Discipline Priest

                 Discipline Priest is overlooked by many. Those who play Disc will often be called "useless" healers because the heal count is low. Others will mock you saying Disc is for pvp and proceed to ask the Leader to kick you from raid. But Disc is more than a healer, it's a real "health" giver, as shields raise the target's fortitude momentarily, increasing the maximum damage it can take. Those who know best understand how broken is Disc and how useful is in every raid, regardless of the boss' mechanics.

Let's go first by saying you can't play Disc as you play your regular healer. Disc is meant to protect, to act before the damage has been inflicted. First we'll go by the talent specs you can use:

Dungeons:

This spec is best suited for dungeons, where you will rarely face party-wide damage. Your main focus is keeping Power World: Shield (PW:S) on the tank and just Penance/Flash Heal as you need. 

Raids:

 

This spec is better suited for raiding. At higher gear levels your PW:S will be much stronger than 1 Renew (Instant protection vs a "will help you slowly" spell), so you're better off spending one GCD shielding.

• Aspiration 2/2: This mainly to use Penance more often and to give Power Infusion to that Mage/Warlock doing tons of damage at least 3 times per boss fight. Both your Pain Suppression and Inner Focus will mostly be used once per fight.
• Focused Will 3/3: This is really just to ditch points as 3% critical increase means more chances to proc Divine Aegis.
• Improved Flash Heal 0/3: Since you're using Penance more often, Flash Heal gets relegated to "will use if necessary", that won't happen often unless your raid setup requires you to, more info on this later.
• Desperate Prayer 1/1: It's a real lifesaver as it allows you to instantly heal yourself while moving. Disc is a high mobility healer and this helps towards that.
• Holy Reach: This might seem only useful for Holy Priest but that's a wrong assumption. Depending on your raid setup you might be needed to do raid-wide healing and relying on your Prayer of Mending (PoM) alone won't help much there. One Borrowed Time (BT) buff will boost a Prayer of Healing's spell haste by 25%, making it even more reliable for disc than Holy (Since holy has to stack up Serendipity and that requires at least 2 GCD with Flash heal or 1 with Binding Heal to get a similar 24% haste for it). Since you keep the most of the raid shielded with PW:S you will have lots of BT to use and this just makes your Prayer of Healing more effective for spread fights.

Major Gyphs:

Recommended:

• Penance: Penance is unarguably the best single target heal a Priest can pull off and this glyph allows you to use it more often.
• Power Word: Shield (PW:S): This is the spell you cast the most so using its glyph seems reasonable. The heal amount is small but this is actually good since it won't cause overheal, making it somewhat effective.

Situational:

• Glyph of Prayer of Healing (PoH): If you find yourself more and more doing raid healing or if an encounter has a lot of raid damage, this glyph might just be what you're looking for. Even better if you picked Holy Reach talent.
• Glyph of Flash Heal (FH): If you're up for Tank healing duty this is the glyph you need, as Penance although very good, it won't keep up with the Boss' damage on the tank, forcing you to Flash Heal. FH is not very cost friendly and this glyph helps there.
• Glyph of Renew: Renew is not great for Disc, mostly because it can't crit therefore it can't give any shield, also deep Holy has the best talents to make it a more worth GCD. If you're doing 10 modes and everyone has Weakened Soul (WS) effect and your Prayer of Mending+Penance are on cooldown, you might as well use Renew.
• Hymn of Hope: It just gives that 20% bonus mana pool for another 2 seconds, the amount of charges remain the same, a pretty meh glyph.

Minors:

• Shadow Protection: Useful in every raid.
• Fortitude: Buffed stamina to the guy that just got resurrected or did your Stamina buff a second before tank pulled? This one is somewhat useful.
• Shackle Undead: Disable a foe from a safe distance? This is WotLK, undead errwhere.
• Levitate: ???

Stat prios

As a healer your main concern must always be having enough resources to do your job, that is having enough mana reserve. As you start your Disc adventure you first want to have enough mana reserve for the dungeons you will farm. Whilst you can stop and drink to refill your mana, doing it after every group of foes will slow down your group considerably, and you don't want that in a party with random strangers, oh no...

Low gear: Intellect>Spirit>Spell Power.
              Reds: Runed.
              Yellows: Brilliant.
              Blues: Sparkling.

You can mix those stats as you please with Purple/Orange/Green gems but try to follow the prios. As you get better gear (after an average of 232) you change your prios to the following (slowly as you progress your gear):

Mid/Higher: Spell power>Intellect>Spirit.
               Reds: Runed.
               Yellows: Luminous.
               Blue: Purified.

The focus changes entirely to Spell power, as your main spell (PW:S) scales greatly with your Borrowed Time talent.

Haste or Crit?

Haste and Critical are regular Dps stats and heals don't usually rush items with them. The reason behind this is simple: In spite of heals getting stronger, your overheal also increases which is wasted mana, thus making you an ineffective healer. Another reason is, dps have many tools to get back big amounts of mana, and even if they do go oom the raid won't notice much because there are many dps in a raid, contrary to only 5 healers; losing 1 heal means 20% less raid healing, if the healers are doing a similar job overall.

Taking that into account, healers prioritize mana reserves until the gear is very good. Regarding Disc things are a little different. First of all your haste gets capped rather easily (154 haste for a 1 second GCD if you have 3% aura and 5% from totem) due to BT. Almost every weapon in Icecrown Citadel and Trial of the Crusader has haste in it and 2 out of the 5 T10 pieces have haste, therefore your haste soft cap will be reached without issues. Crit is a much better stat for Discipline and gives you more chances of Divine Aegis procs (The shield from your PW:S can crit, although it's not that significant in the grand scheme of things). With this in mind, you can easily figure out that although haste is important before 154, it loses importance rather quickly, while crit continues to be useful and has no real cap thanks to Divine Aegis. So in case you have two items with same ilvl, one crit and the other one haste, you can pick wisely now.

Intellect or Spirit?

If your mana suffers, Intellect is the way to go as Disc. Spirit should just come in your gear and maybe from Purified purple gems. If you need more reassurance, keep reading.

Rapture

This talent is probably the best mana source generation effect after replenishment (yes, you heard me Paladins and your Divine plea). It seems a little lackluster because it's only 2.5% on you when the shield breaks and 2% on the shielded target (along the other resource types), but the truth relies in the numbers...The cooldown is 12 seconds, this means you have 5 sure procs if you use them on tanks and other targets taking heavy damage, that gives you 15% of your total mana, without the need to lose 50% of your healing done. Not just that, although the cooldown presumably only allows one proc every 12 seconds, if two of your shields break at the same time you get twice the amount (5%) in a single proc, or three times the amount if three break, or... you get the idea. Multi procs are hard to master but if you know the encounter it shouldn't be that complicated. This is another reason why you shouldn't reapply your PW:S; just let it break and give you mana!

Pro tip: You can use lower rank PW:S to achieve this Rapture multi proc, although it is very hard to master.

How do I know an item is an upgrade?

Remember the stat prios. Let's consider Item X. Does X have haste? Your cap is 154 with all haste buffs considered (not Heroism/Bloodlust considered); if X has no haste points and you are haste capped then you can consider X an upgrade if the ilvl is higher than your current item (and of course if you're not replacing an item with haste). The next thing to check for is the mana regeneration stat, because if it lacks haste then it must have mp5 or Spirit in it; obviously Spirit is the preferred stat, but if you can't find anything else in that slot, then mp5 will have to do. Better items (213 and above) have an additional stat, if the above conditions are met then that stat will be Critical; this one is fine since it favors your Divine Aegis. Congratulations, you can use X!

  A little Theorycrafting

A lot of people believe haste and crit are very important stats for a disc, and even forgo stats with spirit to use a haste/crit item. For all those people I can only say 1 thing: You fail. Well, now that I have your attention I'll just explain with numbers (because numbers don't lie).

First of all, establish a rotation; if you look at the most used spells their cooldowns are low (10s PoM and 8s Penance), so in a 10s span, you will do 1 PoM, 1 Penance and the rest of the time you will fill with PW:S. Penance is actually around 1.35s with your haste cap and other haste buffs, so we have:

• 7 Power word: Shield (7 seconds)
• 1 Prayer of Mending (1 second)
• 1 Penance (1.35 seconds)
• Waste time: .65 seconds (If your latency is not close to 0, you can consider this time as Latency)

Eventually you will use two penance in a 10s span because it has 8s cooldown, that's where that .65s fills in (Or latency). Now that you know what you're doing let's see the stat benefits:

                                                              Benefits from

       Spell name              Spell Power            Haste           Critical

Power Word: Shield           Yes                       No                 No

Prayer of Mending             Yes                       No                 Yes

Penance                             Yes                      Yes                 Yes

A note on Penance crits: You really just need one of the ticks to crit, two crits is a waste because on average a boss does 1 auto attack every 2 seconds; but a tank won't take damage every 2 seconds, this timer will be increased further by factoring in avoidance stats, making it somewhere between 3 seconds depending on the tank. More than 90% of the time the first critical heal from Penance will be overwritten by the second critical before it does its part, therefore although Penance can crit, only 1 crit will be helpful, the rest will be overheal or waste. Run the math if you don't believe me: 3 ticks in 1.35s means a tick every .45s, no tank will take damage that fast. Anyway, the real benefit from Penance crit is putting Inspiration buff (and Grace) on the tank, the absorb will be a meager ~2k that will be gone with literally any source of damage. (40% crit is enough for Penance to crit at least once, you get this fairly easy if you respect the stat prios I mentioned before and the usual raid buffs you get from other classes). 

Another thing worth mentioning is, although the PW:S glyph heal can crit, whether it does or not won't make a noticeable difference in the heal meter, in other words, you don't cast PW:S for the heal from glyph, you do it to PROTECT people. Always keep that in mind.

Ok then, having this in consideration, we come to the realization that 70% of our spells cast in a 10s span don't benefit from haste and crit stats, and from the 30% remaining, 10% benefits fully from crit but not from haste, and the last 20% benefits fully from haste but just mildly from crit. 

Quantifying this even further, we have a 100% benefit from spell power, 30% from crit and only 20% from haste; this means every time you stack haste beyond the cap you're getting only 20% benefit from it, and only 30% benefit from crit. This is why spell power is king, followed by intellect to cast nonstop. Critical heals cause overheal but since you have Divine Aegis, it is accepted that Critical is superior to haste, at least slightly due to this.


Last thoughts regarding stats and gear:

Generally, your only worry is keeping that haste stat at 154 or just a little above it in case you don't have the other buffs (433 without any external aura/totem). Dungeons don't matter much, or at least not for long, so while you're in that stage haste is a whatevs stat. In a raid, missing those buffs is a huge pushback in raid performance; missing a shaman is also missing Heroism/Bloodlust so generally the shaman will be present in most 10modes. Retribution or Balance may not be present in a 10 mode but almost every 25mode will have at least one of these. If you want to set your haste to 256 (if only 5% totem is present) for 10 modes that's fine too, just don't sacrifice spell power to have this rating.

At very high gear, I'm talking about full 25n modes geared, your mana reserve becomes so good you can even modify your rotation a little and use Prayer of Healing regularly. The reason you didn't do this before is due to the high cost of the spell, but at high gear (or should I say high intellect) you stop worrying about that; remember to use it with a BT charge.

Playing Disc

Now that you have your desired talent spec and you are aware what Disc needs to gear you will learn how to play Discipline. Like I said before Disc plays, preferably, before damage happens. PW:S is your bread and butter; let's say it shields for 10k damage on average, that means that for 30 seconds you are increasing a target's health by 10k, thus making everyone mini tanks... amazing!

It's no surprise when Disc is treated as a raidwide protector, as raising a target's health by ~30% (non tank) seems more plausible than raising another one's by merely ~15% (on an average tank) or less. The 2 T10 bonus tried to help Disc a little by giving Flash Heal a nice hot, but still Disc will be better by focusing on the raid rather than only on the tank(s).

There is a priority as to how you will use your precious GCDs:

1. PW:S on tank(s), always. Same applies to anyone else with heavy damage on them. Don't reapply it before it breaks, let your Rapture talent do its job.
2. PoM always on cooldown. To make sure it triggers asap use it on the tank following a PW:S, or someone that is about to take heavy damage enough to break the PW:S you supposedly dropped before.
3. Penance on whoever has less than half health, or use it on the tank taking the most damage. This works like your PoM except for single target, it does 3 ticks (jumps in the case of PoM) and each one can crit and add a shield. It's important that you have this on cooldown all the time if damage is being taken that goes beyond your shield in a rather fast way. Remember Penance applies Grace, so if you are helping with tank healing duty keep the Grace stacks solely on the tank.
4. From here you can do 2 things: PoH or FH; you will go with the former if the raid is taking heavy damage, or go with the latter if only one or two in your raid are taking heavy damage.
5. Go back to first priority or redo from fourth priority if the danger is still high, or third priority if your Penance is back.

Seeing this in a spell priority list, it can go like this:

1. PW:S on target taking or about to take damage.
2. PoM on tank or target taking heavy damage if it has WS.
3. Penance if PoM on cooldown. If damage is too high go to next priority.
4. Prayer of Healing if raid damage is too high for your shields (and the other healer's heals) to keep up with.

If the raid is not taking much damage you can chill a little and simply spam PW:S on every raidmate and Penance the tank just to refresh Inspiration.

Each time you cast PW:S you get BT, use this to your advantage for every spell that requires a cast time or channeling. Remember Penance benefits from your BT buff but it doesn't consume it when you cast it, so right after Penance you can use FH or PoH for a very fast heal. Disc (and healer priest generally speaking) has high mobility, make use of it and avoid as much damage as you can.

Something to consider is, for 25 modes, you can remove Penance and PoM from your rotation entirely if the other healers are doing a great job at keeping everyone healthy, if that's the case just PW:S spam on everyone, reapplying PW:S on the tanks as soon as WS debuff is gone as priority.

Tank healing duty (situational)

They want you to tank heal?!? Are they crazy? Are YOU crazy? To be fair the other heal specs may be better at it, but that doesn't mean Disc can't perform. This will happen mostly in a 10mode as having a Holy Paladin in 25mode is extremely important, and Holy paladin will do this job better. If the other healer is a Druid or Shaman you can offer yourself as tank healer. First of all use this talent spec:

• Grace 1/2: Your penance is used on the tank so 1 point is enough, Penance will have 87.5% chance to apply at least one charge per use.
• Renewed Hope 2/2: It gives 2% crit per point to your main heals here, Penance and Greater heal (GH).
• Divine Fury 5/5: Solely for GH.
• Improved Renew 3/3: You will use Renew with this spec so you might as well buff it.

The playstyle changes as well, as you change your mindset from being a PW:S spammer to simply using PW:S to gain Borrowed Time for more effective Penance and GH. So it goes like this:

1. PW:S on tank(s) as soon as WS debuff is gone.
2. Penance always with BT and always have it in cd (Remember Penance doesn't consume BT).
3. Renew on the tank(s), remember instants don't consume your BT.
4. If Penance is in cd and Renew is on the tank, use the last seconds of your BT with a GH.

Things to consider:

• Don't spam your PW:S on everyone; your BT buff will last 4s after GCD from the PW:S is over, then 2.35s from both Penance and Renew, that means you have 1.65s left to use your hasted GH. Once that GH is finished you can PW:S someone to gain BT and start again
• You don't use PoM much with this spec, mostly because there's no reassurance that it will always bounce between the tanks.
• Use Glyph of Renew as your third glyph option.
• If you need BT, you can shield yourself or someone else taking damage, that's perfectly plausible as well, just make sure you use that BT to heal the tank.
• Depending on the encounter, you can incorporate Flash Heal, but generally GH is a safer choice as it benefits more from haste and gives more shield on crit. Another reason is, since Flash Heal heals less, you will inevitably be forced to cast a few of them without BT, making overall heal lower.
• Haste and crit stats gain more value, as you cast less PW:S.
• If you find yourself in trouble, use Power Infusion and GH to your heart's content.

This playstyle is harder due to having more things to keep in mind. You can swap points from Improved Healing if mana is not a concern to something you consider more important.

When to use cooldowns?

Using cooldowns as a healer works in a very similar way as how tanks use theirs. Whenever you think someone is in real danger of dying you might use one of your many cooldowns you have as priest.

• Power Infusion is usually used on a high dps caster, but it can also be used on yourself to power up your long cast time spells. Something often overlooked is the fact that it also reduces costs by 20% so use this to your advantage if your mana is draining fast.
• Pain Suppression is best used on the Tank if damage taken in the next few seconds could cause its death. Usually dps get the blame for getting themselves killed, but if you know the Tank is strong and won't die anytime soon you can choose to save the dps. Needless to say, healers have the next priority after the tank.
• Inner Focus has a long cooldown and it might not seem worth, but have you considered using it with Divine Hymn? A BT buff with Inner Focus can give you a pretty strong and fast to cast Divine Hymn, something the Holy spec can only dream about (not to mention it makes it FREE to cast). If you feel wild you can even Power Infusion yourself to boost the haste on the channel even further. Use this only if a wipe is at risk as it is your best combo.
• Hymn of Hope is best used after you summon your Shadowfiend, when you are at your lowest mana left. The 20% mana increase will allow your little pet to return you absurdly high amounts of mana. To make sure you don't spend an eternity casting this make sure you have a BT buff on you as you cast it.
• Shadowfiend is a pet, therefore it can get buffs like Heroism/Bloodlust when your Shaman in raid uses the ability. As you might guess, the more attacks the pet performs the more mana you get back, so if you know when your Shaman will use the best raid buff available you can also summon your pet a few seconds before.
• Fear Ward lasts 3 min and has 3 min cd, you can just keep yourself buffed all the time without consequences.
• Non critical Desperate Prayer heals about the same as a Critical FH. Use only while moving and if you can't spare a Penance. Remember it can crit and benefit from Divine Aegis.

 Macros

There aren't that many pve macros for priest (at least I don't think there should be a lot). I have so much fun with my hotkeys that I don't use many of them. Even so there are some macros you can use yourself as a starting Disc:

Inner Focus

#showtooltip Divine Hymn
/cast Inner focus
/cast Divine Hymn

This is self explanatory. Your strongest and most expensive spell is the one you must use with Inner Focus.


#showtooltip Power Infusion
/cast [target=name] Power Infusion

This will use PI on any desired target you wish, name can be your name as well if you are feeling wild.

#showtooltip
/castsequence Prayer of Mending, Penance

If you didn't pick talents to lower the cooldown of your Penance, you can use this one to have your PoM and Penance in the same button, since PoM has 10s cd as Disc and Penance has 10s as well if you use the glyph but not the Aspiration talent.

Addons

I don't use any specific addon for Disc priest aside from my UI addon, my action bar addon and my heal/absorbs meter. Regardless of this I recognize OmniCC can be useful to track your Penance and Prayer of Mending spells to know exactly when they will be off cd, in addition to PI and the others of course.

Last thoughts

                 Even tho Disc is a unique heal spec the same rules apply to it as to other healers: Your life>others. keep yourself out of danger so you don't have to waste GCDs healing yourself while others die because you were careless. Remember Disc is a high mobility spec, show your skill by taking the least damage while also keeping everyone's health safe. Disc is so versatile you can be a Tank healer (with the proper spec) if your raid setup requires it. Having played all heal classes at high end raiding I can safely say Disc is the most enjoyable one, at least for me. Give it a shot, you might stick to it over Holy; not to mention Disc can do many things other specs can't do.

Protection Warrior

It hasn't been long since I posted a guide on how-to with Paladin Tank, now I'm posting one with Warrior Tank. It's actually a futile attempt on making every warrior dps out there to respec to tank; not gonna happen but at least I can try! Let's begin with a basic understanding of what a Warrior tank does and how.

A Warrior tank is an armor and health juggernaut, a spec focused entirely on taking direct hits at a reduced damage thanks to the focus on the aforementioned high armor and stamina stats. It is in fact more similar to Druid tank than to Paladin tank in spite of both using shields. However Warrior gets the job done better than a Druid and we'll see why in this post.

Talent spec

This is currently the talent spec I'm using.

As with many talent specs there are variations but I will take the time as I always do to explain my choices on some controversial selections.

Deep Wounds 0/3: Some might argue why I forgo this talent when many tanks go three points there. First let's look at the math behind this talent: 48% over 6 seconds, all raid buffs considered allow you to keep the bleed with a 100% uptime, which results in a constant 8% average weapon damage per second, this becomes 10.4% if a Mangle effect is on the target. In a best case scenario, within a time span of 10 seconds you will do 104% average weapon damage, which is basically 1 free auto; except this "free" auto will not give you rage, will not critically strike and you can't clip an Heroic Strike to it. So basically you're spending 3 talents for 1 underpowered white hit every 10 seconds considering all buffs and no bad luck involved. Not worth at all considering Warrior builds aggro with Heroic Strike spam and Shield Slam/Revenge procs.

Improved Disciplines 2/2: Some say a Shield Wall down from five to four min cooldown won't make a difference considering most boss fights don't even reach the 4 min mark. This is totally true and basing our decisions on this thought we should forbid this talent from all specs. Except if you're using Glyph of Shield Wall of course, putting your SW in a very nice 2 min cooldown. I will go in-deep with this in the glyphs section.

Safeguard 2/2: This is so nice, and not just for PvP. Let's think of the situations where Intervene is useful. If you wanted to save someone wouldn't just be easier to Taunt? Therefore the redirection of 1 melee attack is a very meager effect for a 30 sec cooldown skill. So what makes this talent so good? This talent gives a small feel-like of how Paladin tanking fares. As Paladin you can use Hand of Sacrifice on a tank to lessen the damage taken by it, making healer's job easier. It's a little complicated if you're not entirely used to boss mechanics, but if you are this thing is truly amazing: 30% for 6 seconds with a 30 sec cooldown, rounded to a more linear amount it gives 6% constant reduction on the other tank (as long as you use it every time is ready and you are Off Tanking!); truly amazing! Even if you don't use it every 30 sec to make the most of it you can save it for when the boss gains some damage boost. Just don't use it if boss is on you because boss will follow you and keep in mind it reduces threat by 10% on your target, as long as a rogue is using Tricks of the Trade every 30 seconds as well (Because of the 2 set bonus from Rogue T10) threat shouldn't be a problem (Taunt trading helps). Check the macros section to make the Intervene easier to use.

Improved Charge 2/2: Charge adds versatility to Warrior tanking, it's useful to stop a minion dead in its tracks and also gives you a good chunk of rage for a couple of Heroic Strike and Devastation without worrying about going out of Rage. Needless to say it gives you a heads-up when you jump on boss at pull.

Stat Priorities

Like every tank not named Druid, aim for Defense Cap. Once capped focus on your Expertise, then Hit rating and finally Stamina. The numbers go like this (in order of importance):

1. Defense Cap: 535 for dungeons and 540 for raids. Focus on getting that critical strike immunity first.
2. Expertise: Parries and Dodges hurt tanks more than they hurt melee dps. getting Expertise soft capped must be your goal after that Defense cap (6.5% or 26 expertise). If you want to go with some more it's not harmful either.
3. Hit Rating: You need Hit after your Expertise has been dealt with. Get 8% and don't worry anymore about those misses. Remember every time you are not building threat the chance of getting a mdps killed increases.
4. Stamina: Once your numbers elsewhere are set right you can devote yourself to increasing that health pool as much as you want.
5. Armor: The only way to get bonus armor is through the use of Agility gems but this is not advisable. Any bonus armor you get will have to be passively through items with a green bonus armor stat. These items usually leave out some stat like Dodge or Parry to get that higher armor stat, but that's fine for you. You should favor these kind of items over others of similar level.

Warrior tank is a little warped and the reason behind this is Shield Block. Shield Block is an amazing defensive skill, giving you twice as much block value for 10 seconds with a 40 seconds cooldown is indeed amazing. The problem relies on that pesky 100% block rating bonus. You see, the limit of avoidance is 102.4% so a bunch of that block rating bonus is wasted, it could have given less block rating and have a reduced cooldown but Blizzard decided not troll instead.

Chill of the Throne

It's a pest, but warrior doesn't care much about the loss of dodge with that high armor and bonus block rating. This debuff hurts Druid the most because it causes the majority of melee attacks from a boss to land on it, which makes Savage Defense more important to proc everytime, anyway this is one of the reasons Druid is the last option of a tank when raiding Icecrown Citadel. Not that Warrior tank is super good but more like Druid tank is bad.

 Gems and enchants

• Meta: Eternal Earthsiege Diamond if not defense capped, otherwise Austere Earthsiege Diamond.
• Red: Guardian's Dreadstone if you need Expertise, or Solid Majestic Zircon.
• Yellow: Vivid Eye of Zul if you need Hit, or Solid Majestic Zircon.
• Blue: Solid Majestic Zircon.  

To know if the socket bonus is worth you must analyze your stat needs. It's not a rule of thumb to put Solid Majestic Zircons everywhere, focus on having the right Defense/Exp/Hit stats and then you can just go with Stamina gems everywhere. A socket bonus with +12 Stamina is hard to ignore so if you want to go for it you are free to do so.

Regarding enchants, treat your choices based on the stat priorities I mentioned before. Lifeward or Blade Ward both work fine on your weapon. +18 Stamina on your shield, +15 Stamina and move speed on your boots rather the +22 Stamina one.

Professions:

Blacksmith Jewelcrafting are always the most flexible choices. If you're feeling lazy you can go with Mining for the 60 passive Stamina bonus and anything not Tailoring/Herbalism/Skinning/Alchemy/Engineering. Professions with Stamina choices are the best.

Glyphs

The only Glyph that is a must-have is Glyph of Blocking, from there there are plenty of glyphs to use, depending on the situation and the raids you frequent (not in order of importance):

• Glyph of Revenge: If you feel your Rage generation is low this is a good option.
• Glyph of Shield Wall: Remember Improved Disciplines? This will allow you to use your best defensive skill at least twice per fight, and in some fights even thrice. Only use this glyph if you went Improved Disciplines 2/2, otherwise it's not very worth.
• Glyph of Last Stand: If you didn't feel compelled to use Improved Disciplines and the Glyph of Shield Wall, this glyph is perfectly viable as well. Just remember having more health is not the same as taking less damage, you're merely converting overheal into effective health since technically you're taking the same damage, but critical heals will not be wasted for the duration of the buff. Keep in mind you better use Enraged Regeneration in unison with Last Stand, but Regeneration has 3 min cooldown.
• Glyph of Heroic Strike: Another Rage generation glyph, the option is there if you want more rage. All buffs considered your Heroic Strike can critically hit more than 30% of the time, consider your weapon speed for a closer calculation of how much rage you would get in a desired time span.
• Glyph of Vigilance: This is best for dungeons where you might not get a Tricks of the Trade or Misdirection effect to help you out. It's also good if you are low geared.
• Glyph of Taunt: This is a fine Glyph, but you have Mocking Blow too and the chances of both failing in succession are way too low. I wouldn't bother with this one but hey the option is there.
• Glyph of Cleave: Cleave will drain your rage pretty fast, this is more of a situational Glyph if you are often tanking more than two minions.
• Glyph of Devastate: This one will make you generate threat faster but it's generally not worth it, unless you switch targets often.

Minor Glyphs

There are plenty of choices, with Glyph of Thunder clap being the most appealing one for a tank. The other two glyphs can be any combination of:

• Glyph of Command Shout.
• Glyph of Bloodrage.
• Glyph of Mocking Blow.

 Skill Priorities

Warrior tank doesn't have a rotation like Paladin, instead works around procs and prios. From start to end this is how it goes:

1. Heroic Throw and Charge immediately during pull (preferably).
2. Thunder clap every 29 seconds (You can skip this if you have a Death Knight dps using Icy Touch on your target)
3. Revenge procs.
4. Shield Slam procs.
5. Devastate when no procs are available.
6. Heroic Strike.

For Area of Effect threat just Thunder clap and Shockwave as much as possible and replace Heroic Strike with Cleave. It will drain your rage pretty fast but as long as you keep minions on you it won't be that bad, they will also give you more rage when they hit you.

Heroic Strike: Why do I put Heroic strike as low priority? Truth be told HS is just there to ditch your rage, the damage bonus is not that high although the threat is a nice bonus. When should you HS? If you have more than 40 rage you should HS spam, until you're at around ~15 then take a small break from it. If you use both Heroic Strike and Revenge Glyphs you can spam it and your threat will skyrocket, however this is hardly necessary considering threat misdirection skills from a Rogue or Hunter plus Vigilance. Speaking of Vigilance the best target is usually a Warlock or a Mage, or a guy that skipped threat reduction talents.

When to use your survival skills

Like I've said before many fail on this one, not knowing when to use cooldowns. Fortunately Warrior has several skills that can be used in succession with little backfire. If you notice a soon to be increase of damage taken you should always Shield Wall first, after the effect ends if the storm hasn't passed you should Last Stand +Enraged Regeneration. Don't save your Shield Block, use it every time it is up.

Macros

I don't use any macros for Warrior because I find it fun to click HS and Cleave when needed. The only macro I would recommend is one for Intervene:

#showtooltip Intervene
/cast [@name] Intervene

Just a simple macro to use Intervene instantly on a defined party or raid member. I recommend putting the other tank's name where name is. Additionally you can bind Heroic Strike to Revenge, but that's boring.

Tips

• You build a lot more rage by having something hitting you, use Charge if nothing is doing so.
• Use Bloodrage and Berserker Rage often.
• Keep Shield Block up at all times, unless nothing is hitting you.
• Heroic Throw a minion you wish to pull in case your Charge is in cooldown or you wish to save Taunt.
• If you are not tanking the boss you can take a few steps back and Intercept on the tank taking boss, this will redirect some damage to you which is good for healers.
• This has nothing to do with Warrior but a lot to do with Tanks: Be aware of other's status, check your healer's mana reserve often and if the other tank is doing well.

That's all I have to say regarding Warrior tanking. I hope it was useful enough to make you a better tank. I hope no Druid tank took offense on my statements.

Marksmanship Hunter Pve

              I was inclined to do a different guide for the next entry but someone asked me to write one for MM so here it is. If someone still hasn't gotten right to it I'll just say it: MM hunter is the highest dps spec a hunter can have. It's not particularly hard to learn either and just as fun as any of the others. So let's get down to business, talents first as usual:

This is the talent spec that offers the highest damage.You can make a few changes depending on your stats and mana issues such as:

Rapid Recuperation X/2: If there is no Judgement of Wisdom effect on the boss you can move points from Improved Barrage to this one; hunter can oom quite fast and having a haste stat over 200 won't help on your mana reserve; switching to Viper Aspect will lower your damage badly. Despite the chances are high you won't oom due to the many buffs in a 25 raid, this option is perfectly viable.

Improved Hunter's Mark X/3: If you are hit capped from gear and you don't need Focused Aim, you can move points from there to Improved Hunter's Mark. It's even better if there are other hunters in the raid as the benefit will multiply.

Trueshot Aura 0/1: If you know there will be a Blood Death Knight or an Enhancement Shaman in your raid, you can remove this and put it elsewhere.

Your Survival and Beast Mastery talents will seldom be different.

Stat priorities:

Below 400 armor penetration aka low gear your focus should be attack power. Once you get past this number it is better to go full armor penetration through gems. Eventually, whether by farming emblems or joining raids, your ArmorPen will scale much better than Attack Power or Agility could ever do. So the stat priorities look like this:

Hit Rating>Armor penetration until hard capped (1399)>Agility>Crit>Attack Power>Haste

Know that a hunter gets hit capped at 8%. With Focused Aim you just have to get 5% from your items, or 4% if you get a Draenei often in your group. Hunter attacks cannot be dodged or parried. Agility is a better option over everything else once you reach the hard ArmorPen cap. Your pet gets your hit rating from gear only and rounds down everytime, just for you to know.

Haste is not a very good stat for a hunter, while most casters and several dual wielders love it, for a hunter is a hassle and not worth gemming/enchanting for it. You should also try to avoid gear with haste unless the upgrade over your former item is very worth it.

Gems and enchants:

Gems are pretty straightforward: Red ArmorPen gems everywhere if your ArmorPen from items is above 400, use Nightmare Tear in a blue socket to get your Relentless Earthsiege Diamond meta gem active. If you need to decide where to put your Prismatic gem try to pick the best socket bonus, usually an item with red+blue sockets so the bonus is higher. Enchants should focus on attack power. If you manage to get ArmorPen hard capped you should gem Agility/Critical Orange gems in yellow sockets.

Professions:

Blacksmith and Jewelcrafting are the best by far, but if you are feeling adventurous you can replace either with a profession that gives attack power as bonus.

Glyphs

Some Glyphs are a must to have while others are a matter of preference or situational:

Glyph of Serpent Sting: Although your Chimera shot resets the sting, the added time on it also increases the shot damage, since it deals a % of the total damage the sting does regardless of the timer left on it, so this glyph directly increases Chimera Shot damage.

Glyph of Steady Shot: You use Steady Shot 4 or 5 times for every Chimera and Aimed Shot you use, it's wise to buff its damage.

Situational/Optional:

Glyph of the Hawk: Not a bad glyph by any means, at high gear your white damage is your highest total; it also helps proc your 2 set bonus from T10. Helpful too if you have some latency issues. I use this one as third option.

Glyph of Kill Shot: Best when the boss has more health pool, or bosses that get more dangerous as they are low health. I personally don't favor this one but hey, up to you.

Glyph of Chimera Shot: By definition, reducing the cooldown from 10 to 9 seconds will increase your Chimera Shot by 10% assuming you use the shot as soon as it is up. This is usually not the case due to latency. If your latency is low you can go with this one.

Glyph of Aimed Shot: This is good if you move a lot as 2 sec less will mean you replace 1 steady shot for an earlier Aimed Shot.

Glyph of Trueshot Aura: If you picked Trueshot Aura you can use this one to further buff your Aimed Shot, needless to say Glyph of Aimed Shot and this one get along. The crit multiplier for a Hunter is very high.

Glyph of Hunter's Mark: If you went with 3/3 Improved Hunter's Mark this one is good too. Much better if your raid setup has usually 2 or more hunters.

Minor glyphs: Up to you.

Shot Priorities:

Your shots have different damage and you should know which ones have higher priority to use if two or more are available at the time. At the start of the fight or before it you will always put Hunter's Mark. In order of importance:

1. Serpent Sting (once per fight)
2. Kill Shot
3. Chimera Shot
4. Aimed Shot
5. Arcane Shot (Low gear)
6. Steady Shot until any other shot is available.

Take out Arcane Shot completely when your ArmorPen rating is above 600. You can still use it as filler in high mobility encounters like Halion or Sindragosa.

Best pets

Wolf is the best pet due to Furious Howl. If you get tired of seeing the same wolf like I do you can tame one that changes color every time you call it, these can be found west of Icecrown where Ymirjar keep their wolves. Another option is a raptor, but the dps is slightly lower.

A couple of tips:

• Improved Steady Shot proc: Use with Chimera Shot. At high armor pen (+1300) use it with Aimed Shot.
• Rapid Fire: Use at the start and as soon as it is off use Readiness and Rapid Fire again. Make sure your Chimera and Aimed shots are in cooldown so you can use them immediatly again.
• Use Call of the Wild when an Heroism/Bloodlust effect is in effect, if not then just use it in conjunction with Rapid Fire.
• Reapply your Serpent Sting when you trigger your T10 2 set bonus only once to keep the bonus damage on it.
• Use Hearty Rhino food if you can afford it.
• Use Silencing shot as often as you can, it triggers no global cooldown!
• Have your pet's Rabid and Furious Howl skills on auto cast.

Macros

I use simple macros on all my characters, these ones are just basic ones for any new hunter:

 #showtooltip XXXX
/console Sound_EnableSFX 0
/cast Silencing Shot
/cast Kill Command
/cast XXXX
/console Sound_EnableSFX 1
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

This macro will cast Silencing Shot and Kill command if they are available while also using the XXXX skill. If they aren't available you won't hear or see any error message from the game. I have this macro tied to my Serpent Sting, Steady and Chimera Shots.

#showtooltip Call of the Wild
/cast Call of the Wild

This one is self explanatory, Call of the Wild.

#showtooltip Misdirection
/cast [@name] Misdirection

Every hunter regardless of spec should have a Misdirection macro. Replace 'name' with the tank you wish to target or if you want to get someone killed just put a dps' name there.

Last Thoughts

Every full dps class has a spec superior in terms of damage to the others, whether is fun or not for you. Despite all dps thrive to be at the top you can always play Beast Mastery or Survival specs, they are perfectly viable and fun. Just remember as long as you know your class you will do better than those playing the best specs if they don't fully know what they are doing.

Paladin Tank

                     One of the roles I do the most is tanking, therefore I get asked a lot on how to tank with X class or what stats are the best for Y class. Well the sad part is I don't have all the answers, but I can provide almost all of them. I'll start with the premier tanking class in WotLK expansion which is Paladin.

Back in the days of TBC paladin used to be a spell power based tank; yes, a tank with spell power everywhere. With the homogenization of plate tank gear for the introduction of the Death Knight class, paladin had to go through the change of using the same gear as Protection Warriors. The changes end there, Blizzard didn't want to make paladin tanks the same as warriors so the threat generation and class particularities remained the same overall. Paladin tanks generate threat through holy damage, there are plenty of sources of threat generation other classes won't make use of; I'll go step by step on how to gear up your paladin tank and why you shouldn't think of it as a warrior just because both equip a shield.

Another misconception is thinking Protection Paladin is easy to play just because Retribution Paladin spec is easy to. Who hasn't heard this?

"Retri pala is a 4 button spec therefore Prot pala must be just as cheap"

This is a very ignorant assumption many make regarding paladins. You will see by yourself soon enough.

Talents

                 This is the best spec for paladin tank focused on 25 man content. Now we will go through the wats and the whys of this spec.

• 2/2 Judgements of the Just: Whilst some may argue Death Knight's(DK) Frost Fever reduces attack speed making this talent unnecessary, truth is some DK tanks skip the talent to make their fever reduce the attack speed from 14 to 20%. DK dps will go 99% of the time with improved Frost Fever, but there's no guarantee a DK will put fever on your target, for example Saurfang during Gunship event or the Oozes at Rotface encounter. I prefer having that nice 20% whenever I want.
• 0/5 Reckoning: It is indeed true your threat will be higher with points here, but the difference is just not worth dropping points from other threat generation talents into this one.
• 1/2 Spiritual Attunement: You don't need two points here, you get enough mana with all the massive damage a MT takes, also considers the four points in Benediction.
• 4/5 Benediction: You need to get to the third tier some way, skipping Heart of the Crusader and Improved Blessing of Might. The reason you skip these two is because Holy Paladins will pick them 99% of the time. You won't give Might over your precious Sanctuary buff. Another reason to skip the 3% is because it doesn't stacks with Totem of Wrath.
• 1/2 Improved Judgements: You only need 1 point due to the Paladin tank Rotation.
• 2/2 Pursuit of Justice: 15% bonus movement speed is great, and you only sacrifice 2% crit from Conviction that most paladin tanks invest on. Just try it out and you'll see how those high mobility bosses are easier to move around.
• 0/1 Seal of Command: Useful only for mobs, it really is useless for boss encounters. Your Hammer of the Righteous applies stacks of Seal of Vengeance so it's not a total loss of AoE aggro if you skip this.

If you think you're not ready for 25 mans or wish to do 10/5 mans more often you can move points from Benediction to Heart of the Crusader and maybe 1 point from Conviction to Seal of Command for 5 mans.

Generic Tanking stats

               There are some numbers you wish to reach regardless of the tank you play, here are some numbers to help you out just in case (in order of importance):

1. Defense Rating (DR): NPCs two levels higher than you (like the ones you find in 5 mans) have a 5.4% critical strike chance with melee attacks; a 535 defense rating will make you uncrittable for these encounters. NPCs three levels higher than you (like the ones you fight in raids) have a 5.6% crit chance, stomp them with 540 defense rating.
2. Hit rating (HR): If you are playing draenei or have one in your group get 7%, otherwise 8%. For 5 mans 7% is enough.
3. Expertise Rating (EPR): Maybe as important as hit, you need 6.5% (26) to hit through your foe's dodge. (82 EPR if you have glyph of Seal of Vengeance).

What stats should my Paladin focus on?

               I sometimes get asked why I don't insert Stamina gems everywhere if Defense rating gets capped and further DR is useless. Well, the answer is further DR for a paladin tank is not useless. This is where people mix up tank stats and think just because something is very good for a class it automatically makes it good for all the others. Yes indeed Stamina scales very well with buffs and the health buff you get inside Icecrown Citadel, but it also makes you a paper-tank. It doesn't matter how much spell damage high-end raids do, that damage will never surpass the damage dealt by physical attacks (or Auto attacks) on the MT. Your focus as a tank regardless of class is to soak damage, to take the least possible damage so heals are not pressured, while generating enough threat (losing aggro 1 second will mean a dead dps, then comes the QQ). We will focus on threat later but for now you must realize paladin tank is very different to the other tanking classes in the sense DR is not a waste of stat (and I don't mind explaining why).

 102.4% is the maximum avoidance to reach in order to avoid all damage taken from melee hits. Whilst other tanking classes can't add up their defensive stats to reach this number, Paladin is the only class capable of getting there thanks to the amazing 30% continuous bonus block chance in Holy Shield. So what happens when you add your chance to avoid+dodge+parry+block=102.4%? Bosses never land their hits fully on you and if they ever do you will block some of it. This is why you don't go 30 Stamina gems everywhere as Paladin.

The gem slots go like this:

• Meta: Effulgent Skyflare Diamond.
• Red: Sovereign Dreadstone prefer, or Guardian's Dreadstone if you're below the EPR cap.
• Blue: Solid Majestic Zircon always.
• Yellow: Enduring Eye of Zul.

The focus is stamina but not gemming full of it gives you a little too from socket bonus, while still going for that 102.4% avoidance. Balancing your tank stats is almost an art.

Armor and Chill of the Throne

               Armor is the best stat for a tank below 30 thousand, after that it loses some importance due to Diminishing returns. Other tank classes might take more armor than paladin but don't underestimate it either. Most items with bonus armor (with the armor amount green colored) forgo parry or dodge chance, those items are usually better for Warrior or DK. Chill of the Throne changes everything; remember when I said you should get 102.4% avoidance with Paladin? Let's say you reached that number and then went to Icecrown Citadel and got that nasty debuff making you lose 20%. Let me tell you there's no point trying to get back your max avoidance, even if you only raid Icecrown Citadel. This is where armor becomes useful, for that 20% chance of receiving a direct hit. Whether you decide to focus on using armor items (like the ones I previously mentioned with green armor amounts) or not, just try not to have more than 102.4% avoidance when you're out of Ic. Citadel. For Heroic raiding you should get high amounts of armor tho because the damage taken will be more consistent and it'll make heals better predict how to heal you, allowing them to put some more focus on boss tactics.

Glyphs

• Major: Divine Plea, Seal of Vengeance, Salvation.
• Minor: Sense Undead, Lay on hands, anything.

               You might wonder why I use Salvation instead of Righteous Defense or some other glyph you're in love with; the reason is after boss falls below 80% health the chance of a dps taking aggro from you is very little, you can safely use Hand of Salvation on yourself without the danger of getting someone killed. Remember what I said earlier, tanks are meant to soak damage while keeping aggro on themselves. 20% damage reduction is nothing to laugh about specially when used right, also your healers will love you (if you're into that kind of thing).

Rotation

                Protection Paladin doesn't have any procs like the other tank classes, it rather goes with a rotation that is carved in stone as the best rotation available for paladin: It's called 696 because it uses two spells with 6 second cooldown and will give the maximum amount of threat possible. The rotation goes as this in this order:

     Shield of the R(6)>Judgement (9)>Hammer of the R(6)>Consecration (8)>Shield of the R(6)>Holy Shield (8)>Hammer of the R(6)>Spells as they come up.

(where the (X) are the cooldowns of the abilities)

You open with Shield of the Righteous to build stacks of Dodge rating from your lvl264 Libram, afterwards a long cooldown skill (with 8 or 9 seconds) then Hammer of the Righteous, then another spell with high cooldown, and so on. It becomes something like this:

SotR>longer cd skill>HotR>longer cd skill>SotR>....

Don't use Holy Shield when you still have it up because although it has 8 sec cooldown the block lasts 10 sec. It's a little hard to get at first but once you get used to it you can just press the buttons without even watching at your bars and focus entirely on the boss fight. The rotation is flexible enough to include other abilities in it like Sacred Shield and Avenger's Shield, just continue using the same order you were using before including the foreign skill and the rotation will go back to normal after 9 seconds.

This is the reason behind the 1/2 Improved Judgements, to have our Judgement on 9 sec cooldown; this rotation can't be used properly if you have 0 or 2 points there so you can always tell the newbie paladins when they put 2 points there (or none); go ahead and inspect full heroic paladins in Dalaran and get surprised when they don't use 696, it's shameful but it clearly shows they aren't using their class to the fullest. Wonder why some tanks lose aggro so easily? Now you got an idea why. It also proves my point regarding Pve raiding: One thing is knowing the encounters and get the job done (even if barely) and another completely different thing (and harder to do) is to learn your class and get the most out of your gear.

If you want to practice it buff yourself Blessing of wisdom, Seal of wisdom, use Judgement of Wisdom and go to a dummy, you can practice for extended periods of time this way.

When to use your defensive spells

                 I often see tanks failing on this, using their defensive abilities when they shouldn't and then dying because they had their stuff in cooldown. You can be aware of this anytime a tank takes too much damage in a short period of time. When you question them about dying too fast they always say I did use them!- Yea I'm sure you did when boss wasn't even hitting you. Knowing the encounter is crucial to press the right skill: Divine Sacrifice when a high amount of AoE is about to happen, or Divine Protection when the boss gains some very dangerous damage buff. In addition you have Hand of Salvation as a cool bonus. The only skill you're not using on yourself is Lay on Hands, save this one to heal the other tank if heals are struggling.

Another situation that presents itself often is when a heal gets disabled (for example a Sindragosa Ice Tomb or Blood Queen's Swarming Shadows) and can't heal for a few seconds. Before you pressure the other heal to blow up cooldowns to heal you use one of your defensive spells to give time to the disabled healer to get back on track. The same applies if a healer dies, don't wait until you're low health. Being aware of what happens to others is a key element and will work you wonders. This is also why 696 is so good, once you're used to it you can oversee everything happening during the fight.

A few of tips

• Always have your Righteous Fury on.
• Always remind the Retri pala in your raid to turn Fury off.
• Use Seal of Vengeance if you're Main tank, or Seal of Light if you're Off tank. (Switch fast to Seal of Vengeance if you must taunt boss)
• Use Holy Shield a few seconds before pulling to have some block from the start.
• Devotion aura unless it is absolutely necessary to use another one.
• Use Judgement of Wisdom if you have a Holy Paladin in your raid.
• Have your Divine Plea up from the start.
• Use Blessing of Sanctuary on yourself always.
• Use Avenging Wrath at the start to build a decent amount of threat.
• Keep Sacred Shield on yourself at all times, or put it on the Main tank if you are Off tank.
• Use Hand of Sacrifice on the other tank if necessary to help the healers.

The end

                Tanking is fun, you don't contest as much for gear and you can always get into groups faster. Just remember, if you're doing everything right and a dps pulls aggro it will always be their own fault, so don't let those filthy dps badmouth you. If you think Prot Paladin is too complicated and not your cup d' tea there's always the three-button alternative nobody fails at: Feral tank druid. Thanks for reading.

Healers

             For this entry I will expose the pros and cons of every heal spec in WotLK, enjoy.

Holy Paladin

Pros

• Best single target heal in the game in Holy Light.
• Strongest single target heal and an absolute tank saver in Lay on Hands.
• Best Tank healing buff (Beacon of Light)
• Absolutely huge mana pool, which makes Replenishment buff and other % mana restore effects restore a lot of mana.
• A reliable and easy to use passive healing effect in Judgement of Light.
• The Auras along with Aura Mastery can help in situations of extreme raid boss AOE.
• A one minute cooldown mana restoration effect.
• Avenging Wrath grants very powerful heals for 20 seconds.
• Survives more than other healers thanks to Divine Shield.
• Cleanse is very good, magic and disease are important effects to remove in 1 GCD.

 Cons

• Very poor AOE heal. Holy Light glyphed helps a ton, but the 8 yards radius restricts it to melee and tanks mostly.
• Holy Light is the main healing spell used, and it is very costly. Makes necessary to stack intellect through gemming.
• Because it requires a lot of intellect stacking, spell power is lacking which makes the scaling of Holy Light somewhat poor.
• Judgement of Light does a lot of the total healing done by a healer paladin, and it can be used by any Paladin regardless of spec; this makes the holy paladin not a must if you have another paladin in raid.
• Although Divine Plea restores a lot of mana, the chances of using it are rather few. The principle is simple: If you cast a lot Holy Light it means the raid is taking more damage than desired which takes away the chances of using your DP, if you decide to use it anyway it will put a lot of stress on the other healers and risk a wipe.
• No heals over time and only Holy Shock for an instant heal (6 seconds cooldown). It could be said Paladin can't heal while moving, which is a huge downside considering many bosses require a lot of positioning.

 tl;dr: Best tank healing and passive healing, bad AOE heal, low mobility.

Priests

Holy

Pros

•  Good AOE heal in Circle of Healing, Prayer of Mending and Prayer of Healing. Divine Hymn can save a raid.
• Best life saver spell in the game in Guardian Spirit.
• With the right spec it can heal and move continuously, making high mobility boss fights rather easy.
• Excellent mana regen thanks to the high spirit stat and Shadowfiend.
• If spec'ed for it can be an optional single target healer with some AOE heal in CoH and PoM.
• Can continue healing for a while in case a death occurs.
• Body and Soul talent is extremely useful. 
• The Hymns are amazing.

Cons

•  The single target heals are rather weak compared to others. Greater Heal cast time is long even including talents, requires lots of serendipity stacks to make it faster cast but you would have to cast Flash Heal 3 times or Binding Heal 2 times beforehand.
• Sadly, the AOE heals of Holy Priest have cooldown. Even though the cooldowns are rather short (6 sec CoH, 7 sec PoM), the fact that you have to use your precious Global Cooldown for filler Flash Heal or Renew, cuts a lot your HPS (Heal per second). You could use Prayer of Healing while your other heals are in cooldown but it has the same problem than Greater Heal: 10 years cast time. Therefore Holy Priest is not a premier AOE healer either.
• Body and Soul talent is useless if a Discipline Priest is in raid.

 tl;dr: Not the best at single target healing, neither at AOE healing. Mixed healer.


Discipline

Pros

• Prevents damage in absorb effects, which is useful when healing reduction is present or for an incoming high damage effect.
• PW: Shield is a very strong protective spell for an instant cast, and can heal if glyphed.
• Critical heals often cause overheal, but Divine Aegis fixes that so they don't go to waste as much. It effectively converts 30% of your critical heals into a shield. Doing some math at 3 points it increases the bonus critical heal by 90%.
• High Mobility.
• Strong single target heal in Penance.
• The 25% haste bonus from talents makes reaching the haste cap an easy task, allowing higher investment in spell power and critical that other healer specs cannot give the luxury to.
• Excellent life saving cooldowns in Pain Suppression and Power Infusion.
• Still good Divine Hymn and Hymn of Hope to prevent a wipe.
• Prayer of Healing is reliable for AOE healing as long as you use it with a 25% bonus haste charge.

Cons

• Weakened Soul Effect will force you to use single target heals if your shield broke too early.
• Single target healing through Penance is good but the 8 seconds cooldown don't make it a very reliable single target heal.
• Flash Heal spam drains mana fast.
• Prayer of Mending has 10 seconds cooldown compared to Holy build's 7 seconds, reducing its potential.

tl;dr: Too good for reducing damage and preventing a death, bad for extended single target healing.

Restoration Shaman

 Pros

• Earth Shield is a reliable passive tank healing buff.
• Riptide instant and passive healing are very nice,  low cooldown as well. Makes your best heal Chain Heal stronger.
• Chain heal is the best AOE heal spell in the game; no cooldown, 40 yards range, each jump can apply Earthliving and gives stacks of Tidal Waves, which makes your Healing Wave an excellent tank healing spell. The mana cost is also reasonable unlike Prayer of Healing and Holy Light.
• Ancestral Awakening helps with your critical single target heals. It can convert your overheal into actual heal, which is amazing, and saves someone low health if no other healer could get to him/her in time.
• Cleanse Spirit removes curse and disease, the most important effects to remove in WotLK raiding.
• It can resurrect on its own if the worst scenario happens.
• Mana Tide totem is an amazing mana restore totem, 24% to each of the shaman's party members over 12 seconds. Assuming the shaman has mana users in the same group, that makes it an effective restoration of 120% mana, much better than Hymn of Hope because it allows the shaman to continue casting heal spells.

Cons

• Chain Heal has a rather long cast time. Many shamans stack 20 haste gems everywhere just to have it cast faster, but that also makes your heal per cast weaker.
• Because of the necessary Chain Heal spam, shaman lacks some mobility, similar to Holy Paladin.

tl;dr: Resto shaman too op.

 Restoration Druid

Pros

• High Mobility thanks to many instant Heal Over Time spells. 
• A 6% bonus healing buff makes everyone feel a little safer.
• Wild Growth is a decent AOE HoT spell, the cooldown is low enough and acquires targets regardless of the group they are.
• Tranquility is extremely strong, the best AOE life saving heal.
• Swiftmend is a very strong instant heal compared to most other instant heal effects.
• Nourish is fast cast and strong enough to focus your heals when needed.
• Nature's swiftness helps when your Swiftmend is in cooldown, just use it with Healing Touch in a Macro.
• Good for bosses with raid wide damage effects.

Cons

• Resto Druid is best at raid healing, when focusing heals on the tank it sort of falters because Healing Touch has long cast time and Nourish drains mana fast.
• Not exactly the best to save a low health from death, if Nature's swiftness is in CD and the target lacks an available HoT to use your Swiftmend, chances are that player will die.

 tl;dr: It's nice as long as a player doesn't take too much damage in a short spawn of time.

Summary

           As you can see every class has its ups and downs, although shaman seems to have the least downs, doesn't mean it is perfect. I didn't explain the how-to for each class because the objective of this entry was simply compare each class strictly on healing terms. Some classes didn't receive credit for the buffs they provide, this should be accounted for too when building your raid. Regardless of the Healer remember all heal classes can also DPS, in case healing didn't work out for you.

Fire Mage

          It's been a while since I last posted here, the reason should be obvious: I quit wow for nearly 5 years. Anyway, now that I'm back and I'm head of a guild again I'll post guides to help guildies get better with their classes. It should be obvious I got this knowledge from other sources (mostly elitist jerks), but I also know plenty from my own experience. One thing to note is, I'm no longer into pvp as much as I was before, due to many factors I will not explain. Being practical I simply shifted from pvp addict to pve, I still play lots of classes and try to master them the best I can.

As I'm returning to the writing scene, I'll take it easy and go with probably the best class I use as of today: Fire Mage.

The Drama - Why Fire is so OP?

 "Timmy is a master with Arcane Mage, he is top dps in ToC and Ulduar almost every raid. When 3.3 went live he began upgrading his armor and continued raiding in arcane spec. He noticed something strange: He wasn't among the top in dps charts anymore. "What's going on?" Timmy wondered. He noticed there were other mages there. "Wow, they upgraded their gear so quickly" He thought. As he saw the charts in detail he realized those mages were different. Timmy's face filled with horror as he noticed the spells said mages used.

From that day on life wouldn't be the same for Timmy..."

Patch 3.3 is old but players starting their WoW adventure might not notice the differences among specs, at least not at first. I'll just be perfectly clear: Fire is The Pve Mage Spec to go in 3.3.5. Sorry arcane, we sure had fun in previous patches but recently you just can't seem to pull it off, specially in gamer-district where trinkets are given to the highest dps and you're still behind all those Spriests... and you can't even roll for Phylactery...

Blizz was specially generous with fire spec in the form of the T10 bonuses, since high end gear reaches ridiculous crit ratings the 2 set bonus can be sustained for ~80% of the fight, meaning you have free 9% haste rating which is a direct increase of 9% in your total dps. Amont this, fire got other buffs which I'm too lazy to check for in patch notes at the moment, just take my word on this.

tl;dr:Arcane is dead.

Talents

The best fire spec is the following:

I will briefly explain the talents I believe could cause controversy.

No Flame Throwing: Yea, no +6 yards on those fire spells. If 35 yards is not enough for you, you should give up on ranged and roll a retri pala.

Magic Absorption: Two points give you 80 resistance to all schools. Let's not forget the only source of arcane resist is Mark of the wild from druid (75), which raises your arcane resist to 155. Plus the Frost resist from aura/totem, you hit 210 frost resist. It might seem negligible, but in Sindragosa fights you're gonna want to cast more spells and not die from Unchained Magic debuff. Remember Phylactery of the Nameless Lich? Those 80 extra resist could be the difference between stopping at 11 spells cast or stopping at 13, allowing you more spells per debuff application and therefore more damage. It also helps for Rotface fight, if you don't want to move from the slime spray (I shouldn't be saying this because you're supposed to move, but you don't want to lose that trinket either right? You know the other casters won't move from spray; hell, they don't even move from Ooze explosion...)
Even if you don't compete for a trinket, the reduced damage taken will make healer's job easier.

Student of the Mind: Most mages go with 1 point there to have 4% bonus spirit. If your gear has more spirit than usual consider getting 3 points there, even if the gains are only 11 or 12 crit rating. I'll take those 12 crit rating over 6 useless bonus range.

Only 3 points in Arcane Concentration: Use your mana gems and don't cry about oom.

The Rotation

Start of fight(If warlock in raid):

Living Bomb>Fireball until Proc of Hot Streak>Pyroblast>Fireball until proc of Hot Streak>Reapply Living Bomb AFTER it explodes.

If you don't have a warlock in raid just use Scorch after your first Living Bomb application, and reapply that 5% buff every 30 seconds.

You shouldn't wait for your fireball to proc Hot Streak, if the last Fireball you did was a crit. Let's say Fireball critted, but considering travel time you will probably be casting the next Fireball by the time you see the big numbers. That Fireball you're casting will probably crit, but you don't have means of knowing this, so as that Fireball is traveling you should be casting another Fireball. Never wait for procs, just spam Fireball and as you get a Hot Streak proc finish your current cast and use Pyroblast immediately; the reason behind this is Hot Streak doesn't cares how many Fireball crits you do past the second, if you crit 3 times in a row with fireball, you get 2 Hot streak procs (one proc after 2 crits, the second after the third crit) because Hot streak only checks if the last Fireball was a crit, if the condition is met Hot streak will proc again. Use this to your advantage: Next time you get Hot streak it will be when you're halfway through a FB cast, finish that cast and use Pyroblast fast, your Fireball will reach the target before Pyroblast and if it crits it will give you another Hot Streak proc. Each Proc of Hot Streak gives you 12% haste with 2 T10 pieces and lasts 5 seconds. If you have a Hot Streak avalaible you don't need to use Pyroblast if you still have 1 or 2 seconds of bonus haste, try to use another Fireball and use your Pyroblast once the haste buff is gone, this is done to prolong the bonus haste.

Never reapply Living Bomb before it explodes, unless you can't apply it due to the boss mechanics (i.e. when Sindragosa is just ascending, you can reapply Living Bomb before it explodes).

When to use Combustion: Your Spell casts gain the bonuses you currently have, when you apply a Dot it continues having that bonus even after its effect has worn off you. When you use Combustion your spell critical chance is increased by 10% instantly. If you want your Living Bomb to have a higher crit chance (Ticks will also crit more), use Combustion then cast 2 Fireballs and use Living Bomb when your crit bonus from Combustion is high enough. If your crit rating is already high, you might have to use Living Bomb with only 20% bonus crit chance from Combustion (every good move matters in that little cancer dps chart).

Remember using your mana gem often, there's nothing more sad than a mage going oom because he/she didn't use the gem. Use one when you are at 85% mana and the next one should be up before boss goes down.

When to use Evocation: Never.

Glyphs

Fire mage, unlike other dps specs, has three glyphs carved in stone that will never change.

Glyph of Living Bomb
Glyph of Molten Armor
Glyph of Fireball

Stat Distribution:

Hit until capped>spellpower>Crit until capped>Haste>spirit.

Your Hit cap is 17% but this number can go down thanks to those generous Boomkins that only exist to give buffs to other casters dps. Spriest debuff Misery works too. Considering these buffs you can down that number to 14%. If raid leader is your friend you can ask him to put a Draenei in your group to lower that number to 13%. If you're a man of many enemies like me, just go with 14%.

Hit is rather easy to get, there is a ridiculous amount of items with tremendous amounts of hit.

Regarding Crit, chances are low you will reach the cap without crit gems (Which is around 80% with full raid buffs) but if you reached that number you should start stacking spell power. Just try that every piece of gear you use has Crit.

Yellows: Hit rating if you need. If not, go with 12 spell power+10 crit.
Reds: 23 Spell Power.
Blues: You can go with 12 spell power+10 spirit, or 10 spirit+10 crit. I go with the latter.

The ancient debate regarding spirit (Or at least since 3.0)

"I won Frozen Bonespike today but leader said spirit is for healers and then he kicked me from raid after I called him a Zef Sider ninja."

Nobody ever said spirit is meant for healers. Spirit is indeed good for healers only IF they need the mana regen. Back in TBC spirit was only for healers, but Blizz wanted to make it useful for dps, so a few benefits from having it were introduced. Every good healer should know the right time to stop stacking spirit/mana regen and start weighting more into stats like haste-crit-spell power to increase the healing done (For example Back from Deathbringer25 has spirit-haste, a holy priest with plenty of mana regen is using the Back from Valithria25 with haste-crit, the holy priest knows there's no need for more regen so he/she passes the cloak). I'm not even gonna go deep explaining why some healers with high gear are low on total healing done. Spirit is good to reach that crit cap but if leader is irrational then little can be done about it. And yes, Frozen Bonespike is amazing for fire mage before Bloodsurge.

Spell power vs Crit chance.

Less spell power means weaker non crits (and weaker crits), but the tier bonus is so good, you're gonna love that sweet +90% uptime on that haste. Crit gemming also makes your mana deplete slower compared to spell power gems, because you benefit from that 30%  mana recovery every time you crit. In summary, when your crit is low, your mana will suffer and you can go oom even with mana gems and Evocation in long fights particularly Lich King.

Best Professions

If you're lazy you can go with Skinning, it gives you 40 crit rating without any effort involved. As your second prof you can go with Jewelcrafting or even Blacksmith to stack more Spell power. Engineering is legit too. All the other profs are underwhelming.

Best Friends

Your Best Friend will always be a Boomkin. Like that ugly friend you hang up with that helps you get laid, Boomkin will make sure you reach the top position while staying behind and watching you get the goodies only the top dps can get. Boomkin is your best friend, but that doesn't means you can't cheat on him with other classes, Ele shaman is the funny one every party should have, nobody takes him/her seriously but he/she always makes sure you enjoy your time. Warlocks might seem like they are there to help with Demonic Pact and Fel Intelligence buffs but they really aren't, they are very close to you in damage dealt and will take the top if you don't work hard. In the end Mages have to stick together, always trade Focus Magic to make sure mages take over the top.

Addons

I use classtimer to know when my Living Bomb goes off, as sometimes WoW ui doesn't update immediately. You can download a compatible version from wowace.com.

Macros

I don't use any macros for fire mage because fire mage is cheap. The only general macro I use when I have too many stacks of Unchained Magic or to survive an explosion is

#showtooltip Ice block
/Cast Ice Block
/Cancelaura Ice Block
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

This will use Ice block and cancel it if I press it again, it's good because you don't waste time right-clicking the buff, so your dps doesn't suffer. You also use a simple burst macro with /Cast Mirror Image /Cast Combustion if you're a slow clicker.

That's basically all I have to say regarding Fire mage. Remember knowing bosses is important, but knowing your class is just as important (And harder). I hope this modest guide was of some use to you. If you have anything to say feel free to use the comments section (There's no complains section so save them).