Priestly Diversions

[Lissa]

It's the difference between having Greater Heal being worthless and being somewhat useful.  That half-second really does make a difference.  Now, if they would just make it a full second reduction, then I'd use greater heal all the time.

A full second would be nice, but even that reduction isn't necessary. If you plan effectively, you can use GH all the time occasionally throwing out a Flash with Renew to give you the little extra time you need to get GH off. I used it all the time and quite effectively without needing the reduced cast time.

How many times have you been in a battle where your group is *almost* able to win it but not quite?  After all, if it was a hopeless battle, you or your paladin/shaman would have run long before you got in trouble.  But in this case, you *thought* you could make it but that extra add came in or you figured just a little wrong.  So, your group is taking a pounding and you die and can't quite give the group that additional heal they need.  But wait!  What if you could send off a last ditch Prayer of Healing and cast Renew on everyone before you die?  Yes, Spirit of Redemption can save so many party wipes that way.

If a single ADD shows up and that wipes the party or is getting you killed, you aren't using all your spells to their full potential. In the case of ADDs attacking you as the Priest you have Fade. With that, you should have enough time for the Warrior to get a taunt up and take back the agro management from you. Simply put, SoR is a safety net for sloppy play.

You don't need it to be successful, but it's extremely nice, and considering the other Holy talents have now become useful, it's no longer a waste of talents to go get it anymore.

Again, Improved PoH isn't needed. How many times did you actually need to use it? I can count on one hand the number of times I needed to use it. Likewise, PoH will garner you the most agro of any spell a Priest can cast.

Yes, but since a Shadow Priest can't effectively heal while having no Holy Talents in an instance, that point is moot.  You must've always had at least one secondary healer with you and maybe more covering for you.  Like I said, for me it's boolean.  If you're soloing and/or PvPing, then you should go shadow/discipline.  If you're running instances and raids, you should go holy/discipline.  If you're PvPing as a holy priest, you're not as effective as a PvPer as you should be.  If you're running instances or raids as a shadow priest, you're hampering your party.  It only costs a little bit of gold to switch between the two, so there's no reason to hamper yourself in any situation by spreading out the talent points.

Wrong. As I stated previously, I have run BRS, BRD, Stratholme, and Temple under Shadow Spec (all the way to Shadowform and as high as I could go in Discipline with no Holy talents) and was quite successful. You do not have to be Holy spec, or even have any talents in Holy to be effective. Also, those times when I ran, the secondary healer was s'pose to be a Paladin and the Paladin wasn't casting any Healing spells, but using Seals and the like to increase agro on themselves and decrease agro on me and the other casters, thereby making me the only healer in the group.

Anyway, that's neither here nor there.  The original discussion was whether Holy Tree was useful or not, and the fact that we're talking about it as a place where *some* people could reasonably choose to put talent points means that it is indeed useful now.  Some people might prefer shadow over holy and some might like holy over shadow, but holy is no longer the ridiculous tree it once was.
[right][snapback]61376[/snapback][/right]

This is true. Holy was stupid before, but it still has a ways to go IMO. Holy Fire needs to be rethought seriously. The cast time reduction, Master Healer, needs to effect more spells than just Heal and GH, but should effect all timed healing spells and should decrease by a percentage instead of a given amount of time for as deep as it is in the tree. I would prefer to see a return of Combat Res and allow the Priest to be the only class capable of rezzing in combat due to a talent.