Benediction - The Balance of Light and Shadow

[res]

This guide will show you how to acquire the epic priest weapon, Benediction.


How do I get started?

First of all, to begin the quest for Benediction you need to find a raid group that is capable of killing Marjodomo Executus, get him to drop Eye of Divinity, and most importantly, make sure you're the lucky priest that gets your hands on it!


Eris Havenfire

When you have acquired the Eye of Divinity you have to make a trip to Eastern Plaguelands and seek out Eris Havenfire.
Note that you can only see Eris Havenfire when you have the Eye of Divinity equipped.

She is located at the yellow dot:



Eris Havenfire is not like most NPCs however, she doesn't stick around indefinitely.

If any priest has attempted her quest "The Balance of Light and Shadow" and Failed, she will despawn for 2 hours. Yes you heard that right, 2 HOURS, so don't be alarmed if you can't see her with your trinket equipped, you'll just have to wait.

However, there is a way to avoid her to despawn if you feel overwhelmed during the quest, which brings us to "The Cleaner".


The Cleaner

Yes, the quest giver de-spawning for 2 hours isn't the only annoying thing about this quest. If ANYONE enters the quest zone while somebody is attempting the quest the quest will be interrupted and "The Cleaner" will show up to "clean" everybody up. This usually ends in 2 dead priests.

The bad thing about this mechanic is that if other priests arent aware that you are on the quest, they might log in / go to the quest giver to start the quest themselves only to see that you were in the middle of the quest and have now interrupted it as a big bad demons is now on its way to kill you both.

The good thing about this mechanic is that he interrupts the quest.
This means that if you are about to fail the quest, have a friend stand outside the quest area and tell them to run in, this will interrupt the quest instead of failing it and Eris Havenfire will NOT despawn.

This brings us to the quest.


The Balance of Light and Shadow

The quest is pretty straight forward: "Save 50 Peasants before 15 are slain."

But there's a lot more too it than that.

As soon as you start the quest untargetable skeletal archers will spawn on the hills north of the quest giver, these will shoot at the peasants that should also have spawned further up the road. Your objective is to get the waves of peasants to the beacon of light.

You will have to escort the peasants to their destination, healing them to prevent them from dying.

The Peasants will also periodically receive a disease that ticks for a fair amount of damage, you will have to dispel it with abolish disease.

A good tip is to have friendly nameplates activated so that you can see what peasants require your aid.

There will also be weak skeletons spawning that wants nothing else than to mess up your quest progress. They are very weak and have about 100 health, but will attack you and the peasants. You can use a low rank of holy nova to clear them.

If 15 of your Peasants die, you fail the quest and the questgiver will despawn for 2 hours.

Remember, you can always cancel the quest by having someone interrupt it by activating The Cleaner so the quest giver never has to despawn.

If 50 of your peasants survive, you will complete the quest, the quest giver will do an emote/yell then just go talk to her to recieve your reward: Splinter of Nordrassil

You can use this to craft your very own Benediction, and you already have half of the components!
All you need now is the The Eye of Shadow.

The Eye of Shadow

You can get this item by either getting your raid group together to kill Lord Kazzak, buying it off the auction house, or farm high level demons in one of these zones:

Winterspring if you have a small group:


or Blasted Lands if you have a larger group:



Helpful Consumables:

Stratholme Holy Water
For Killing Scourge Footsoldiers, 1 minute cooldown.

Oil of Immolation
For Killing Scourge Footsoldiers, no cooldown.

Major Mana Potion
For restoring Mana.

Demonic Rune / Dark Rune
For restoring mana. Shares cooldown with each other but not with Major Mana Potion.

[AgentMulder]

This is one of the best written guides I've ever seen.

Thanks!

[visceral89]

Very nice guide, thanks alot!

[SupaflyIRL]

GEARING:

Gear for Max Mana/Max Regen/+healing. Stamina is unimportant, the only thing that matters is your mana pool.

SPEC:

http://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#bxMrsV0oZfothf0Vx

Focus is on max mana, and max positive gain from the melee hits of the mini skeletons.

SPELLS:

Rank 3 Holy Nova
-Use only if skeletons are spread out and you need a heal as well

Abolish Disease
-Cure purple first then green

Flash Heal, Heal, Renew (downrank these to do around 800-1000 each, depending on your mana pool)
-Heal on mobs < 50%, Renew on mobs >50%, flash heal if (and only if) you need a panic heal.

OTHER CONSUMABLES:
Lesser Mana Oil
Nightfin Soup
Flask of Wisdom
Night Dragon's Breath

[Kjepp]

Thanks for all the info guys. Is there any newer videos available from anyone doing this on Nost?

[Lombar]

Here is my in depth guide of how I completed this. I didn't keep track but I believe I never lost a single peasant. Following this guide you could 1 shot the event but if you want to save on consumables try it once first to get a feel for it.

Stats / Spec
This part is just for a comparison to what I had.

My gear was BIS or roughly equivalent. So I had no shortage of plus healing meaning I could downrank and still have very effective heals. If you have very weak gear and are in need of this guide then congrats. More seriously if you have very sub-par gear then you might need to uprank the spells I list later on by 1 rank.

Health : around 3.2k
Mana : just short of 6k
This was after self buffs and elixirs.

My spec was just my raid spec. Holy Nova will make the event easier and I have other reasons for always keeping it.

Consumables
You could skip anything after the first 2 listed below but each one will make this easier. Personally I'd rather spend a bit more gold than keep trying the event.

3 Major Mana Potions(use it right after you spend 2k mana and every time it comes off cooldown and missing 2k mana. This will allow you to use 3 during the event as this is a mana intensive event.)
10-15 Oil of Immolation(better to have more than not enough)
3 Stratholme Holy Water
Lesser Mana Oil
Sagefish Delight
Elixir of Superior Defense(never had one but would recommend it, skeletons hurt over time)(you can also swap this for Mark of the Wild)
Elixir of the Sages(can swap this with Arcane Intellect)

Additionally you could bring 3 Dark Runes but I never bothered.

Spells
I changed my keybinds for this fight to make it easier. Obviously this is unnecessary but gives you an idea of what spells I used.
1: Abolish Disease
2: Flash Heal rank 5
3: Renew rank 6
4: Holy Nova rank 3
5: Oil of Immolation
Shift-1: Greater Heal rank 4
Shift-2: Stratholme Holy Water
Shift-3: Inner Focus

Also recasting Inner Fire for the armor will help during the event. You don't need to always have it up but taking less damage is nice if you can afford the mana.

The Event
Now that you have all the required consumables and correct rank of spells we can get into the mechanics.
First make sure health plates are on for friendlies. By default this is Shift-V. Make sure you can see the quest givers health before you start as not doing this will guarantee that you fail the event.

Here is a list in priority order of who to cure / heal.
1. Cure peasants with purple aura
2. Flash heal peasants below 50% health. If the peasant is about 10% health or less this will be priority number 1 over curing. The only exception is if a peasant has roughly the same health but also has a purple aura then cure the aura first. The aura really does hurt a lot at about a 10% health per second rate.
3. Renew peasants with the green aura. I never bothered to cure green aura since renew will heal more than the aura does in damage. This means you don't have to waste mana on a costly cure.
4. Renew peasants over 50% health but below 80%. I say 80% because there is no point in healing a nearly full peasant. This will save you mana and allow you to follow the priority list more effectively. You will be busy.
5. Stop caring for peasants that have moved past the quest giver unless they have a purple aura and are about to die or have a green aura and no renew while having less than 40% health. They despawn a few yards after they pass her and the next wave spawns around the time they get to her.

You will get a better feel after the first wave of this priority list. I feel like I covered all the exceptions but in the heat of the event use your best judgement.

Next is how to deal with the skeletons that spawn.
Oil of Immolation will be your #1 way of dealing with them. It has no cooldown and only takes 2 ticks to kill a skeleton. If you are overwhelmed by skeletons (as in 6+) use a Stratholme Holy Water. You don't want to tank that many. They don't do a lot of damage but they still hurt after the full event. If your Holy Water is on cooldown and are low on health and need to clear them use a Holy Nova. It only takes 1 cast to kill skeletons. Don't use Holy Nova if you are still sitting on a lot of health because you want to save your mana and save the global cooldown for healing peasants.

At some point your health will get low. Using a renew on yourself is a great way to stay alive especially while tanking skeletons. I didn't need to do it that many times maybe 3-4 over the course of the fight. However I did need to use a Greater heal rank 4 on myself. This is where you should use Inner Focus then greater heal. Wait until you are not busy and on very low health (10-15%). You will only get to do this once in the event. Should you get this low a 2nd time use whatever heal fits the situation. I never got that low more than once.

You can let 14 peasants die over the course of the fight. There is a total of 50 peasants spread across 5 waves with 10 per wave. This means you can let about 2-3 die per wave. However try not to let any die as the later waves get more intense and it is better that you lose them at that point. I don't think I lost any and if I did it was only 2-3 at most over the entire event. This meant for the last wave I could do nothing and still beat it.


After writing and reading my guide it sounds like a hard event but it actually is very easy. If anything is unclear or you feel I missed something let me know and I can answer the question and update the guide.

[PriestInOurTime]

2 hour respawn on this overpopulated server will be wonderful I predict. This is one of those areas where they should really compensate for the population not matching that of vanilla conditions. :/

[Lombar]

2 hour respawn on this overpopulated server will be wonderful I predict. This is one of those areas where they should really compensate for the population not matching that of vanilla conditions. :/

It is actually not bad in the slightest. When I did it the first 2 days after the raid reset the quest was on constant cooldown. By day 4 there was absolutely no one doing it it seemed.

[vondelphia]

What about Anathema?

The shadow version of this staff? You did a great job on the tutorial too btw, hoot wooth!!

[SweedJesus]

I'm absolutely losing my mind doing this. The amount of consumables I've dropped on attempts to only have someone run too close and reset it has gone over 50g. Eventually, I guess.

Edit: Just got it. Cooperating with any other priests around really helps.