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A tank’s blog, mostly…

Description

 
Power Word: Shield (Rank 12)
600 Mana, 40 yd range
Instant cast, 4 sec cooldown
Draws on the soul of the party member to shield them, absorbing 1265 damage. Lasts 30 sec. While the shield holds, spellcasting will not be interrupted by damage. Once shielded, the target cannot be shielded again for 15 sec.

Power Word: Shield is a nice utility spell that can be used on many occasions. It will not heal, but rather prevent a sizeable amount of damage taken by the target. It helps to ease out spiky damage, protects low-armoured allies from being smeared by frenzied hordes of adds and helps you solo mobs without getting interrupted on every swing.

Strengths

Power Word: Shield is one of the very few reliable damage prevention spells. Additionally it’s instant cast and as such can be used while repositioning or flying through the air. It may be used to ease spiky damage by dropping it in occasionally. Do this only if your tank is rage-capped and you can afford the global cooldown. Other than that it prevents spell pushback which is also very handy on numerous situations.

Weakness

However, Power World: Shield cannot replace healing spells. First and foremost, it has a cooldown of 4 seconds. Additionally, any single target cannot be shielded more than once every 15 seconds. Tanks don’t like to be shielded most of the time. It hinders their rage or mana generation. In conclusion, Power Word: Shield is a rather expensive spell when compared to your other healing spells. Especially when considering that it only uses about 20% of your +healing stat.

When & how to use

Protect the mage that nukes the adds. Shield Aran’s current target while running away from the Blizzard. Protect yourself from damage and spell pushback from that stray add that found your way to you. If damage can be anticipated or may be predicted, popping a Power Word: Shield on the target may be a good idea.

Image Power Word: Shield as some kind of safety belt. If things go wrong you have a chance to instantly stall off incoming damage, buying you time to get off a healing spell that is not instant cast. If someone is assaulted by critical damage and you need to bring him up fast, start with a Power Word: Shield, then Prayer of Mending and then Flash Heal to create a padding.

When not to use

Don’t use it if a target is not in danger of taking critical damage soon. A well-placed Renew is only a global cooldown away too, and it heals more damage than Power Word: Shield may prevent.

As a rule of thumb, don’t use it when there is no emergency situation.

Description

 
Fade
330 Mana
Instant cast, 30 sec cooldown
Fade out, discouraging enemies from attacking you for 10 sec.  More effective than Fade (Rank 6).

Fade is one of the most useful spells a priest will ever use. However, the wording above is not very informative and needs a bit of elaboration.

When you fade, the spell will reduce your threat with every target that has you on it’s hate list by 1500. This value is not divided, it’s applied as a static "penalty" to all mobs. You may cast Fade preemptively. While you cannot go below 0 threat, it will apply to all threat accumulated during it’s 10 second duration, too. So, you may fade and then run into a mob group (already in combat but not necessarily tagged) and shackle one of those mobs without fearing swift retribution from it’s friends.

Additionally, Fade becomes better the more mobs you are fighting. Because of it’s static application of 1500 negative hate to each mob, it will scale well with large groups of mobs.

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In a Nutshell

Terestian Illhoof is an optional boss that only controls a very small amount of trash respawn inside Karazhan. He resides inside the library near the Shade of Aran. You will find him in a room that is hidden behind a suspicious bookshelf inside a room that is filled with Shadow Pillagers and Homunculi.

Illhoof himself is a very add-lasting encounter without phases, however there are a few twists that define the course of the battle. The key to the fight is to control the swarming adds and to reduce uptime of the Demon Chains to a minimum.

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In a Nutshell

The Shade of Aran is an optional encounter on your way to the top of the tower. He controls most of the respawn in the library, however and should be dealt with if you are in risk of wiping on the content after him.

The fight itself is very unique and fun. As a healer you need good reflexes and situational awareness in order to stay and keep other people alive.

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Just a small personal progression rambling. Skip it if you don’t want to get involved.

Still reading? Fine!

<Ravenous> has recently grouped up with two other guilds to form a raiding alliance. Before this, we had some difficulties mustering enough people to raid Gruul’s Lair properly.

With the addition of new an nice people to kiss the floor together, we managed to get the raids rolling.

With much success, I have to add.

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