Robility is written by Roble, a Level 80 Discipline Priest currently residing on Kazzak EU. The following is a little bit about myself and where the inspiration for the blog came from.
I’m a 19 year old university student (4-year Maths, if you were wondering) just coming to the end of my first year and living in the north-east of the UK. My WoW history is pretty varied, but with one thing in common across all of my characters – I just don’t have enough time to spare! I’ve never raided more than once a week and I’m in a guild that exclusively does 10 mans (although we are hoping to get a second raid group going soon). Even so, being a “casual” guild – or at least, what I’d call casual – doesn’t stop the majority of us from being quite good players. Once we get into a progression raid, it’s heads down, phones unplugged, full consumables and so on and so forth, for four hours or so on a Saturday night. And I wouldn’t swap it for the world.
I don’t want to sound like I’m trying to rub it in people’s faces or anything, but the reason why I’m a casual raider is that my family is very important to me! Every single raid of every guild I’ve met starts during a mealtime, and we normally sit down and eat together and it serves as a nice “quality time” occasion when we can all talk about what’s been going on. I don’t want to get too wimpish about it, but on the Saturday evening when I take my food to my room and raid with the guild, I feel a little bad that I’ve left my parents on their own (now that my brother lives away from home). They know what’s going on, but any more than twice a week and I’d start to feel a little detached from “real life”.
Anyway, enough of that stuff.
So I picked up WoW and TBC in November 2007, rolled several characters and settled on a Draenei Enhancement Shaman, originally on Boulderfist – I later moved to Stormreaver. My first raid guild was effectively co-GMed by myself, and it took us a hell of a long time to get things sorted, even just finding 10 people for a regular Kara raid. But eventually, just before 2.4 came out, I got my first taste of raiding and never looked back. But it still wasn’t a real progress raid, because badge gear was readily available and well, we breezed through Karazhan. Welfare epics and so on and so forth, whine whine etc. We had a boatload of fun, though – and then I went to university. WoTLK came out, and I didn’t think much of it, I had plenty of work on my plate.
I came back, my old guild has disbanded, and for reasons I’ll leave to one side, rerolled Horde on Kazzak with my brother. He’s been an officer in a quite successful PvE guild for a while now – not a hardcore Vodka/Ensidia-esque guild, but enough to have downed Yogg-Saron in both 10 and 25-man (including a realm 2nd 10-man after they transferred off Kazzak), and I respect that. It’s further than I, or my guild, will get for at least a month or two.
I picked a Priest, mainly because it was a class that had always interested me. I could say that I wanted to play a healer and liked the Priest’s versatility/raid healing capabilities, but really it was just the neat sound PoM makes when it bounces that drew me to the class! So I RaF levelled the Priest with my brother and sped through Outland/Northrend over the course of Christmas and subsequently Easter. Halfway through my Christmas holidays, I met the to-be GM of the guild I’m now an officer in, and everything moved from there, mainly while I was at uni.
As for progress, well we’re doing about as well as you can expect from a guild that only raids four hours per week. First week of 3.1, we downed Razorscale and XT002 (we went from a guildie’s save, so FL was gone – sadly, we needed him to fill the group), and then one-shotted FL and downed Kologarn the week after. While I was back at uni, the guild downed Ignis and Iron Council without me and so we’re currently working on Auriaya and Hodir – frost resistance tank, anyone?
So, introduction over. Next logical step is to explain why I’m writing all this crap. Obviously I could have just started a blog on my own site, or written articles on my guild’s forums, or whatever. So why here? Well those of you who were linked from the Ensidia website will know that this blog started out as a series of entries on the Ensidia blogging system. No disrespect to Ensidia, but their system is lacking a little, most notably an “edit” button of any sort. Eventually, with the attention the site was doubtless going to receive, my blog became lost in a sea of “my guild just downed Yogg 25 but they’re all horrible at the game and I hate them” rants. So I messaged a certain prominent Priest blogger whose work I greatly admired and asked him where the best place to start was. He told me to come here, and here I am.
Yes, the image quality on the banner is crap (edit: fixed that!). No, it’s not going to be the best or most frequently updated blog on the web. No, I’m not from Ensidia, or even a well-respected, fancypants-website guild. I’m here because I know my class and I want to pass on that information, and hopefully what I’ll be providing is a ground-up “guide” catered at the guy who’s maybe got a Holy Priest and wonders what to do when he switches, or the guy who’s levelling a Priest alt for his guild and wants to heal in raids, having only ever DPSed or tanked before.
And why me? What authority do I have to educate you, O Mighty One? Well, the answer to that would be “none”. If you’re not going to learn from it, don’t read it. I’m more than happy with that. 
So in this blog, provided I continue to update it, I’ll be talking about plenty of stuff that affects Discipline Priests – our perks and quirks, our specs, gear, key stats and spells, what we bring to raids, how to heal certain fights and most importantly, how to play one. I’m no pro, but chances are there’s someone out there who’ll read what I write and learn something, and if it helps one person then it will be worth it.
If anyone has any requests for a new entry (which I somehow doubt, but I’ll ask anyway) then drop me a comment, but otherwise I might start with what we bring to raids and how raid leaders can best use us, both for hardcore and casual guilds. Seems like a sensible place to begin. If I’m around on Kazzak, don’t hesitate to drop me a whisper with any constructive criticisms or, dare I say it, praise that you might have. 
– Roble, Kazzak EU
