stoney.
PvP – 16/55/0 – as I mentioned above there is far more flexibility in specs for PvP. I chose this one because it’s a good starter PvP spec that is highly mana-conservative and defensive focused. I’ve seen many different takes on enhancement PvP specs and experienced players will alter to suit their own play style. But if you need a place to start, go with this.
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by Zuggy
When it comes to macros, the druid class has seen both extremes. From the classes initial conception, which literally required dozens of macros to effectively operate in both PvP and PvE environments, to the more simplistic druid we see today. After years of tweaking and adjustment this type of mass macro creation is no longer environment (thank God!), as many shifting abilities are now automatic.
Restoration Druid Macros
Nature’s Swiftness Heal
/cast Nature’s Swiftness
/stopcasting
/cast Healing Touch
Mouseover Healing Macros
/cast [target=mouseover] Healing Touch
/cast [target=mouseover] Rejuvenation
/cast [target=mouseover] Lifebloom
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by Matt Low
Toravon is the latest boss to appear within the Vault of Archavon, however we’re not quite sure if he is the last of the VoA bosses to be seen in this expansion. The boss is fairly simple conceptually, but don’t take him too lightly. I’ll walk you through what you need to know to get score some sweet tier 10 PvE gear and equivilent PvP gear.
Gear Drops
He drops tier 10 level gloves and legs along with PvP gear (like belt and boots). Unlike his brothers, he drops 3 items on 25 instead of 2. And yes, he does drop Emblems of Frost. Its a fairly simple encounter for an equipped raid group. There aren’t any fires to stay out of or anything. You’ll need 2 tanks and at least 4-5 healers (on 10 man, you can get away with 2).
Tanks
Tanks will need to switch off of each other to shake the Frostbite debuff. It can stack up to 100 times and each application places a DoT which hits for about 1000 every couple of seconds. Your tanks can switch when they feel the debuff is getting high.
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