WOOHOO!

[castille]

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The quest for Benediction is -the- single most nerve-wracking priest experience any priest will ever have. It's worse than being the only healer up on a near-wipe for Razorgore.

What it boils down to, story-wise, is that this priest couldn't escape Stratholme with the peasants she had taken under her wing, who she was guiding to safety. Because of the tragedy, and the number of souls, she's stuck in limbo -- a good soul, with a ton of good souls stuck in limbo. Your job is to finish what she started, to guide the souls from the grasp of the Undead to the Light.

There are two kinds of undead you're combating. Melee and archers. You can kill the melee, but not the archers. The archers don't do that much damage, and the melee's attention is easy to get -- heal aggro or just popping any kind of AoE will do it for you.

The undead, of course, carry a disease. Archers can infect with the disease, and there's a chance that 2-4 peasants will start the match with a purple disease on them. I used abolish disease for just about everything, mainly because there was the possibility of them getting reinfected by archers, and because, for some reason, the cost of Cure Disease (one shot) and Abolish Disease (5 shots, one every 5 seconds) are so close, there's no reason not to. (50% more mana for 5 times the utility...)

Anyway, carrying on .. Some people use renew, but I found a mid-rank flash heal -- about 4-6 -- worked really well, instead. I tried renew, at first, but life dropped too fast for my liking. I could pump 2 or 3 flash heals. Keep in mind that I -am- shadow spec. Someone with the core holy talents will be able to do much more with their renews than I was. I used shield and oil of immolation to clear the melee skellies, but I had thorns on me, too, which helped speed things up.

The key to this quest is acceptable losses, and timely use of the oils of immolation. Buffs like thorns aura (improved, if you can) and possibly a paladin standing -right- on the NPC with retribution aura can also be extremely helpful. The melee skeletons only have about 100 or so life, and die quick, but there's a pack of 4-5 that hit for around 70-90 damage, and attack fast. You will have to watch one or two peasants die, however. Possibly per wave. This is acceptable losses, since you can lose up to 15.

Also to note: the nameplate mode does NOT scale to zooming out. I was hoping to be able to zoom out far enough that the nameplates wouldn't run over each other, but it doesn't matter. Just find an angle where they don't move around as much.

The NPC gives a buff that means about 2000 mana when you finish a wave. For me, that's around 2/5ths of my mana pool . . But, disc/holy or holy/disc priests will usually have more, since I sacrifice a lot of stats for +dmg .. I need have on my +healing gear for this, but that sacrifices stats for healing utility. ;) If it hadn't been for her buff at the end of every wave, I probably would not have made it, since I was experimenting so much with renew in the beginning of the quest . . If you can bring mana potions, not a bad idea. If you can bring something that doesn't go off the potion timer to restore your life without costing mana (bandaging takes too long to get real benefit).

Buffs you may want to consider:

-- Soulstone. Death does NOT mean instant defeat in this quest. If you die, you can pop back up and save the last few you need, maybe. I was -actually- thinking about using the soulestone I had just to regain mana :P That's how bone dry I was towards the end, there. In fact, I had been certain I had failed when I saw the message in yellow pop up -- but it said (Complete) instead of (Done). I was stoked.

-- Thorns. More damage you can do to them every time they hit you, the less time you'll have to spend with Oil of Immolation

-- Mark of the Wild. YAY MORE STATS!

-- Retribution Aura. Have the paladin stand RIGHT on the NPC lady. He has to NOT move. He can't see a thing, because you need the eye to see it .. so, for people who are trying to watch this -- sorry.

-- Devotion Aura. Whoa. You talked -two- paladins into standing there for 15 minutes (sans any wait time for the NPC to spawn). Wow.

-- Blessing of Wisdom. For this fight, mana can be very important, and you can find yourself down to the bone.

-- Blessing of Kings. YAY FOR MORE STATS!

-- Arcane Intellect. YAY MORE STATS.

-- Nightfin soup. More mana / 5..

-- Sagefish Delight. More mana / 5

-- Lesser Mana Oil. More mana / 5. There's a pattern! :D

None of these are -required-. Except one.

-- Oils of Immolation. You will go through about 10-15 of these, depending on how much you pop them .. I went through about 12, but I might've been trigger happy. Firebloom, and goldthorn, iirc.