“As a healer, I fuggin’ hate DK tanks. Actually, DK anything in general. It’s like a huntard and a retardin had a baby, but it was raised by a combat rogue.”

I am not pleased at all with the Blizzard decision to not implement non-rated PvP weapons, because, to put it in Kalgan’s words, “most players are encouraged to get their weapon upgrade through PvE”.

Uh, well, what if you play this game to casually PvP, like if you’re on my low-populated server where getting groups = pulling teeth, and you actually don’t want to PvE to be halfway competitive in PvP? Or if you have terrible luck with droprate, a la Lumi and the staff from heroic VH (20+ runs and counting)? And you don’t want to fork over hundreds, no, scrap that, thousands of gold to get some craftables?

Well, then I guess you don’t need to be playing, either.

PvE rewards mediocrity. This has been well established. You can be bad and still get gear. The game design actually encourages this. You don’t need to be doing much to get kitted, just turning up for raids is enough. PvP doesn’t quite work that way, in fact, quite the opposite. PvP rewards only the good players (or well, currently, mostly only plate wearers who have access to Naxx25 gear) and rewards it well.

The trouble with that is, the people who PvP casually but like to be competitive, like me, ultimately end up having nothing to strive for except the enjoyment they derive from arena (and let’s face it, arena isn’t horribly enjoyable for most classes right now). This wasn’t the case during the first two seasons as the end result was the same for everyone, just that some people got there faster and some people got there slower. I got there on my own slow pace, learning a lot of things about my class on the way, and life was good. For S3, and especially S4, I was suddenly limited in how far I could “go” unless we, individually and as a team, raised our skillcap, AND started playing a FoTM team with few if any counters. Which, well, you know, isn’t going to happen.

So in S4, suddenly, the casual had less reasons to play arena, and the gear gap between the casual and the hardcore got bigger. S5 only feeds that, except with one catch – if you PvE, guess what, you have easy access to PvP gear through Vault and Emblems. But it doesn’t work the other way around. PvPers can’t buy the shiny badge gear or T7 with battleground marks.

Even Kalgan has agreed in a blue post that the current arena system leaves the casual little incentive to play. I really hope this is changed soon and casuals actually have a reason to participate in the arena system.

Ah, what will some Naxx fights become when you cannot spam Circle of Healing anymore? Here is a small guide to help you get through!

1. Spider Wing

Anub’Rekhan: There is not much difference in this fight. You might want to wait and use CoH more than once to top off the people who were injured by his spikes, but other than that, you won’t miss your cooldown-less CoH much.

Grand Widow Faerlina: You will probably utilize Prayer of Healing and Flash Heal a lot more frequently to top off the people damaged by the Poison Bolt Volley, and those that were silly and stood in Rain of Fire.

Maexxna: Heal as normal! There is no AoE damage going around here.

2. Plague Wing

Noth the Plaguebringer: You might miss your CoH spam when the Arcane Explosion-ing adds spawn, but other than that, you can just heal as normal. There is no damage Prayer of Healing can’t heal through here. You can still heal the rest of the incidental damage, if there is any, with Renews and Flash Heals.

Heigan the Unclean: Ah, here is the first fight where you will start missing the mobility afforded by CoH spam. You no longer have a handy tool to instantly top off those that were hit by the slime, so just try to Renew them up and maybe a Flash Heal when you have time. If you have excess mana, Holy Nova is also an option, though it does not heal for much. Most priests have low HP, though, one or two hits from the slime will be the end of you, so don’t risk stopping too much to Flash Heal people.

Loatheb: Loatheb is the first real challenge without cooldown-less CoH. You really need to start abusing Prayer of Healing to heal through Inevitable Doom damage, especially at the later stages of the fight where Doom hits every 15 seconds instead of every 30. Start casting roughly two seconds before Necrotic Aura is due to expire – this gives enough time for Prayer to hit, and you can throw a CoH afterwards if it’s needed. If you have any GCD’s still left before Necrotic Aura ends, try a Holy Nova. Most of the time, only Circle of Healing will not be enough to heal all of the Deathbloom/Inevitable Doom damage.

3. Construct Wing

Patchwerk: Did you ever use CoH on Patchwerk, anyway? Spam those Greaters, and pray.

Grobbulus: Grobbulus just got a little bit harder, since a single CoH is not enough most of the time to top off all incidental damage. I found myself relying on Flash Heal a lot more, with more PoMs on nontanks. If there is a slime among the melee, Prayer of Mending on one melee will work wonders due to the slime’s AoE damage pulse. When things are going really terribly, Prayer of Healing will get you out of a bind.

Gluth: Healing through Decimate damage is now a more serious challenge, since people might get hit and die to the zombies before you load up your Prayer of Healing. If you’re on raid healing duty, CoH, Prayer of Healing, maybe toss a PoM/Renew on the tank or the lowest HP people to use up a few more GCDs before your CoH is up again. Alternately, CoH, Prayer x 2, then CoH again if it’s still needed.

Thaddius: Yet another fight where you have to lean on your Flash Heal and Renew a lot more. His Chain Lightning damage is no longer easily healable by CoH spam. If someone messed up their charge switch, Prayer of Healing might be needed. Overall, you’ll probably find yourself wishing your Circle was off cooldown quite frequently.

4. Death Knight Quarter

Instructor Razuvious: This fight is largely the same as before. His shout damage is healable by one CoH or two, and is not urgent anyway. Alternatively, hit CoH once, then Holy Nova.

Gothik the Harvester: Again, largely the same as before. On the live side you can get by without using CoH at all, but if you’re on the Undead side, you’ll probably want to be ready with quick Flash Heals and Renews, or maybe a Holy Nova, to top off incidental AoE damage that Circle can’t heal through.

The Four Horsemen: If everyone does what they’re supposed to, Meteor damage from Thane only needs one CoH or two to heal through, so if you’re healing on Thane, you won’t see much change. You will still miss cooldown-less CoH, though, to top off that silly melee who chained Holy Wrath on Zeliek. There is not much to do aside from lean on Flash Heal a lot more.

5. Frostwyrm Lair

Sapphiron: Needless to say, Sapph just got a lot harder. Make sure your assigned group is always standing together during the ground phase, because you WILL want Prayer of Healing, and you will want it a lot more often than before. PoM bouncing works wonders here as well, especially on melee that’s hard to reach with Prayer of Healing (unless you have a shaman, then you can forget about melee completely), so mash that button every cooldown for very mana efficient heals on five people. Speaking of mana, it might be an issue, so watch out.

During the air phase, healing will change significantly, and get harder since everyone will be running around and you can no longer rely on Prayer of Healing as your primary heal. Always keep PoM and CoH on cooldown while running around, and spam Holy Nova and Flash Heal to catch up on healing when you’ve got yourself comfortably settled behind an Ice Block.

Kel’Thuzad: Healing KT is largely the same as before, to everyone’s relief. KT’s raid damage is more concentrated on a few people in pre-determined intervals (Frost Blast, Frostbolt volley), instead of constant raid damage on everyone like Sapphiron, so even the new CoH will be more than enough. I can’t think of a moment in this fight where I wished my CoH was off cooldown more frequently, except if your raid messed up and got a banshee in its midst during phase 1.

For most of the time lately I’ve been chilling on Luminaria, instead of leveling/gearing/bothering with my other characters on Haomarush Horde. The reasons for that are numerous, but mostly having to do with the difficulty of getting anything done on a low population server. We’ve lately tried yet another raiding alliance that fell apart, due to some loot drama, and the players involved suddenly transferring back to their home server without a single word, over one night.

Being on a high population server simply benefits my casual playstyle much, much more, because I don’t need a guild to get everything done. I can easily PuG any 10man raid so the content is not beyond my reach. I can chain heroics if I want to (groups usually take 5 minutes to set up), premade or PuG battlegrounds (granted, Misery EU is a pretty bad battlegroup for Alliance), find an arena team and have fun with that – and the great thing is that in doing all of these things, I can see a much higher quality of gameplay from other players that is hard to see on my home server. Things both take less time to do, and are easier because of the higher skill level that everyone expects from each other.

Do I miss my Hordies? For sure. As far as I’m concerned, Ely is still my main, and will be my main (until I level Kielle on Grim Batol?). I have history on her, it’s not just a character I can get rid of if I wanted to – she represents all the friends I made and all the fun I had since vanilla WoW. We’ve considered a server transfer to see if we can end up someplace where we can enjoy our Hordies more, however, as a friends group, we all had so many alts, most of them at the level cap, that transferring wasn’t financially viable at all, not to mention the fact that we consider Haomarush home. 

But at least as a friends group we seem to be happy on Grim Batol right now. My forever partner-in-crime Zilli has leveled up a druid himself, and we’ve been rocking arenas, battlegrounds, and happily chaining heroics to gear ourselves up. In future posts, you might read more about our adventures.