My main is a Priest. A Shadow Priest, to be precise. While I started out Holy, my Priest has always been my main and probably always will be. The only thing that could possibly draw me away is my Protection Paladin, should my raid ever need another. Obviously, the very first thing I looked at in the Wrath Beta patch notes were the Priest notes. I've talked about what we saw in Alpha, and I was cautiously optimistic at the time. After seeing these notes... well... yeah, I'm still optimistic. I am (dare I say it?)... excited, even!

I'll tuck my analysis behind the cut, but here are my three favorite notes out of the Priest notes:

• New Talent: Improved Spirit Tap (Shadow) - Gives you a 50/100% chance to gain a 50% bonus to your Spirit after gaining a critical effect chance from your Mind Blast or Shadow Word: Death spells. For the duration, your mana will regenreate at a 25% rate while casting. Lasts 8 sec.
• Lightwell (Holy): Cast time reduced to .5 sec, down from 1.5 sec. Charges increased to 10, up from 5. Now breaks from any attack that hits you for 30% or more of your total health. Cooldown reduced to 3 minutes, down from 5.
• Shadowform (Shadow): Now has an innate 30% threat reduction. Now has a shapeshift UI.

Matticus was originally asked this question, and he's been asking it of people around the WoW blogosphere, so we'll ask it here, too: Assuming that Blizzard suddenly announced that the entire World of Warcraft would be shut down in just five short hours, what would you do with your time?

Automagica would head for World PvP in Hillsbrad. Eye for an Eye would head into the Horde cities for a final extermination. Destructive Reach would do some old-fashioned exploring, both in instances and out, and get contact information for a lot of ingame friends. And Double Bubble, after one last Kara run, would go back to a favorite fishing hole with a favorite pet, and serenely wait for the world to end.

As much as I love instances, I've already run them so much, and I worry that most of my five hours would be taken up with trying to find a group, so I'd probably quest solo (assuming the servers would actually stay up). My Hunter, at 65, would probably too far behind to finish off at 70, so I'd probably do a mad dash for 70 on my Rogue, currently 68. And I'd end the world just as I dinged the highest level on my second 70, which I would consider a proud accomplishment. What would you do with your last five hours in Azeroth?

Once again, the WoW Insider Show is returning to the virtual airwaves, and this show is taking place in a very different world than last week: Turpster's Shadow Priest is 70, dogs and cats are living together, and I am out for the week. But worry not -- the very capable John "BigBearButt" Patricelli is stepping in to take on the hosting duties, and joining him will be the raid-ready Shadow Priest himself, Turpster (John, could you do me a favor and ask Turpster when he's going to start leveling his Paladin now?), along with another man with his own popular WoW blog, Matt "Matticus" Low. I'm sure they'll chat, as we always do, about all the big news from the World of Warcraft in the last week, including level 30 mounts, the various talent changes that have come down, and what's on deck for the Midsummer Fire Festival next week. Since I'm not around, they probably won't talk about Shamans at all, so you can look forward to that.

And if there's anything else you want to ask them, it's easy and free -- just drop them a note at theshow@wowinsider.com, and they may even answer your question live on the air. During the show, you can even join them in IRC for a live chat -- point your IRC client to irc.mmoirc.com in the #wowradio channel and make sure to say hi for me.

Should be a "hum-dinger," as they say in the business. Well maybe they don't say it in the business, but I'm sure they say it somewhere. Tune in to WoW Radio tomorrow afternoon at 3:30 Eastern to hear BBB, Matticus, and Turpster take on the past week in Warcraft.

This past week on the WoW Insider Show (a recording of which is now available over on WoW Radio), we were honored to welcome Matt "Matticus" Low to the show to talk about his career in WoW and his experience healing endgame raids. Amanda Dean was also in attendance with some Arena opinions, and Turpster and I rounded out the crew. We talked about:

• The fact that Turpster is now 69 on his Shadow Priest, and that next week, after the show, he's going to ding at a live event (stay tuned tomorrow for more details on how that's going down).
• How Blizzard changed the Death Knight descriptions, and whether that matters this early in the game
• Amanda's thought that Arena is broken, and how it might possibly be fixed again (as well as the various class representations in there and what's up with those)
  
• What we thought was interesting in the latest Blizzcast

Plus, we answered reader email (including taking a little Blizzard-inspired quiz) and chatted with Matticus about how the popular Spiritual Guidance column is going. All in all, good show -- check it out on WoW Radio's website right now, or listen in (and feel free to give us a review, good or bad as long as it's honest) over on iTunes.

And if you've got something you want us to talk about on the show, drop us an email at theshow@wowinsider.com. We'll be back next week with Turpster's big ding event, and another show next Saturday afternoon at 3:30 Eastern.

The weekly podcast goes live tomorrow afternoon yet again, and if you've only been listening to the recorded show, this might just be the week you want to join us at 3:30pm Eastern, both on the live feed and in the IRC chat: Matt "Matticus" Low will be joining us for his WoW Insider Show debut. Not only has he taken over the wildly popular priest column Spiritual Guidance, but he's an accomplished WoW player and blogger at his own personal site, World of Matticus. Additionally, Amanda Dean will be on with us, and Turpster and myself will both be around as usual, chatting about everything from what the Death Knight class is really for to why Amanda thinks Arena is broken, Should be a terrific show.

You can join us live tomorrow at 3:30pm Eastern over on WoW Radio, and you can chat with us live either from that site or in IRC at irc.mmo-irc.com in the #wowradio channel. Or email us -- the show's address is theshow@wowinsider.com, and we'll be answering your questions and queries from there as well. We'll see you tomorrow afternoon.

As you may have heard the other day, our Twitter account is up and running, and one of the most vocal participants so far has been our new Priest blogger, Matticus from World of Matticus. The other day, he posted a question on the Twitter account that he'd also asked people on his own blog: what makes an encounter epic?

The answers are all pretty good (I've put them all behind the break -- thanks, Twitterers!). From what most people said, lore and story play a huge part in making a fight feel epic, and not just the story of the game, but the story of the guild playing as well -- when your guild almost wipes, and pulls off a great kill, that's an epic battle whether it's in Karazhan or in Sunwell Plateau. Challenge also helps -- people raid to be pushed to the edge of their endgame abilities, and when a well-tuned fight does that, it's one of the best experiences in the game.

Great answers all -- hopefully we'll get to see more epic encounters than not in the Wrath of the Lich King (as Matticus points out, we don't need 40 or even 25 players to have a truly epic encounter with Arthas). And if you haven't started following our Twitter account (@WoWInsider) yet, please do, and stay tuned for more interesting and informal Twitter polls like this.

We've heard your calls for more coverage and we're happy to announce new writers are incoming. You have already seen the work of our two newest columnists, Shelbi Roach and Jennie Lees. Shelbi comes to us as half of the husband-and-wife team at The Bronze Kettle. Her crafting prowess is already on display in the weekly World of WarCrafts feature with step-by-step how-tos on a simple scroll and super potions.

Some of you long time readers may remember Jennie Lees. She was the lead writer on WoW Insider back in the day. She's back to with a vengeance to helm our weekly raid column, Ready Check. And she's hit the ground running with a complete walkthrough for getting your bear mount and strategies for downing the first raid boss in Sunwell Plateau, Kalecgos.

Starting soon are two new columnists. Breathing new life into our weekly Priest column, Spiritual Guidance, is one of the most popular Priest bloggers on the Internet, Matticus. Also joining us is Jon Eldridge. He will be tackling a weekly column focusing on one of the hottest topics outside the game: computer security. From keyloggers to trojans to Blizzard's Warden program, Jon will be providing advice on keeping your account from ending up in the wrong hands.

Finally, many of you have noticed the lack of new pages for our on-going World of Warcraft webcomic, Tales from the Lion's Pride Inn. Chris Jahosky suffered a bad hard drive crash costing him a number of pages that were in various stages of completion. But never fear, Chris is rebuilding them all and Tales will be returning in just a few weeks.

Super-power gamers probably know this one already, but for my part I know this is something I always struggle with. If I have an ability or item with a cooldown of more than one minute, I find myself always hesitating to actually use it; I keep wanting to save it for that emergency moment when I'm really going to need it. The problem is that those situations don't come once every minute, or even every 5 or 10 minutes. They come unexpectedly, and often that one cooldown you've been saving for that situation isn't really enough to save you.

So, as Matticus says, "Use them. Please." It makes a lot more sense to use the cooldowns on a regular basis (like, roughly every time the cooldown is up) than it does to hardly use them at all, or only in situations where it's too late. Now, if you're like me and you think about this for a while, and reluctantly agree that yes it does make sense, then you come up with another problem that you want to use these cooldowns only at moments when it'll be most effective. On my hunter, for example, I hate to use "Bestial Wrath" (and "Beast Within") unless I believe there's at least 18 seconds left in the fight, because I hate seeing myself and my pet all Big and Red with nothing to kill!

But the plain and simple fact is, people like me need to be less stingy with cooldowns. I don't mean we should blow them at moments that don't matter, of course, rather we would do better if we used them much more often, especially when they're not absolutely necessary to succeed. They can help the various sorts of grinding, farming, and trash-mob fighting go by a bit faster, and sometimes in long boss fights you can use them more than once!

Can you think of any cooldowns that you think should be saved for that somewhat rare panic-button moment (such as a rogue's "Vanish," perhaps)? Can you think of cooldowns that you see people often forgetting or hesitating to use?