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Dawn Moore

Washington, DC - www.discopriest.com, http://wow.joystiq.com/2011/09/14/about-the-bloggers-dawn-moore/

In addition to babbling about priests, films, and rocks at WoW Insider, Dawn writes for LearnToRaid.com, a resource site for PvE, and manages Team ReIGN, a professional StarCraft 2 team.

Spiritual Guidance: Lightwell, Lightspring, and the latest on priest healing in Mists

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Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers the healing side of things for discipline and holy priests. She also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast.

Well, we got it. I never thought I'd see the day, but we finally got the Trial of the Crusader Lightwell that shoots heals at allied players instead of requiring them to click. Holy priests will gain access to the new Lightwell, called Lightspring, using a glyph of the same name. Before you get too excited, however, I should mention that there is a catch. Apparently, automatic Lightwells don't heal for nearly as much as a manual ones do, so depending on the fight and your raid members' ability to use the Lightwell in the first place, you may choose to skip the Glyph of Lightspring now and again.

Good ol' Derevka has already written up a thorough first look at Lightspring in which he points out many of the spell's limitations. In the post, he points out that Lightspring only heals targets at less than 50% of their health, and it has a 5-second cooldown between heals to prevent it from being used as a raid cooldown. To read the rest of Derevka's write-up and see his comparisons on the numerical output of the two spells, head over to Tales of a Priest.

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Filed under: Priest, (Priest) Spiritual Guidance

WoW Meets League of Legends: Transmogrify your hunter into an AD carry

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As a raider, I've come to hate the MOBA genre over time. My guild was raiding Icecrown Citadel when Heroes of Newerth first came out, and within a few weeks, I quickly noticed the effect it had. Being in a progression guild, my guildmates were usually patient, focused, and committed when putting in the long hours needed to secure not just server firsts but the highest possible world rankings we could.

After HoN came out, however, it all changed. Core members of the raid were frequently dodging raid nights, and a few times the raid leader even called the night early when progression on a boss fight wasn't up to his satisfaction. The reason? He and half the guild were more interested in playing HoN than raiding.

In the past six months, I've noticed the same thing happening again with League of Legends -- only it's a hundred times worse, because it seems like everyone and their mother is playing this game. As such, I have developed a potential solution to dodgy guildmates. Using transmogrification, your guildies can now transform themselves into two of the most popular League of Legends characters, Graves and Ashe. Who knows? In doing so, maybe they'll actually work on last hitting the damned boss for a change.

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Filed under: Transmogrification

Spiritual Guidance: Shadowfiends retire, more priest talent news from Mists beta

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Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers the healing side of things for discipline and holy priests. She also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast.

Do you want to know the greatest and most amazing new thing priests are getting in Mists of Pandaria? It's a squid. Well, it could be an octopus, but I think it's a squid. It's called a Mindbender, and it's our new level 45 talent. The Mindbender is a flying, shadowy squid that serves as an improved version of (read: replacement for) our old pal, Shadowfiend. Our new squid friend does double the damage of Shadowfiend and thus returns twice as much mana. I can only assume the reason he can do this is because he latches onto the heads of our enemies and sucks out their brains, sort of like a Mind Flayer, the squid-faced monsters from Dungeons and Dragons with telekinetic powers. Mindbender, Mind Flayer ... That's right, Blizzard, I'm on to you.

Anyway, I imagine Squiddy will become the prime choice for healing priests in MoP because 1.) mana is mana, and 2.) the other level 45 talents are a bit lackluster. That will unfortunately mean leaving Shadowfiend at home, which is awfully sad, but I've painted up a scenario in my head where Shadowfiend tells me, "Look, Dawn, we've been raiding together for a few years now, and it's about time that I caught up on all the prime time television I've missed. There's Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and I've still only seen one episode of Game of Thrones. I need a break."

"OK, Shadowfiend," I say to it, "you can stay home this expansion."

"Thanks, dollface," it responds with Don Draper-esque charm and winks an eye at me I never knew it had.

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Filed under: Priest, (Priest) Spiritual Guidance

Transmog Inspirations: WoW meets Nintendo, part 2

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I give up. I can't for the life of me create a transmog for Princess Peach. I've tried and I've tried, but there just aren't enough pink clothes in the World of Warcraft to piece together a convincing Peach. I'm sorry, Mario, but you're going to have to settle for some other princess. Princess Poobah? Princess Theradras? Princess ... I can't think of any more. Someone call Anne!

Anyway, this week I decided to put together a few more transmogs based on Nintendo characters. A lot of readers were asking for more, so I made one for Princess Zelda, Toad, and Roy (you know, from Fire Emblem and Super Smash Bros. -- everyone loves Roy!).

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Filed under: Transmogrification

Spiritual Guidance: New priest talents in the Mists of Pandaria beta

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Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers the healing side of things for discipline and holy priests. She also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast.

Let's get the bad news out of the way first: We've already lost Path of the Devout on beta. The good news is that in its place, we now have Feathers From Heaven, a talent that allows priests to lay out a little track of speed-boosting feathers. Think of them as those little speed arrows in Mario Kart, only they're feathers, and you can put them wherever you please.

The individual feathers have no expiration that I can tell, so you can lay them out in advance on one end of the room for special tactics in your raid encounters or PvP, if it suits your fancy. The ability has no mana cost at the moment. Instead, it is limited by charges: one feather per charge, and you can have three charges at a time. You can place one feather right after the other, but it takes 10 seconds to restore one charge. This allows you to spam three of them on the ground in succession if you like (something you can't do with Body and Soul) or spread them out gradually ahead of you in your path. They can be used by any friendly target, not just party members, so be mindful of people's stealing them if you're using them while leveling to snatch up quest items. Oh yeah, and the feathers can be used on top of water with Levitate.

So, you're excited about Mists of Pandaria now, right?

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Filed under: Priest, (Priest) Spiritual Guidance

Guide to transmogrification resources

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You just spent 13,000 gold on a pair of purple boots. No, not purple quality -- purple as in the color. What? It matched the subtle detailing on your tier 2 shoulders perfectly. OK, maybe not perfectly, but it's close enough. Wait, maybe you can find something closer? Better go look again.

We get it. You're addicted to transmogrification. Your void storage is packed full of gear that you haven't worn since level 9, and your friends are planning to stage an intervention. You want more -- no, you need more. Fortunately, we're here to help. Like a best friend who brings you a batch of her famous marshmallow chocolate chunk cookies two days after you start a diet, we've compiled a list of transmogrification resources you may find useful in getting your next fix -- I mean, outfit.

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Filed under: Transmogrification

Spiritual Guidance: First impressions of the Mists of Pandaria beta from a healing priest

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers the healing side of things for discipline and holy priests. She also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast.

This past week, I finally got access to the Mists of Pandaria beta, which means I've had lots of shiny new stuff to play with recently. As a healing priest, I gave a thorough look at both holy and discipline priests and found a lot of things I felt I should report back.

First, let's start with Chakra. Before I even finished downloading the beta client, I heard complaints from other priests saying that Chakra states had turned into stances (think warrior stances). The concept of this intrigued me, but when I finally got around to toying around with it, I didn't really know why anyone would think too much of it. The stances simplify Chakra, so rather than having to press two buttons to change to Chakra: Sanctuary, all you have to do is hit one. If you want to switch again, there is a 30-second cooldown before you can swap.

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Filed under: Priest, (Priest) Spiritual Guidance

How to go tribal with transmogrification

Do you like hugging trees? Did you want to see more of D.E.H.T.A. in Wrath of the Lich King? If you answered yes to either of those questions, this week's transmogrification guide is for you. This week, we're going to be exploring that super-chic tribal look the tauren of Azeroth love so much. So if you happen to be a druid who wants to look more the part (or just want to be a rogue who inflicts cognitive dissonance), keep reading.

First off, you should know that at the end of the day, there's a lot of flexibility to this outfit. Anything with wood, leaves, feathers, animal hide, fur, or antlers has the potential to be swapped in. Just be mindful of how you incorporate color. When using earthy-looking armor models, you want to try and keep the earth tones in the same color family. So for example, if your chestpiece is a mustard-colored brown, you may want to make sure most of your browns have a similar hue. When it comes to accents and contrasting color, try to make all of those little details match. So if you get a red headband, trying using a red belt or weapon to tie it all together.

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Filed under: Transmogrification

Spiritual Guidance: Monk healing vs. priest healing in Mists of Pandaria

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers the healing side of things for discipline and holy priests. She also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast.

Well, I don't know about you, but I'm starting to feel pretty pumped up after Monday's release of the information from Blizzard's Mists of Pandaria press event. Some of the new zones are very striking, the pandaren ladies are absolutely adorable, and monks get an ability called Shuffle, which means we'll have an expansion full of Party Rock Anthem jokes to look forward to. Priests didn't see anything new on Monday, but with all the information released about mistweavers and monk healing in general, I thought I might make some comparisons to get a better idea about what priest healing is going to look like in MoP.

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Filed under: Priest, (Priest) Spiritual Guidance

Spiritual Guidance: Prayer of Healing and secondary stats for Mists of Pandaria healers

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers the healing side of things for discipline and holy priests. She also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast.

I trust you all remember that three weeks ago, Blizzard developers stated that Prayer of Healing would no longer be available to priests of every spec. The spell was to become an ability exclusive to the holy tree, and in order to provide the discipline tree with adequate AoE healing, the developers were working on redesigning Holy Nova.

Well, as of earlier this week, it looks like discipline will be keeping Prayer of Healing in Mists of Pandaria after all. The developers made this statement on Tuesday.

Kaivax -- Talent update: Priests
Prayer of Healing can be used by Holy and Discipline once again. We realized that the goal of making Holy Nova an effective AE healing tool was problematic. It meant that we would have to change Holy Nova so thoroughly, that it was becoming a second Prayer of Healing. Remember: we aren't even in beta yet, and we want to retain as much opportunity as possible to respond to player feedback throughout the rest of this process. Things will change for priests, and every other class, over the coming weeks.

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Filed under: Priest, (Priest) Spiritual Guidance

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