What does "elitist" mean to you?

A lot of people are throwing around this word recently, and I've come to realise it means something different to everyone.

Some people call anyone better than them "elitist", some people call anyone who welcomes harder fights "elitist", most people call the pug leader who declines them because of no gear and no experience "elitist"...

e·lit·ism

/ɪˈlitɪzəm, eɪˈli-/  [ih-lee-tiz-uhm, ey-lee-]

–noun

1.

practice of or belief in rule by an elite.

2.

consciousness of or pride in belonging to a select or favored group.

Well that's the dictionary definition.

Practice of or belief in rule by an elite:

This is an interesting one because of the competitive nature of WoW.  Top guilds are the elite - but do they rule us?

By definition, no they do not rule us.  They don't govern us, nor do they levy taxes on us, nor do they discipline us for any transgression or even have any authority over us at all.

But we use their strats.  And we look at their toons to check their specs and the way they gear.  We use their maths, their datamining, their rotations.  They may not govern us directly, but they do dictate a lot of our actions.

Consciousness of or pride in belonging to a select or favoured group:

This is more like it.  But then, this is just human nature.  Everybody who has ever been on a winning team, no matter how small the field of battle, knows what it is to be proud to be in that group.  Or at least aware of being in said team.

Neither of these really covers what people in WoW mean when they say it though.

Ok so then what does it mean?

Most people use it as a derogatory term referring to people who are arrogant and/or who express the opinion that they are better than themselves.

But then, this isn't entirely fair.  What if I can prove quantitatively and objectively that I am better than you?  Then am I "elitist" when I offer advice?  Or when I say you've messed up your gearing or spec?  Or that your strat is a bad one?  Is trying to help more or less "elitist" than laughing at you and mocking you for being worse than me?

Now you're just being difficult.

I'm a girl.  There's a rule somewhere that says I'm allowed.

But the point here is, it's difficult to apply the term as in it's current WoW-incarnation to anybody.  Especially considering that everybody defines their own "elite" group differently.

There is a group of people who think that people who played in Vanilla are the "elite" of WoW.

I agree that having played in Vanilla is a status symbol.  But it's no guarantee of being better at anything that someone who hasn't played that long.  Both our tanks played in Vanilla - and they both are, in my humble opinion, very good.  One of them is capable of handling any role with ease and efficiency.  Dps?  Top of the meter - by a significant margin.  Healing?  Why did we bring these other 2 losers?  Tanking?  Aware, intelligent cooldown usage, respectful of healers...  Our hunter played in Vanilla too and he's solid and reliable, as well as habitually high dps.  Only our new shadow priest has managed to knock him off the top of the damage meter for longer than a couple of weeks.  Tell our hunter to do something and it just gets done, quietly, efficiently and without complaint, even if it knocks him down a spot or two on the damage meter (I totally saw him get knocked down a spot the one time when we asked him to do something - but he was back up to the top the next week so I don't know if that counts).

We also have a mage social in our guild who played in Vanilla who can barely stand her staff the right way up without hitting herself in the face.  Another friend of mine has played since Vanilla and to be frank, I have no idea at all what he does with his time.  He doesn't instance, he doesn't hunt achievements, he doesn't pvp, he doesn't play the auction house, he doesn't collect reps.  As far as I can tell, he just levels.  Picks a class, levels it to max and then starts again from the beginning.  At last count he had 12 toons that are 80+.

I also have a close friend, as well as a few friendly acquaintances, who are in a world top 60 guild who started playing in WotLK. Our dps dk doesn't know a world where there is such a thing as a Daily Heroic quest - he only started playing after 3.3.

So quite obviously, having played in Vanilla is a bit like having a rare vanity pet.  It's shiny and rare, but doesn't guarantee that you're better than anybody else at anything at all, except perhaps at playing a game without getting bored for more than 5 years.

Some people claim that those who put up a fuss when people who play casually and/or not very well have access to similar gear that they will be getting are elitist.  Being able to buy Tier 9 and 10 in WotLK from doing heroics was very controversial.  Yes, those items had lower stats than items that required tier tokens, but still you could get a full set of the latest tier gear without ever setting foot in a raid.  "Casuals should have access to the same gear and perks as raiders do!"  they cried.  How would you feel if you got paid exactly the same salary as the guy in your office who works for half-days and only ever gets anything done properly by accident?  Probably not very good.  My personal opinion on the matter?  Cool, latest tier for my alts in a few months.  Did it make me cringe to see a rogue running around in top tier gear that was unenchanted and gemmed with pure stam?  Sure, but my priest had upgraded her 4set long before he had 2set, so who cares?

Some people claimed that those who applauded the massively increased difficulty of heroics were elitist.  This is quite possibly the most controversial topic yet.  I was one of the people who welcomed it.  I like being challenged, I like being pushed to improve myself.  Hearing that the difficulty of healing was going to be increased put a smile on my face for months.  Before that announcement, I had been running my daily heroics with a warlock tanking just so that I could find some challenge in my daily grind.

What does it mean to me?

To me, it means someone who uses a random set of criteria to assume that they're better than someone at something.  "I played in Vanilla, so obviously I'm a better strat-crafter/raid-leader/player than you."  Er... what?  "I have 10 85s, so obviously I'm a better dancer/ice-skater than you."  Um... ok.  "My guild does 25mans and we have the same progress, so obviously we're better than you."  Really?  Do you actually believe that?  Despite the fact that there was a blue post saying that they made 10mans harder than 25s accidentally, and that they'll try to balance 10s and 25s more carefully in Firelands?

To all the people who I classify as "elitist": do yourself a favour and check that your means of measuring your ability is actually related in some way to said ability or that you have any form of quantifiable evidence before you go telling people that they're worse than you and making yourself look like a fool.

The Maloriak Incident

This year has been a rough one in terms of morale.  Our gl burnt out and refused to take a break from raiding, either from delusions that he's irreplacable (not even close) or from terror that we'd find someone better and replace him (ok he might've gotten this one right, but we reassured him several times that we wouldn't).  He was "unable" to make raids several times, forcing us to reschedule main raids for Mondays and Thursdays and sub raids to Tuesdays and late for nearly every single raid.

Late in March, it got so bad that when he posted (yet again) that he couldn't make it, the following thread got underway:

GL:

There's this big competition my friends are in, last i heard it was pegged for a couple weeks away, but it seems the date was changed to this sunday (they said they told me last week....they might have, but i think i was too drunk to remember about it). It's a big deal for them so should really go along to support them.

Sorry about this, and all the lateness over the last couple months, and the other couple times ive had to skip thanks to work things. I've been trying to take steps to fix this, with any luck they might pay off soon.

I should be able to make a monday/tuesday raid if we can get it organised (just need to know before hand, there's a big crunch going on in work and i was going to be volunteering to help with some testing for it when i can)

 This is a legitimate reason for not being able to make a raid.  Under normal circumstances, it would've been greeted with a slew of "Have fun!" 's and a discussion about rescheduling.  At the time, however, we had rescheduled 6 different raids in 3 weeks, and the officers (myself and my co-gl) were completely burnt out, partly from our raid schedule (pretty much 4 or 5 nights a week were scheduled as raids, some of them doubled up with 2 raids scheduled for that night, even if we only raided 2-3 of them each week), but mostly from fighting an uphill battle against our GL to keep raid morale up to a point where people actually wanted to raid and were capable of killing anything at all.  And so it began.

Me:

I'm more than likely overstepping my bounds here, but I really feel that this needs to be said.

Would it be possible for you to organise your personal stuff on one of the 5 days that we don't have set aside for raiding? I understand that you have a new job and all, but you are allowed to say "no" to overtime - at least you are in South Africa, I imagine the relevant laws are in place in Wales too. Remember that you're not the only person in the guild with a job, even a job that requires overtime, and everyone else still manages to be at almost every single raid on time. At the moment you're asking the entire guild to re-organise their social lives around yours every second week or so, having to shift raids to Thursdays and such.

A little respect for the other 9 people you raid with would be massively appreciated. I feel that a small reminder about how much our guild leader's disinterest in our raids affects raid morale overall wouldn't be entirely out of place here either. I know I'm not speaking for everyone in the guild, but I personally am starting to get those "Why do I even bother to look forward to raids when I know they're not going to happen? What's the point in even logging at all?" thoughts.

Co-gl:

Firstly I'd like to say thanks for the heads up I've moved the raid to Monday with the alt raid on either Sunday or Tuesday, depending on interest.

Secondly I do agree with a few of the points [my name] has brought up while I understand at times there isn't much you can do about it, but there are nine other people dependant on you turning up to raids and being in the mood to raid. This is not intended as a personal attack and applies to anyone in the raid, there are times when I would rather be doing anything else but you just need to suck it for the few hours of the raid and then go crash out.

Co-gl again:  (I swear he just does it to up his postcount on forums)

I feel I should also say if you do want or need time to sort everything out then feel free to take a break from raiding for a bit I'll work something out to fill in while your gone, and then when you come back you can just step back into your current role. I would much rather do that than you try to keep everything going now and then burn yourself out in the process and either feel like your forced to raid and not want to be there or just stop out right.

GL:

Well, it's never quite so simple. Overtime is actually me volunteering, and to be honest, given this is my career im trying to build and im still in my initial 3 month probationary period, im doing all i can. It has to have priority, but im still trying my best to work it around meeting you guys in game as best i can. And personal stuff? it's not like ive not declined invitations so i can raid with you guys, but this sunday isn't something i cant just reschedule. (It's not like i really go out on sundays at all often either, with work the next day and all)

You make it sound as though I'm not trying as best I can, i get up, leave my house, do my hours, go home and arrive back home 12 hours after i first woke up for work give or take 30mins, and as soon as I get in, im online being criticised for being late bwhen ive not had even 5 minutes to sit down yet.

It's not so much about not being in the mood, it's being exhausted with no room to rest and then losing focus because of the piss poor sleep i had the night before.

Have been trying to get earlier days in too, and if there weren't some accident, or whatever it was causing some insane 2 hour traffic last wed, id have been home well on time =/

But there is a silver lining though, am planning to move someplace closer to work in the next month or two, should help fix half my problems and give me a couple more hours a day in spare time.

But basically, it's not that i dont care, far from it, raiding with you guys is like, why i play the game. I come along regardless of what state im in, am trying as best as i can and am doing what i can to improve it.....if that's not good enough for you...then i dont know what else i can do.

Our pro holy pala:

To be honest [GL], it sounds like you've tried juggling everything around in your life as far as you can and you still can't manage to make time for raiding (and if you can't be there on time, prepared, with enough energy to actually enjoy yourself and play your best, then you haven't managed to make time).

That being the case, why not just take a break until you do have time? We can get by without you for a while, and once you're set in the new place closer to work, you can come back to raiding. You know there'll always be a spot for you.

Basically I think that punctuality and a decent attendance rate are things we would expect from any raider. If anyone else's circumstances changed to the point where we couldn't guarantee that, we would do the decent thing and step out of the raid team until such a time as we could.

Me:

You know we love you [GL], and that we will always keep your spot open for you. We all understand real life commitments and how you feel you should act when building a new career and how exhausting a new job can be. There's no shame in admitting you've taken on too much and you're just not coping. I would much rather you take a break, however much it nerfs our raid team, than you wind up hating WoW and cancelling your subscription or having a nervous breakdown like a friend of mine has twice now (she seems to think that working 20 hours a day 7 days a week to do 4 people's jobs is a normal job requirement and has done it at 2 different jobs now, nearly getting fired at both due to serious medical issues resulting from 10 hours of sleep a week). Remember: Your guild policy has always been that people should have fun and progress is nice too.

It's affecting all of us too, however much you'd like to think I'm being unreasonable, demanding bitch. I know you're going out of your way for us, but as things things stand most of us have 4-5 evenings a week "scheduled" for raid, even though we only end up raiding 3 of them (including the alt run). Tonight, for example, most of us have 2 raids scheduled in our heads, which feels like an awful lot to me And WoW pretty much is my social life - imagine how those of us who actually have a social life feel about it!

  The following Wednesday, he actually showed up on time, catching us all unawares.  We had unofficially moved raid start back half an hour due to his consistent lateness - ie, we had told everybody but him and left the time unchanged on the calendar in case he looked at it (supremely unlikely) and thought he could leave work half an hour later.  We greeted him with shock and he responded by reproachfully asking if we had thought he was lying when he said he was leaving earlier in the morning so as to be on time for raids (we had), then discovered that one of our raiders was having serious net troubles and was unable to log.

We looked at pulling in a sub, but the resto shaman sub (have the resto druid go moonkin and me go shadow for 2healer fights) wasn't online and the prot warrior sub was... well quite frankly, just not up to it (http://soulwarding.blogspot.com/2011/04/officer-stuffs-failing-trial.html).  So a reschedule was suggested and I flipped.  I was completely fed up with rescheduling not only our guild's lives but also a few regular pugs in our sub runs' lives as well.  I managed to scrape up a replacement (a friend of mine's offrealm alt) and off we went, clearing up all our farm content except Nef, Maloriak (not on farm on heroic yet) and Al'akir (next planned heroic target).

On sunday we found that our guildie's line still wasn't fixed, so I once again talked my friend into raiding with us on his alt instead of doing Nefarion heroic on his main (his guild are 13/13).  The plan was to kill Maloriak heroic, which we only had one kill of at that point, then do Nef normal quickly and move over to Al'akir and started working on him on heroic.  It didn't start off great, it's a bastard of a fight and we had only killed it once, so we wiped a fair bit.

Suddenly, as we're about to pull, our gl says "brb it's important".  So we wait.  And wait.  And wait.  After a while I ask our co-gl to look out the window and check for signs that our gl's house is on fire.  Apparently it's not.  10 minutes later when he gets back we ask him what the problem was, half-expecting to be told "That's private" like he's told us a few times.  But no!  This time he's willing to share.  Apparently his father had slacked in filling out the government census which was due that day and our gl had to go log him into the website so they could submit their form that day.  Now, our raid ends at 22h30 UK time, so must of us pointed out that if it waited this long, it could wait another 3 hours without any serious injury coming to anybody and one of the guys pointed out that most people weren't filling in their census this year anyway because it had been contracted to an American gun company so people were objecting by refusing to fill it in (I would too tbh).

Anyway, we pointed out that this was, in fact, not important and that we would appreciate if he could tell his father to wait until we were done, pointing out (again) that there were 9 people to consider in the raid other than him.  A few afk's later, I crapped him out about it again, saying that this was disrespectful, that he's old enough (24) to tell his dad to leave him alone for a few hours and that he should explain to his father that this rubbish was messing around 9 other people.  He responded that his dad didn't understand, to which I said "Put him on vent, we'll explain it to him.".

Interruptions aside, suddenly everything came together.  We were at 38% halfway through the second black phase, all the Arcane Storms had been interrupted timeously, healer mana bars were looking healthy... It was looking like a kill with 2 hours to spare to work on Al'akir.  And then we hear our gl's voice on vent:  "Wipe it guys, be right back.".

...

Our best attempt of the night, wiped.  Why?  Because f* you, that's why.  Vent and /ra exploded.  We were livid.  In fact, livid might actually be a severe understatement of how angry we all were.  When he got back, we rained hellfire on his head.  Even our co-gl, who is well-liked and respected by the entire guild, couldn't stop it.  Normally when he says "enough now", everyone stops, no matter how angry they are with each other.  Usually it doesn't even go to whispers.  But this time, people ignored him.  We lambasted our gl for a full 10 minutes mostly in /ra (I don't think some people trusted themselves on vent), but partially on vent as well.

You know what the worst part is?  Yes, it gets worse.  He was upset, even angry, with us for being so unreasonable.  He actually was sincerely and completely convinced he had done nothing wrong and that all 9 of us were being jerks for not understanding how important it was that his dad fill out an internet form with him hand-holding the entire way before raid end.

We're lucky we didn't lose half the raid team.  Only our co-gl (soon to be our gl) is to thank for that.  How he managed to hold the entire raid team together I don't know.  How he had the strength to not say "So guys, I'm starting a new guild, who's with me?"  I don't know.  My guild, my guildies and I owe a lot to this man, and I think that he will be an incredible gl and make our guild and our raids a lot stronger than we ever have been.  I have a lot of hope for our future with him in charge.

PST

PST is up!  And yes, I know I'm late posting it.  Once again, all episodes of the Weekly Marmot and PST are archived on Tankspot.

Ditched

My co-gl posted today that our gl is going to (has already?) quit WoW.  It seems our guild leader apparently can't even be bothered to tell us himself, let alone log on and hand over the guild leader rank to someone else.

As depressing as it is to lose one of the best geared toons in our raid group (indeed, the only toon with 2 pieces of heroic tier), it's infinitely more depressing to realise he cares so little for us that he can't even extend us the basic courtesy of handing over the reigns and letting us know that he's leaving us for good.

And so it seems we will have to wait another 16 days before our co-gl can ticket and ask for a gm to hand over guild leader to him. 16 days with no access to any of the administrative stuff, like bank access and rank settings and no recourse should one of our members be hacked and the guild bank be cleaned out.  16 days with our poor co-gl trying desperately to steer without a rudder.

Thanks for nothing.

Call to Arms and Dungeon Finder in general

Oh dear.  This new idea brings visions of disaster to my mind.  I appreciate that dps queues are long, painful and boring, but I really don't think that this is the answer.  In fact, to be perfectly honest, I think the dungeon finder in general is a horrible idea.  Let me explain why.

Previously, when you were levelling and wanted to instance, there were only 8-10 people (low pop realm, others may be different) in your level bracket online at any given time.  This meant that you always saw at least 1 familiar face every time you entered an instance and that if you were an asshol and/or a ninja, word got around damn fast and most of the groups you got would kick you before you got to the instance.  If you were particularly fun to be around or good at your job, you would find yourself instance levelling the last few levels, whether you'd planned to or not.  This also meant that when you hit level cap, you had a group of people that you liked who had also just hit level cap to do heroics with.

Afterwards, you kept these people on your friends list, and when you were lf tank/healer/dps for the daily heroic, you could usually whisper one them and convince them to run with you for kicks or for old times' sake or whatever.  The more people liked you, the more likely they were to say yes to an instance.  And the worse your reputation was, the less likely you were to find a group.  Being an asshol came with penalties - hard penalties.  The community would close its ranks against you.

Then the dungeon finder came along.  And people were now "anonymous".  There was no more punishment for ninjaing or being an asshol.  Oh there was vote-kick.  And the community is still active in rare groups - a few times I've run an instance that I've enjoyed and the group has run more instances that we don't even need just because we're having fun together and when we've had to replace someone and landed up with an asshol/ninja, we've closed ranks on them and removed them from the group.  But they could just requeue and ninja some more stuff and/or abuse some more people.

And there are penalties associated with kicking people.  The more you kick, the longer you have to wait before you can kick.  Add to that the impatience of people...  If you want to kick someone and refused to continue until you could, more often than not you get kicked when possible instead of the guy you wanted to kick for ninjaing and/or being an asshol.  The reason for these penalties?  People used vote-kick for griefing.  Oh and did I mention?  You were only allowed to kick one person per instance.  That meant that if you kicked this guy, you ran the pug lotto hard and might wind up with someone even worse that you were now stuck with.  Net result:  being an asshol and/or a ninja came with no penalties whatsoever, but refusing to run with an asshol/ninja did.  The less you wanted to put up with abusive morons, the more you were punished for it.

Then the guild system was introduced, leading to yet another extra set of penalties for kicking someone while in a guild group because of people kicking others because a guildie wants in.

Now my guild is fairly laid back.  We're good enough to carry 1 or 2 dps in most heroics and generally we don't mind if the people are nice.  We may mock them a little in guild, but we don't kick someone for doing 3k dps (How?  Seriously, how is this possible at 85?  I mean, are you afk?  Not using spells or abilities? Please tell me - even I can manage 10k+ and I'm a dreadful dps) or dying on every boss and trash pull or being permanently lost.  If we run across a 3k dps/green tank/green healer who's really, really nice, we've even been known to include them in further runs as well as give them tips and suggestions to improve their dps, tanking or healing as well as links to Elitist Jerks and such.

But we've also been known to kick people who are better than us because they're complete [censored].  And why should we be forced to take an extra penalty because 4 of us group with someone from a top 30 guild who thinks his world rank entitles him to hit need on everything that he can roll on?  We don't need him to boost us - we can cope fine by ourselves thank you very much.  Similarly, why should we have to put up with a 3k dps rogue who dies on every trash pull and then swears the tank and/or healer blind, calling us "bads" and "morons" and telling us to l2p?  And what about the middle-of-the-road guy who's not worse or better than us but launches into a fit of namecalling if the healer drops him when things go awry, or the tank's 2 taunts just weren't enough to grab all the mobs he ran into by accident and he dies?

Another thing that bothers me is, even if you do decide "No thanks, I'd rather build my own group than play pug lotto", most people can't be bothered.  The few that can be bothered come at a price... Some tanks and healers charge for the "privilege" of queueing with them.  And if you do persevere and build a group, you have to use the dungeon finder anyway to get your daily Valour Points!  No more moving to the instance, seeing friends outside the instance entrance and having a chat in /s while you wait for the group to fill or get their acts together and be ready for a summon.

With the coming of Cataclysm, dps queues jumped from 10-15 minutes at peak times and 20-30 minutes at slow times to a whopping 45 minutes at peak times, approaching 2 hours at slow times.  Part of the reason is that people who had no business tanking or healing finally realised this and switched to dps, and part of it is because guild groups became so important for guild experience that very few tanks pug, preferring instead to run with guild groups.  The addition of the differing experience levels for different amounts of guildies lessened the pool of groups of 4, most guild groups prefer to run in groups of 5 now.  We will usually wait until we are able to get a group of 5 before running an instance.

Now, after making a guild the most important part of your WoW life, tanks and healers are being encouraged to ditch guild groups and pug solo.  People who switched to dps after realising that they had no business tanking or healing are being encouraged to go back and inflict themselves on people once more.

Yes, there are advantages to the dungeon finder.  It's nice being able to run an instance more than once, especially if you're looking for an item from there (stupid Stonecore heal trinket 2 damn months it took to drop *^!^@&*^!#).  Not having to travel to an instance is great.  Not that travelling to an instance anywhere now is very far - a lot of the treks to instances in Wrath were much longer than anything in Cataclysm.  For crying out loud, the raids are the furthest to fly to...  Being able to run "the daily" with everyone in your guild is fantastic.

But these upsides are weighed down by the negatives.

I don't kick for frivolous reasons, but some people do, so I am punished for it by having to wait to kick people or having to leave and take the deserter debuff.  I don't leave for no reason, but some people do and so I have to take a 30 minute debuff if I just can't be arsed to be sworn at by the tank for dropping him when he pulls and dies before I've even zoned for another 15 minutes so I can leave without being punished.  If I'm failing horrendously, unable to keep aggro on my tank alt, unable to keep up with damage on a new healing toon or pushing sub-par dps on a dps toon, I leave voluntarily, saying that I'm not contributing as I should be and that I'm sorry for wasting people's time, but other people don't and hence I have to take a penalty to remove them.  I don't ninja and I'm always polite and friendly until someone gives me a reason not to be, but others aren't and hence I have to take more penalties to remove them.

In conclusion, give me back the old system.  Give me back the trip to the instance.  Give me back the 10-30 minutes it takes to build a dungeon group.  Take away from me the ability to run an instance twice in one day.  Take away the ability for me to run the daily with multiple guildies.  I want my Daily Heroic quest back.  I want the community back.  I want the people who abuse others for no damn reason other than they have to put up with it or suffer for it to be ostracised and learn to better their ways.  I want a bad guild reputation to really affect people hard, so that being reported for ninjaing an item or being abusive meant a gkick 9 out of 10 times.

Perhaps there's a way to have the best of both worlds.  Perhaps put an A and B lockout on each instance, so that you can run it twice in a day if you want.  And when re-implementing the daily quest, make it change every 2 hours.  You can still only do the quest once a day, but you can also run "the daily" with all your guildies.

As for the Call to Arms...  If it still remains a necessity, add 2 Call to Arms daily quests for tanks and healers.  "Complete any heroic instance with 4 people who are not in your guild." and "Complete any heroic instance with 20 people who are not in your guild.".  Track guild rep for this (Guild rep hangs around for a few days after you gquit, so that can be tracked as well for unguilded people to prevent exploitation).  The rewards don't have to be huge, some gems/enchanting mats with a chance at one of 3 or 4 BoA pets (maybe one only available from the bag?) for the first one and a chance at one of 3 or 4 BoA mounts (same again) or any BoE epic (including raid drops) from the second one.  This means that everyday most tank and heal toons will be running at least 1 instance with no guildies, and up to 20 with at least 1 person who is not in their guild.

I don't think it would be necessary though.  I never had trouble getting groups together for heroics, even as a dps on a low population realm.  Sure I was a noob, but I guess people liked having me along because I was scrupulous about keeping the healer soulstoned, dropped a soulwell before every boss and was generally polite and friendly to everyone I met.  Hell, I even managed to scrape together a run of a heroic that wasn't the daily the night before 3.2 and the Emblem upgrade on my freshly dinged priest.

Another dc, another song

Keep them coming Kittycat, we LOVE your singing <3

Lecture Mode: Spec and Spells for 10 mans.

There is a lot of leeway for choice in specs these days, but this is the spec that I have currently and have liked the most out of all the specs that I've tried:  http://www.wowhead.com/talent#brrorRsbcRMoMur:cmVdqrzVM.  I've put in the glyphs I currently have up - I logged off after doing Maloriak heroic and Nefarion normal so the glyphs may seem a little strange.

Talents:

Discipline:

Improved Power Word: Shield:  2/2

If you have to ask why, Discipline is probably not the tree for you.

Twin Disciplines:  2/3

Mental Agility:  2/3

These 4 points you can pretty much assign as you like.  I've put 2 in Twin Disciplines because I use a lot of spells other than Power Word:  Shield and 2 in Mental Agility because I still use a lot of shields and the mana decrease affects Renew (which I pretty much only use running back but still - it costs less!), Prayer of Mending (which I don't use as much as I should - time to make my Power Aura more annoying I think), Dispel Magic, Cure Disease etc.

Soul Warding:  2/2

If you have to ask why, Discipline is probably not the tree for you.

Evangelism:  2/2

Archangel:  1/1

Atonement:  2/2

These may seem like an odd choice for anything other than Halfus Wyrmbreaker, but the regen and healing from Atonement is extremely useful for pretty much any boss you could care to name.  I find that AtonementSmite is around the same as for Flash Heal, but for just over half of the mana cost (28% of base mana for Flash Heal and 15% of base mana for Smite), as well as the reduced cooldown on Penance from Train of Thought makes it a lot better than it sounds.

Inner Focus: 1/1

Make the world's most annoying Power Aura ever and use it on cooldown.

Power Infusion: 1/1

This is a particularly sexy spell.  On mana-intensive fights, use it on yourself every cooldown.  It's great for a bit of burst healing as well.  On more laid-back fights, use it on a caster dps.

Renewed Hope:  2/2

+10% crit on Weakened Soul and Grace Targets.  If that's not enough for you, have another look at Divine Aegis.

Rapture:  3/3

Free mana that scales with how much you have - no-brainer much?

Borrowed Time:  2/2

14% spell haste on demand - another no-brainer.

Divine Aegis:  3/3

Free healing from all crits!  And also from every hit of Prayer of Healing, which is a very-abused spell in 10mans.

Pain Suppression:  1/1

Emergency Button!

Train  of Thought:  2/2

Decreased cooldown on Inner Focus or Penance, depending on what you're using.  Very yummy.

Grace:  2/2

8-24% increased healing on multiple targets.  Yet another no-brainer.

Power Word: Barrier:  1/1

Not as awesome as it first appears, it's still a very nice situational raid cooldown.

Holy:

Divine Fury:  3/3

I mostly have this for the reduced cast time on Smite, but the reductions on Heal and Greater Heal are also useful.

Empowered Healing:  2/3

These are basically filler talents for me.  The extra healing on Flash Heal is a nice bonus in conjunction with Surge of Light, but you could easily go for 2/2 Improved Renew if you ever use Renew (I don't).

Inspiration:  2/2

10% reduced damage on everyone you critically heal with pretty much any direct heal.  NOMNOMNOM!

Surge of Light:  2/2

Free Flash Heal from Smite spam that can proc another free Flash Heal that can proc another free Flash Heal that can... Ok you probably won't get that many procs in a row, but still, very sexy.

Desperate Prayer:  1/1

Self-emergency button.  I'd tell you how many times this has saved my life but I'm not sure I can count that high for a start and also I promised I'd try not to embarass myself in this blog.

Glyphs:

Prime Glyphs:

Glyph of Power Word: Shield:  Adds an extra little heal to every use of Power Word: Shield (around 5k for me).

Glyph of Prayer of Healing:  Adds an extra little heal to every hit of Prayer of Healing (around 3k for me).

Glyph of Power Word: Barrier:  Adds some nice oomph to this raid cooldown, but not useful for every fight.  I usually swap it out for Glyph of Penance depending on the fight.

Glyph of Penance:  Reduced cooldown on Penance means an extra use of it (6 instead of 5) every minute if used on cooldown, not factoring in Smite spam and Train of Thought.  When you have T11 4set, this will help you maintain the Indulgence of the Penitent buff when not using Smite.

Major Glyphs:

Glyph of Divine Accuracy:  Non-negotiable for Atonement.

Glyph of Prayer of Mending:  Really nice boost to healing.

Glyph of Desperation:  Once again, this is a situational glyph.  It may seem a little silly to have in a PvE spec, but get back to me when your Nefarion tank takes 2 hits in a row positioning him when you've been Tail Lashed by Onyxia.

Glyph of Dispel Magic:  For dispell-heavy fights, this is a must-have.

Minor Glyphs:

Glyph of Shadowfiend:  Unlikely that your Shadowfiend will die, but just in case!

Glyph of Levitate:  Not useful in pretty much all fights, but saves you from having to keep a stack of reagents with you.

Glyph of Fortitude:  Good for an in-fight buff for someone who has been combat-ressed or who ankhed, but you can't really afford deaths in 10s, so not as useful as for 25s.

Glyph of Fading:  Nice glyph for heavy add fights, but still nothing really special.

Spells:

I'm not going to cover the spells I use in raids and how and when I use them in-depth here.  I plan to put up all our strats for all fights and cover the healing strats I use in detail there.  This is just a basic breakdown of spells I use in raids.

Power Word: Shield:  Gone are the days where all your Disc priest ever did was spam this spell.  It is, however, still very useful.  I mostly use this on the tanks and on dps who are in trouble and dropping fast to buy a little bit of extra time for a cast-time spell.

Prayer of Healing:  Guaranteed Divine Aegis on every hit, guaranteed hot on every hit if glyphed and no upper limit on the number of hits.  No upper limit?  What the hell does that have to do with anything?  Pets are part of the party.  Imagine a group full of hunters and warlocks.  That's 10 hits, with 10 Divine Aegis and 10 hots  (/wipes drool from chin).

Prayer of Mending:  Use it often, but not necessarily on cooldown.  I have mine tracked on Grid so that I can see if it's still going and who it's on.  If it's on someone likely to take damage soon, let it bounce.  If it's not, cast a new one on someone who's likely to take damage soon.  Usually I cast it on the tank, but for an emergency situation (melee toon gets 3 Vile Swills dropped on him and has to run through another 4 to get clear for example), drop this on him after you've shielded.

Penance:  A very cheap big heal.  Use it as often as you can, especially if you have T11 4set.  If nobody is particularly low, then drop it on the tank, otherwise it is best served on the aforementioned melee after PW:S and PoM.

Smite:  Give this a prominent and easy to hit place on your bars.  Use it as often as possible.  Keep a 5 stack of Evangelism as much as you are able.  Learn when heavy healing periods are and save up Evangelism for the healing buff from Archangel for the right moments.

Archangel:  On most fights, you want to use this whenever it's available and you have a 5 stack of Evangelism.  Don't be shy to use it with less than a 5 stack if it's about to wear off and you don't have time to squeeze off the extra Smite or 2 to build it up to full, some mana back and a bit of extra healing is better than a dropped stack, which is just useless.

Divine Hymn:  Delicious raid cooldown, usually ours are scheduled well in advance, but on every fight that it's not, use it at your discretion.  If you don't end a fight with this on cooldown, chances are high that you've failed.

Hymn of Hope:  Raid wide mana cooldown.  Use any maximum mana-based cooldowns after using this, like Arcane Torrent and Shadowfiend.  Announce it to the raid so that other healers can look after you if something nasty lands on you while you're channeling as well as use their own maximum mana-based cooldowns when they have the buff.

Shadowfiend:  Not the best mana cooldown ever, but still quite a useful little thing.  Make sure  you have it glyphed.

Flash Heal:  Very expensive, generally I only use this with a Surge of Light proc or on Chimaeron heroic for Caustic Slime targets when Penance is on cooldown.

Binding Heal:  Same mana cost and heal as Flash Heal, except on 2 people at once.  Very mana-inefficient, use only if you and someone else are in dire straits (or on Chimaeron if you get hit by Caustic Slime).

Greater Heal:  Useful in tank healing if there are too many targets low on health in range of Atonement.

Heal:  Small, efficient spell.  I rarely use this, even in 5mans.

Renew:  Your basic hot.  I rarely use this except running back from wipes.

Inner Fire:  Yummy spell power increase, I keep it up at all times.

Inner Will:  Mana reduction on instants, consider using this with a shield spam spec (not recommended for 10s unless the rest of your raid consists of 2 resto druids and 5 moonkins who are willing to innervate you on cooldown).

Fade:  Useful for getting that pesky Resto druid that keeps beating you on the heal meters out of the fight right at the beginning.  Simply wait for the tank to be in aggro radius of the boss and shield him, then hit Fade immediately.  The hots that the druid has stacked up on the tank will put him at second highest aggro and he'll be dead before the tank even realises that the boss didn't go straight to him.

Arcane Torrent:  So...  Much...  Regen...  If you don't have this spell I can only see one good reason:  You have a Troll or Gnome priest that is Shadow mainspec.  Any other excuse (Blood elves are horrible, I'm alliance /spit, etc) just means you suck.