I was planning on finishing my Black Temple guide but the lure of all this awesome beta news is simply too hard to ignore! I'll have to postpone the guide for a rainy day. Fellow WoW Insider blogger Alex Z. has a terrific analysis of the new Priest talents! It's an excellent analysis of how the Priests will be come the expansion. This week, I want to go further in depth on not just new spells and abilities that Priests bring to a raid but how changes to the other classes will be affecting us. I'll also touch a bit on threat, my thoughts on Lightwell, and the raid viability of Discipline.

Deathknight.info has just posted another batch of info from the Alpha forums, this time with Wryxian and Slorkuz talking about Shamans, Warriors, and Death Knights. Primarily, they focus on the tanking abilities of Death Knights and Warriors and delve into some possible improvements to the Shaman Enhancement tree in WoTLK, including possible new talents:

Shamans

Enhancement Shamans, says Wryxian, will probably see further review. It looks like a lot of the new Enhancement talents will see some changes as well:

• Weapon Specialization (which gives special abilities based on which weapon type the Shaman uses) will likely be removed
• Improved Shamanistic Rage (which made Shamans using SR immune to all movement impairing effects and stuns at 2 points) will also probably be removed.
• Wryxian mentioned a possible replacement for Weapon Specialization: Each melee critical hit would give a stacking buff that reduces cast time by 20% and lasts for 15 seconds. That would mean that at 5 stacks, you'd get a free instant cast spell.
• Feral Spirit, the 51 point enhancement ability that summons ghost wolves to aid the Shaman, may be getting a second look as well.

For Enhancement DPS, they hope that totems and shocks make up for the lack of melee abilities to keep it interesting, though they may consider a new melee move for Shamans as well. In addition, he promises new totem changes soon.

Read on for some juicy information on Warriors, Death Knights, and Blizzard's vision for tanking in WoTLK.

The community seems to be in agreement that Paladins need a little love. At one point the champions of light, along with Warriors dominated the arenas. It's pretty clear that Paladins have been left behind in PvP. This class has found a niche alongside Druids and Warriors in the tanking corps. But is this the only place for a Pally any more?

Lolbubble of Ysera opened a discussion about how well Paladins fair as PvE healers. The thread continued with some of the pros and cons of holy heals. Pallies have the ability to bless their party members, which is always pleasant. They are also mana efficient, especially when there's a knowledgeable player behind the keyboard. They tend to be focused healers, falling short of Prayer of Mending or Chain Heal. This is not necessarily bad if the player is assigned a tank to heal, but not great for overall raid heals. Paladins also have a noticeable lack of reusable instant healing spells.

Or, how to celebrate the birth of a nation via an ugly series of Horde losses in Arathi Basin:

1. Every single Alliance character in the game has a Black War Tiger.

2. Every single Horde character in the game has a Black War Raptor (yes, myself included).

3. I could be wrong, but I don't think "Lich King" is pronounced "Lick King," as I keep hearing it pronounced on my server.

4. However, it might be because the word looks somewhat Germanic, and I will be unable to keep a straight face for the duration of the next expansion.

5. To the point of losing it completely if I hear "World of Warcraft: WRAAAAAAATH OF THE LICK KING" intoned by the Deep-Voiced Serious Trailer Guy.

6. How male human characters run. There's a lot of great animation in the game. This is not one of them.

7. Practically every main-tank of every Hordeside raiding guild is a male Tauren.

8. An egotistical male Tauren. Look, Spanky, just because Bulwark of Azzinoth is bigger on you than anybody else does not mean that the same is true of appendages elsewhere.

My main is a resto Shaman, but I've been spending my spare time either leveling a Rogue or gearing up my Ret Paladin. It is a completely different experience. I've spent hours in the battlegrounds and have managed to earn the honor for the Merciless Gladiator's Greatsword. Thus far is has been a real challenge for me.

I have a harder time with the Paladin than the Rogue. In the battlegrounds my first reaction when I see someone going down is to heal them. I do drop an emergency heal here and a bubble there, I know that my heals are generally crummy. I should just keep swinging my sword and leave the healing to the healers. With the Rogue, there is no option for healing, so I just keep Slicing and Dicing away through the levels. On top of that, I'm used to trying to get away from my opponent, not trying to stay on top of them. The whole paradigm shift has been difficult for me, but I've learned a lot from it.

How do you feel when you play something totally different from your main?

A healer in WoW basically has one job: keep people from being dead. Ideally, you would keep people from ever becoming dead in the first place by healing them, but sometimes people do die and you have to resurrect them. WoW has four classes that can heal, Druid, Paladin, Priest, and Shaman, and three out of those four have more or less the same spell to bring people back to life, whether it's called Resurrection, Redemption, or Ancestral Spirit. There are slight variations in mana cost and the amount of HP and mana the target resurrects with, but they're all 10-second casts and all only work outside of combat.

Then there is the Druid's resurrection spell, Rebirth. This spell is often known as "combat res" or "battle res," since it is the only targettable resurrection spell that can be cast during combat (Shamans can also self-res in or out of combat with Reincarnation). It's a great spell, but it has a 20-minute cooldown, meaning that if you're in a 5-man with a Druid healer and no other resurrecting player, and people die more often than one every 20 minutes (which happens frequently in heroics), they're not all going to be able to be ressed. This is not enough to keep me from wanting to run instances with only a Druid healing - I still love trees. But it is an obvious hole in a the Resto Druid's spell lineup.

Fortunately, it looks like this hole may be closed in Wrath of the Lich King. According to the newly-relocated Wrath alpha wiki, Druids will be receiving a regular, no-cooldown, out-of-combat resurrection spell, entitled Revive. It has a 10-second cast time, and seems to bring targets up with about the same amount of HP and MP as Priest Resurrection. No word on mana cost yet. All I can say is "it's about time." Sure, it does homogenize the healing classes a little bit more, but Druids really ought to be able to fully serve as sole healers, and that means both keeping people from dying and bringing them back up if they do fall.

The Blood tree was originally designated as the primary DPS tree, and a lot of the talents still reflect that, such as Dark Conviction, the ever-present critical strike talent, and Dancing Rune Weapon, the 51 point talent.

However, it's also worth noting that the Blood tree provides quite a few healing skills and talents which may end up making it a useful type of tanking tree via allowing the Death Knight to keep himself healed and keep a bit of grief off his healers: for example, Death Pact will be useful for finishing off a ghoul who's about to die anyway and getting a bit of health back. Below is a selection of some of the spells and talents available to Death Knights in the WWI demo.

Blood Spells:

Blood Presence:
Requires level 55
Costs 1 Blood Rune
Instant cast, 1 second cooldown
Description: Strengthens the Death Knight with the presence of blood, increasing damage done by 15% and healing the Death Knight by 4% of damage dealt. Only one presence may be active at a time.

Blood Strike:
Requires level 55
Costs 1 Blood Rune
Instant cast, 1 second cooldown
Melee range
Description: Instantly strike the enemy, causing 60% weapon damage plus 55 for each disease effect on the target.

Blood Tap:
Requires level 64
Description: Immediately activates a blood rune and temporarily converts it into a death rune. this rune counts as a blood, unholy, or frost rune. lasts 10 seconds.

Death Pact:
Requires level 66.
Description: Sacrifice an undead minion, healing the Death knight for 1200 health

Blood Talents:

Rune Tap
Requires 10 talent points
Instant cast, 1 minute cooldown.
Description: Converts 1 Blood Rune into 10% of your maximum health.

Dark Conviction
Requires 10 talent points
Costs up to 5 talent points
Description: Increases your chance to get a critical strike with melee weapons by 1% per talent point.

Improved Rune Tap
Requires 15 talent points, Rune Tap
Costs up to 3 talent points
Description: Improves Rune Tap's health gain by 15% per talent point

Vendetta
Requires 15 talent points
Costs up to 2 talent points
Description: Heals you for 3% of your total health per talent point whenever you kill a target that yields experience or honor

Scent of Blood
Requires 20 talent points
Costs up to 3 talent points
Description: After being struck by a ranged or melee critical hit, you gain the Scent of Blood effect, causing your next 2 melee hits to steal life from the enemy. lasts for 12s. this effect can not occur more often than once every 12 seconds (Note: the effect of putting more than one talent point in this skill is not yet listed in the description).

Blade Barrier
Requires 20 talent points
Costs up to 3 talent points
Description: Whenever you have no runes active, your parry chance increases by 5% per talent point for the next 8 seconds.

Mark of Blood
Requires 20 talent points
Costs 1 Blood Rune, 1 Unholy Rune
Instant cast
30 yard range
Description: Place a mark of blood on an enemy. whenever the marked target is healed, all party members receive 5% of that healing (up to a maximum of 5% of the Death Knight's health). if a marked target that grants experience or honor is killed, all party members are healed for 10% of their total health. Lasts 3 minutes.

Hysteria
Requires 30 talent points
Costs 1 Blood Rune, 1 Unholy Rune
Instant cast, 2 minute cooldown
30 yard Range
Description: Induces a friendly unit into a killing frenzy for 30s, increasing their physical damage by 20% but causing them to suffer damage equal to 1% of their total health every second.

Heart Strike
Requires 40 Talent Points
Costs 1 Blood Rune
Requires melee weapon
Next Melee
Description: A debilitating attack that lowers the target's total health by up to 20% for 30 seconds.

Dancing Rune Weapon
Requires 50 talent points
Requires Runic Power
Requires melee weapon
Instant, 1 minute cooldown
Description: Unleashes all available runic power to summon a second rune weapon that fights on its own for 1s per 5 runic power, doing the same attacks that you do.

Welcome to Hybrid Theory, where we discuss all things hybrid in the World of Warcraft. Hybrid Theory is brought to you each week by columnist/blogger Alex Ziebart.

Brace yourselves, ladies and gentlemen. Today's Hybrid Theory is purely guesswork and speculation. In no way will I pretend that these are facts, and you should not take them as such. It's a topic that grabbed my interest, and it's something I really enjoy trying to figure out despite the missing pieces of information we don't have yet. I welcome all of you to add your thoughts on it in the comments section below. Perhaps we can get a decent idea of what's to come.

Let's get started, shall we? In the previous weeks of Hybrid Theory, we've discussed all we knew about some of our favorite classes. During this discussion, matters of itemization often came up. Most notably, the new Spellpower mechanic. This would allow healers and DPS classes to use the same gear, but Healing spells would get twice the benefit.

First thought is that DPS and healers will share gear. Right? Well... maybe. Possibly. There are a lot of factors we don't really know yet. While it isn't always the case, for some classes there is a pretty large divide between gear that is good for a caster and gear that is good for a healer, and the deciding factor isn't how much damage or healing is on that item. In some cases you'll be able to switch seamlessly from DPS spec to Healing spec and not need to change your equipment, but trying to optimize your gear in both cases is not going to be so easy.

Before I begin, if you haven't seen our notes from the class discussion Dev Panel at the Worldwide Invitational, you should go take a look. Skip down to the Priest section, look it over, and come on back. I'll wait here for you, okay? Okay, go. Are you back now? Good.

We knew of the existence of the three spells Chilton discussed for quite awhile now, but the confirmation is nice, especially since there's no need to dance around the 'it might not be real, oh no' bit. The three spells I refer to are Divine Hymn, Guardian Spirit, and Dispersion. The stated goal of these abilities is to solidify the role of the current Priest specs. I can definitely agree with that on the part of Divine Hymn and Guardian Spirit, but not so much Dispersion. That doesn't mean Dispersion is a bad ability for what it does, it just doesn't reinforce the role of a Shadow Priest necessarily.

We post a lot of stuff here at WoW Insider, and chances are that you missed some of our weekly features. But don't fret it -- here are our top weekly features from the last seven days, so if you missed them the first time around, we're here to make sure that doesn't happen again.

	Raid Rx: Analyzing your healers, part 3 Marcie Knox continues her series on how to get the most of your healers during a raid.
	Officers' Quarters: Cracking the whip How to keep your guild rolling all the way up through the expansion.
	Ask WoW Insider: When to gem and enchant Our readers sound off on the best time to take advantage of getting your gear min-maxed with gems and enchants.
	Spiritual Guidance: Seven tips to prepare your Priest for Wrath Matt "Matticus" Low gives you a nice checklist for getting your Priest ready to head up to Northrend.

More of our great weekly content after the break.

So by now, you've done some of the Midsummer quests, desecrated a few flames, and you have a bunch of Burning Blossoms burning a hole in your pocket. The question now is: What are you going to do with all of those? Sure, you can throw them in the nearest Festival Bonfire for the sweet buffs, but you can also spend them at the Midsummer Merchants and Midsummer Suppliers located next to every Capital City's fire.

After the break, we'll look at exactly what you can buy and what they do.

Name: Golden Staff of the Sin'dorei (WowDB, Thottbot, Wowhead)
Type: Epic Two-hand Staff
Damage/Speed: 146-338 / 3.20 (75.6 DPS)
Abilities:

• +60 Stamina, +54 Intellect, +57 Spirit. Yeah.
• Red and two Blue sockets, nicely fitted with some +22 healing gems and/or +10 Spirit gems and you're talking about some real power. +4 Spirit socket bonus.
• Improves spell haste rating by 32
• +550 healing, +183 spell damage. Yes, you read that right -- 550 healing. Not since right before the last expansion has there been a staff this nice in comparison to other gear, and even if you could match the healing on a one-hand/offhand combo (you probably can, if you get the right gear and enchants together), the Spirit bonuses on this baby are going to give that duo a run for the money. Take a good look, because this is the kind of stuff that's going to be dropping in endgame raids at level 80.
• Sin'dorei, you should know by now (we're almost to the next expansion), means Blood Elves, or "children of the Blood" in Thalassian. And yes, the staff looks just like the one in the BC art, as seen above. This is very BC staff, if not the most defining staff of this expansion. Look for a lot less gold and green and a lot more blue and black in WotLK.

How to Get It: This is a Kil'jaeden item yet again -- it drops from the last boss currently in the game. And since we've seen so few drops from Killy Jay so far, we're not sure of the drop rate at all. Not that it matters much -- so few players comparatively are going to get loot from the fight with Kayje, that odds are you'll never see it.

You can drool, though. And in ten levels, when we're all working through Naxx again, maybe you can convince your raid to go back and help you get it.

Getting Rid of It: Sells to vendors for 20g 54s 93s and disenchants into a Void Crystal. But look how shiny! Have a good weekend.

Every Sunday, Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Your host is now usually Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus, but this week he has midterms and you're left to suffer with a substitute. Elizabeth recently toyed with the darker side of the priest's profession, but for better or worse, is holy again this week.

I rolled my first Priest for a very simple reason -- I wanted to play with my friends, and I got sick of always having to wait on a healer when we wanted to do something together. With every group stalled for need of healing, picking up a healing class myself seemed a pragmatic solution. (And three healers later, I'm still at it.) So a few weeks ago when we happened to have plenty of healing... but were short DPS... by the same logic I decided I could respec Shadow and lend a hand. And though the plan may seem simple enough, there are quite a few things DPS classes have to worry about that healers may not pay attention to at all.

Ever think about joining the dark side? There are a few things to consider before-hand...

Sources are saying that a new Alpha build showed up on the WoTLK Alpha servers yesterday, featuring a few interesting changes. Kalgan's promised spellpower change we have mentioned, and it now appears to be on the Alpha servers. In addition, it looks like the dev team is working on consolidating even more stats. As of the latest build, all instances of haste rating, hit rating, and critical strike rating on gear will now modify both physical attacks and spells at the same time.

In an out-of-the-blue quote from an otherwise unremarkable PC Gamer interview, Tom "Kalgan" Chilton, WoW's lead class designer, was asked what might be changing in Wrath of the Lich King. He responded that they would be doing away with +damage-only gear, and adding talents that would convert +healing to +damage and vice versa, which would allow magic DPSers and healers to use "the exact same gear."

Hold on, what? If I'm reading this correctly, it means they basically want damage caster gear and healer gear to be identical.