Gear for Healing Priests: Patch 5.2

This is a list of gear for healing priests in patch 5.2. The list includes items from reputations and valour points, the new Throne of Thunder raid, new world bosses and professions. For the raid drops, I’ve kept normal mode gear as the default with additional links to their LFR and heroic versions. I’ve also included items without spirit with a special note indicating so.

The introduction of Thunderforged items adds an interesting layer to the gearing options. I have not included regular raid items’ thunderforged versions in this list for the sake of my own sanity, but I have included drops from Ra-den, the heroic-only boss in Throne.  Note that all of this comes from the PTR and can change at any time. I’ll try to keep up with the changes as and when they happen, and will update this list accordingly.

Enjoy! 🙂

Patch 5.2 Trailer: The Thunder King

I’m a huge fan of cinematics and patch trailers and as much as I was hoping 5.2 would be a bit later, I have to admit that watching this trailer made me excited for it. I particularly love the poetic narration it has – a nice touch!

Healing Perspectives: Wind Lord Mel’jarak

The key to this fight is dealing with the adds that Wind Lord has with him right from the get-go and ultimately killing him before the enrage timer hits. A lot of the success for this fight comes from well managed CCs on certain types of adds as well as getting some decent AoE and splash onto Wind Lord while the adds are being killed.

The fight consists of two phases: Phase 1 is the add-filled phase; Phase 2 hits when the adds are dead and the raid is required to do a little dance while killing Mel’jarak.

Healing Perspectives: Garalon

Garalon is one of those fights that is awful while learning but beautiful once mastered. Well….as beautiful as a bug could get I suppose. For a complete detailed strategy on the fight, I highly recommend checking out many of the great resources on it. This post is primarily from a healing perspective and assumes basic knowledge of the mechanics.

Healing Perspectives: Blade Lord Ta’yak

I’m back raiding! *creaks raid muscles* It’s good to be healing again – and this is around the time where the new patch will be out soon, and I realise I have all these posts that are waiting published!

Today, it’s all about how to help yet another ugly bug in Heart of Fear meet his doom! Much of the fight involves good positioning and well-timed heals. It’s one of those fights I highly recommend viewing/practicing in LFR – it’s a great way to get used to the mechanics and figure out a healing rhythm.

Blade Lord Ta’yak is a simple fight with two phases. Phase 1 is what I call the raid dance phase, where the raid collapses in and spreads out to deal with Unseen Strikes and Wind Step. Phase 2 occurs when Ta’yak hits 20% health and involves the long-tornado-run-of-doom.

The Healing UI Revamp

Every so often, I get the urge to redo my UI. I feel like it isn’t giving me the information I need, that it’s cluttered and it just needs be redone. This is how I felt last week when our new raid team decided to go on in and kill Blade Lord. I wasn’t able to keep up with my cooldowns, my screen felt crowded and my attention was all over the place.

Last weekend, I decided to fix the things that were troubling me. It wasn’t that my old UI was bad – but it was two years old, and a lot of things have changed since then. My healing has changed, the environments have changed and most importantly, my class has changed a whole lot. So it was time to have my UI catch up as well.