After a brief hiatus, elite World of Warcraft player Pixelsmith returns with his series of advanced guides. Here he tells you everything you would already know about Preists if you weren’t so stupid.

Preists

World of Warcraft has nine character classes. At least, that’s what it says on the box. In fact, the World of Warcraft, like every MMO ever made, has just two character classes: one which makes your green bar go down and one which makes your green bar go up. It doesn’t matter whether the bastard pummelling you to death is a muscle bound titan wielding an axe the size of your house, an emaciated waif setting fire to your head ten times a second, a bovine Legolas-wannabe with a pet wolverine called Tiddles or a hyperactive halfwit popping out of thin air and stunlocking your stomach until you keel over in a heap; these many shades of git are one class and one class only. The one that makes your green bar go down.

At some stage in RPG history, one bright spark took a step back from his day job of nurturing his beard, feeding his beer gut and typing endless lines of robot language into a BBC Micro and came up with an astounding new idea. Turning the green-bar-down concept completely on its head, this class would have the core ability of being able to replenish the green and prevent people from dying. Thus the Preist was born.

With the development of the MMO, the Preist would become an instant hit with everyone who didn’t play a Preist, its presence in their party enabling them to hit things to their hearts content with a substantially reduced risk of death. This, in turn, endowed the player behind the Preist with a warm glow of usefulness, popularity and self worth, a fundamentally mistaken feeling generated solely by the Preist’s role as a mobile version of the life-up chicken from Streets of Rage.

World of Warcraft Preists come in three flavours, defined by the trio of talent trees, Vanilla, Concrete and Emo.

Vanilla

The Vanilla Preist is the Preist as originally envisaged by God, or more accurately, as originally envisaged by the tubby programmer whose eureka moment gave birth to the class. Structured primarily around skills which improve green bar replenishment, most Vanilla talents simply boost the conversion rates of the blue bar to the green bar. But the Vanilla tree also holds some special abilities, including: Happy Fire - an area of effect spell which heals friends for virtually nothing while simultaneously damaging foes for virtually nothing; Not Dead Yet - which allows the Preist to shapeshift into an angel simply by wandering into a hail of enemy attacks, granting an enjoyable 15 second period of interruption-free casting; and Bandage Fridge - a handy stockpile of heals over time which is invisible to all other players.

Concrete

The Concrete Preist is designed around the concept of not dying. Through a combination of anti-death talents, high resilience and sheer bloody mindedness, the Concrete Preist can not only survive attacks but actually defeat opponents. A fight usually turns into a steady war of attrition in which the enemy gradually diminishes your blue bar by hacking away at your green bar, all the time being gradually killed themselves at a rate equivalent to a small dog chewing their ankle. Key skills in the Concrete armoury include: Dispel Me 1 - a helpful talent which boosts spell effects for two seconds until dispelled; Dispel Me 2 - a helpful talent which reduces incoming damage for two seconds until dispelled; and Dispel Me 3 - a helpful talent which reflects incoming damage back at the attacker for one second until it disappears of its own accord.

Emo

The Emo Preist was developed as a way of giving the Preist player, whose existence to date had involved doing rarely acknowledged favours for everyone else or collapsing after being kicked in the head by a bigger character, a way of fighting back: Emo Form. Like pumping a Baywatch cameraman full of horse tranquilisers and handing him a shotgun, the Emo Form engages at the flick of a switch and directly converts years of pent up penis envy into a violent explosion of purple-based damage which leaves nothing behind on the battlefield but guts and weeping. Crucial to the power of the Emo Preist are: the Proton Pack, a scary beam which makes ghosts writhe around in readiness for being trapped in a special shoe box; Cheating, which replenishes the green bar in accordance with the amount of enemy green bar reduced and is therefore against the rules; and the Emo Form itself, which boosts damage output and turns the Preist the same colour as the outer layer of a teenager.

Tricks of the trade - the tactics that will help you become the greatest WoW player.

(1) The accepted greeting upon meeting a Preist is “heal”. If this fails to elicit a response, the Preist is Swedish. The accepted greeting upon meeting a Swedish Preist is “hael”.

(2) Emo Preists enjoy being told to change their talent build to enable you to complete an instance. Ask them to do it, and if they refuse, tell them they are a noob. This will make the Preist happy.

(3) In PvP, remember to always target the Preist last. This will ensure it has plenty of time to use up its blue bar on helping its friends, making it much easier to kill when the moment comes.

(4) If you are cornered by an aggressive Preist, reveal a guilty secret. The Preist will then be obliged to sit inside a booth and tell you what you’ve done was bad, but will probably be OK if you say some poems and punch yourself in the face. At this point you can make good your escape.

(5) Reroll Preist.

Thank you for reading my Elite Guide to Preists. Hopefully one day I will see you on the battlefield and you will kill me with what you have learned.

20 Comments

Jesus Christ. Adolf Hitler. Academy Award Nominee James Earl Jones. What do all these people have in common? That’s right - they were all once two years old. In fact, almost every single mover and shaker in human history has spent roughly 365 days occupying the hallowed age of two.

But the ranks of mankind’s greatest infants are soon to be invaded by a new and terrifying force. The US will switch to security code red; Europe will gather its armies; Russia will ready its warheads and China’s fingers will hover over the nuclear button. The world will drop to its knees, raise its hands in prayer and hold its breath in readiness for an event which has the potential to destroy all sentient life.

On Saturday, January 26, The Bruces are two.

The celebrations naturally begin at midnight, but the day’s official programme will start at 15:00 server time with a special commemorative run through ZG. Then we’ll be fannying about like idiots until 19:30, when we will gather in Grom’Gol in preparation for a 20:00 march on Stormwind. We will pause to rest our spirits when we reach Bruce Tower and the Brucecave, East of the Alliance city, before mounting a mighty cavalry charge in a suicidal bid to penetrate its defences and reach the Deeprun Tram.

Many of us will die. But our spirits, buoyed by Bruceish birthday pride, will return to their bodies and rise again, ready to push forward. Stragglers and latecomers will be summoned at the entrance to the tram - Warlocks please come prepared with a full bag of shards.

Once inside, the party begins. We will have:

Fireworks!
Booze!
Dancing!
Exciting competitions with cash prizes!

The Bruce Awards 2008

Click on the comments link below to suggest Bruce Award categories.
Click here for last year’s winners.

38 Comments

Lots of people say to me “Dr. Rugal, is this possible?”

It’s simple really.

But beware, they may become hostile.

12 Comments

I woke up abowt quarter to eight today and couldn’t get out of bed. I just sort of laid about a bit and fought to meself “I hate my job it’s crap”

I rang my boss and told him to stick his shitty job cos I wanted to do sumfin better, like bein a pilot or a doctor or a polar bear. He said I werent gonna have a job much longer anyway cos I keep not coming in, so I spose it worked out alright for everyone.

I went on google and didn’t find a good job or nuffin so I had some toast. Then I fought about WoW for a bit and realised I’ve got a job in that, I make clothes and cut animal’s skin off! I went and saw me nan and borrowed her knitting stuff and her cat but when I tried to cut it’s skin off it hissed at me a bit so I went and had some hot choclat. It was Aero hot choclat and it was well nice but loads of the powder just sat at the bottom and blobbed up which werent nice. Then the cat looked at me funny and I did not like it I think it put a curse on me. The cats name is Benson & Hedges.
I got the knitting fings out the bag and tried to make some Frozen Shadoweeve Robes to sell wiv some blue wool but I did not know how and it was shit. My nan only knowed how to make jumpers and hats but preists do not wear jumpers and the hats were rubbish and had no stats I have no idea how they ecspect sumone to make a desant living taloring in this day and age wen all the work is out sorced to foriengers for 2p a year.
I got well bored and ate some pickled onion Monster munch then tried to get some pigeons or sqirrels to skin for some lether to sell but they were all too fast and I reckon even if I did get one I wouldn’t be able to skin it anyway cos it’s not very nice and I don’t have a nife.

Taloring: 3/10 it was too hard and my nan was listenin to michael ball and hes shit.
Skinnin: 1/10 I am too much of an aminal lover to hurt them and take there skin off.

9 Comments

by Bludgenous, Official Bruce Political Analyst

War is a complicated thing, but WoW manages to encapsulate the different forms from real life and puts them into a game format. Few people know that World War Two was actually won when the Allies captured the Axis flag for a 3rd time winning 3-2 in 1945, and the Hundred Years War between Britain and France went on for so long because they both had each others flags and were hiding on the roof while everyone just killed each other in the field. However modern warfare as we all know is all about oil or “Resources”, and the Arathi Basin is a brave political statement by Blizzard reflecting warfare as we see it today. However you’re not here for a history lesson you’re here to win AB, so lets get started!

Before all war starts, all soldiers, as in real life, are unable to get to the battlefield due to some impregnable 5ft high rusty iron gates, and then when war is ready to commence they magically open. This is similar to the Gulf War when Koffi Annan got the opposing sides together at different edges of some desert somewhere and remotely opened the pens containing US and Iraqi troops. I got a D in A-Level History, so I know what I’m talking about.

Of late a new trend had emerged of it being compulsory to say “table plx”. Under no circumstances should a mage provide a table for food, and it goes without saying that paladins should never ever buff the party. This would provide Horde players with an advantage and might jeopardise the Alliance’s chances of winning.

Once the game starts the first objective is the Farm. This is usually capped quickly, however it should not be defended. Defending in war is incredibly boring, so just don’t do it. The Farm obviously counts less than any of the other checkpoints in the game, so everyone is required to scatter as quickly as possible, but is in fact a thinly disguised metaphor for the Afghan Opium Fields. I’m on to you, Blizzard. Engaging in politics is not what this game should be about! Once this is undefended approximately 5-6 members of the Horde should proceed to the Lumber Mill to be killed by upwards of one member of the Alliance with vastly superior “gear”. Well, if this isn’t a direct statement on the superiority of American weaponry in the fight against terror then I don’t know what is.

The Horde at this point should be losing quite comfortably. The best tactic here is to run about with no particular purpose and do not attempt to cap any further bases. It is best to ignore the Battleground chat window at this point, as there will be a debate raging. At a score of 20-0 to the Alliance it is of course sensible to “let them win” and someone will take it upon themselves to repeatedly spam this in the chat window. In an ideal world Arathi Basin Matches would not happen, we would simply be awarded one battle token to the Alliance three and it would be so much quicker. Alas some people selfishly continue to play. I don’t understand the debate on afk’ers. They should be commended it is the people that are playing I want to see cracked down upon; it is slowing up the games no end.

Anyway you should be well on your way to getting a solitary battle token now, so you just need to do what comes naturally to your class. So for example if you are a healer, heal no one but yourself. It’ll all be over soon.

7 Comments