Back in the old days when Alterac Valley used to last for hours or days, I ran it a lot on my holy priest. I was determined to get my epic mount and the savings for buying the PvP mount at exalted was huge! Once I get the mount, I didn’t do much more PvP. Mostly I’ve run my toons through Alterac a couple times at level 55 for the XP from the initial quests, then ignored the battlegrounds.

Now that I’m leveling another priest, I’m having a blast playing in Alterac Valley again. The XP isn’t amazing, but it’s decent. I still stink at PvP but as a holy priest I can heal those who are better at it than I am (and hopefully annoy the other side). I feel as though I should get the Benediction staff to make it easier on the other side to know who to kill.

A few tips to remember:

• Use the terrain – healing from behind rocks, bushes, and trees can give you a few more precious seconds of life
• When you’re not sure who to heal, use Tab and Target of Target to find someone being targeted by the bad guys
• No matter how weak your stats, you can capture / defend an unguarded objective
• Buff the raid before the battleground starts – it’s free (except for the reagent cost). Buff yourself immediately upon rezzing.
• Have fun! It’s easy to find groups with the dungeon finder or to go do quests, so don’t put yourself through PvP if you’re not enjoying it.

I joined in on a Blackwing Lair raid for fun last night. We went through the instance, got some lower level toons some pretty purples, and got the achievement for a bunch of people. It reminded me of my first raiding toons and why I became a raid leader.

I was sure I had highlighted this earlier, but WoW.com had a video guide to faster raiding. What takes time in raids is not the fights, but the dead time. It’s the time you spend waiting for people to find their way to the instance, waiting for someone to regain that last tenth of a percent of mana, or debating who gets the latest shiny object that kills your momentum and leads to people wandering away to take a nap. I had gotten sick of slow runs, which is one of the reasons I became a raid leader. As a tank, I had the bonus ability of pull whenever I felt ready.

The current heroics are a great way to get practice for speed runs. If you’re the tank, just keep pulling if your healer has over 50% mana. As a healer, let the tank know you’re fine with chain pulls. As DPS … play well so that the healer doesn’t waste mana on you, I guess?