Baby Steps to Better Gear

I have wrote about gear quite a bit in the past, don't know why, but probably because that's one of the forces that drive me in WoW (getting better).

In case you've missed the earlier pieces, you might want to check out the older posts:
Evaluating Gear Upgrades
Forum Watch: Crafting or raiding for gear?
Leveling a Priest as Shadow, but Gearing to be Healer at Level 70
Healing Priest Badge Gear
Blog Watch: Pants of 100 Badges

I'm currently stocking Badges of Justice for 2.4 to get all the goodies from there. I think I'll go for some current BoJ rewards before the patch thou, like Light-Blessed Bonds and Essence of the Martyr.

Which brings me to the first problem; Trinkets. For some reason I just love Bangle of Endless Blessings, it seems to proc often enough for me to never run out of mana. And I can't seem to let go of my last blue. And when spirit gets even better in 2.4 (with better regen with good int), I just might stick with Bangle for good :)

The second problem is that every upgrade seems so small nowadays, I get like +10 healing, and maybe +3mp5 out of the new gear. I'm taking baby steps with gear upgrades and still I'm very happy with it :) WoW is so odd sometimes. I have Robes of Heavenly Purpose sitting in the bank, as I can't let go of Primal Mooncloth Set yet (I don't have belt and/or shoulders to go with the RoHP). Well maybe I figure it out, Belt of the Long Road maybe (as I have Pauldrons of the Solace-Giver from Curator already).

Lootzor ranking I'm using now (All non-PvP healing gear)

Leveling a Priest as Shadow, but Gearing to be Healer at Level 70

So you level your priest as shadow (you should, it's just way faster), but you want to heal when you hit 70. What to do? How to get gear?

Leveling a Priest as Shadow, but Gearing to be Healer at Level 70

Tailoring is not needed, but the tailored sets are soo good that it's recommended.
The sets are better than T4, maybe even T5 in some uses.

Primal Mooncloth Set
Whitemend Wisdom Set

Here's what I would suggest (what I did):

Plan your gear ahead. Use the resources, for example:
Kaliban's WoW-Loot List (Priest)
Best Casual PvE Healing Gear by A Dwarf Priest

1) At around lvl65 (or whenever you hit Nagrand), start taking healing gear as quest rewards over the dps gear.

2) And start going to outland instances as healer (you can very well as shadow) and pick up gear there. Or if you go in instance as dps, ask if you can roll for healer gear if such would show up.

3) Work on the reputation for certain factions to get healer gear from rewards (Like Watcher's Cowl from Cenarion Expedition, Lower City Prayerbook, etc.)

4) And if you like, level tailoring, and work on the PMC set while doing the above

This way I had couple of pieces of PMC done when I hit 70 and I had healer gear from normal instances and some quest rewards. When I finished last piece of PMC, I respecced holy, and started doing heroics for even more healer gear.

Downrank that Heal

I mostly use Greater Heal Rank 1 as my "main-heal". And throw Greater Heal Rank 7 only if max heal is needed. With Renew+Prayer of Mending and occasional emergency Flash Heal, I'm set.

There's no point to overheal if downranked spell does the job.

This saves mana, and thus, might be the edge you need to conquer some battles.

Especially as a Priest, you will still need to dance in-out of the 5 Second Rule (Mana Regen at WoWWiki), but don't overlook downranking.

What I do is this:

I have macroes for max and min rank for each spell (and some middle ranks too, like GH Rank 6).
I cast different ranks of spells on myself several times, and count the "average heal" for each rank.
I then update the macro names like:
"2000 GH1" - for Greater Heal Rank 1 which heals 2000hp on average
"3800 GH7" - for Greater Heal Rank 7 which heals 3800hp on average
.
.
etc.

I update the macroes/buttons every now and then when gear has upgraded.

So when I place the buttons on my action bar, I can easily see what I need to cast if I need to heal, let's say, 2500hp or 1200hp = I can throw big or small heal depending on what is needed.

I use Clique for heals, but the buttons are there to remind me that Greater Heal Rank 6 heals this much and Flash Heal Rank 1 heals this much and so on.

In most cases you do fine by spamming the max rank, it saves mana and makes you more efficient healer.

For theorycrafters, it's about Heal / Mana. Use the Priest Healing Calculator to see the differences of the ranks.

Evaluating Gear Upgrades

It's very useful to plan out your next gear upgrades, and different loot lists help, but you can do it yourself too with several available loot / gear evaluators.

A Dwarf Priest was kind enough to notify me that she found out about gear/loot evaluator which counts spell haste too: Loot Rank

Here's link for Loot Rank PvE Search up to T5.

Lootzor.com shows heroic badges cost right the report page, so don't abandon it either.

Dwarf Priestress' "Best Casual PvE List" was also updated with Voodoo Shaker (which was not showing in lootzor.com - but shows in Loot Rank!)

Now if only someone would enlighten me if some of these evaluators notices set bonuses too :)

Reputation Grind & Calculator

We all need reputation, in WoW for Heroic Dungeon keys, reputation rewards, cool mounts, etc.

To see where you are, and what to do next, look here:
WoW Reputation Calculator

If you want more detailed information, click on the links under spesific faction.

or if you want more, look no further than WoWWiki for the best resources on how to get high reputation (the fastest, easiest, etc): WoWWiki Reputation

EDIT: I just found a post in WoW EU Forums about this: WoWJuju RepCalculator. Same thing as the WoW Reputation Calculator, but with a bit more extended interface.