Priest end-game stuff.

[mjdoom]

The +crit% items are mostly useless for priests.  The heals of a priest are designed to be effective without taking crits into account.  Thus, a crit frequently is just wasted.
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I'm not sure that this is totally true. Very often I am flash healing for less than the amount of damage someone has taken because I am comfortable with the rate at which they are taking damage. An extra crit heal in this case will not necessarily be "wasted" and could potentially save me some mana. Because of my healing methods I'm not as concerned about overhealing.

*Hijack alert!!!*

Ok, off topic here but this caught my attention. Recently I've been trying to find a way to balance my priest for both PvE and PvP simultaneously (yes, I'm crazy). I've already respecced to a 22/19/10 Shadow/Disc/Holy build that is currently working reasonably well. I've successfully 5-manned Scholo with it and done perfectly fine in a few raids. The major loss I've had over my original 31/20 Disc/Holy build is that my mana regen isn't as consistent.

I've slowly been adding some +crit% and +damage to spells items to my inventory and along with shadow reach and 2 points into improved Mind Blast my MB is a decent PvP spell. Silence is of course also exceedingly useful in so many situations.

That said, I really liked my huge mana pool that rarely ran dry with my disc/holy build and even before I respecced to have some shadow I formulated a backup plan in case it didn't work out. As much as I doubt it I'm wondering if anyone has tried this and can give me some perspective before I sink time into the test server to futz with it.

The basic idea is to go back to Disc/Holy with a 32/19 configuration. This time it will be reconfigured to be more appropriate for PvP though. The key is to grab Force of Will, Holy Spec, and Imp. Holy Smite to make smite into a higher octane damage dealer. With these three talents the damage for smite would be on par with Mind Blast but it would have a 5% higher crit chance (and along the way Mind Blast will become a more damaging spell as well). Along with the +4% crit chance I currently have from items (and hopefully more to come) I can have a 22% chance to crit with Smite which seems pretty nice. Once every 5 minutes I could activate Inner Focus for a smite with a whopping 47% chance to crit. Holy damage also has the advantage that the only way to lower its damage (that I know of) are holy protect pots which aren't very common whereas shadow resistance is available from priests. Also, there are items with shadow resist while there are none with holy resist that I know of.

There are some drawbacks though. First off, Smite is a 2.5 second cast while MB is 1.5 second cast. PvP targets don't stand still very often so the difference in casting time can be noticeable. I would also lose the awesome utility of silence and no longer have shadow reach (another negative with moving targets). In addition I would lose improved fade and the chance to stun with blackout, but I won't miss those as much. This will, however, be a build that should be able to make it through places like MC while not running into mana difficulties. As I've been told by some friends in raiding guilds, you can always tell what priests have some shadow because they tend to go OOM faster. This can always be masked partially by better equipment but it is a fact that disc/holy will generally give you better healing mana efficiency.

So, what are some general thoughts? Is the chance to get a spell with an almost 1 in 4 chance to crit that great? I'll still never match the spell damage of a mage, but for a priest built for healing to be able to regularly crit for 650-750 damage (before +damage mods) seems like a nice tool. In addition I can still be a highly effective healbot. I lose some shadow utilities that are very nice though.

Has anyone ever tried something like this? I get the fealing that Imp. Holy Smite is a rarely used talent so I am guessing not. Thoughts?

Note: Here are how I got my crit numbers. This is interesting because of how things mix and match for certain situations.

Assumptions: 5% base crit chance
5% crit chance from Force of Will (for offensive spells)
5% crit chance from Holy Spec. (for holy spells)
3+% crit chance from int (assuming 100 int= 1% crit chance, my current configuration gives me about 350 int depending on how I mix and match gear)

PvE healing: 5% base + 5% HS + 3+% int + 1-3% items (depending on situation) = 14-16+% crit chance per heal

PvP Holy Smite: 5% base + 5% FoW + 5% HS + 3+% int + 4% items = 22+% crit chance

PvP Mind Blast: 5% base + 5% FoW + 3+% int + 1-3% items = 14-16+% crit chance

Also, here is the talent spec for those who are curious:

Discipline Talents (32 points)

Unbreakable Will - 5/5 points
Increases your chance to resist Stun, Fear, and Silence effects by 15%.

Improved Power Word: Shield - 3/3 points
Reduces the duration of your Power Word: Shield's Weakened Soul effect by 15 seconds.

Improved Power Word: Fortitude - 2/2 points
Increases the effect of your Power Word: Fortitude spell by 30%.

Mental Agility - 5/5 points
Reduces the mana cost of your instant cast spells by 10%.

Mental Strength - 5/5 points
Increases your maximum Mana by 10%.

Meditation - 5/5 points
Allows 15% of your Mana regeneration to continue while casting.

Inner Focus - 1/1 point
When activated, reduces the Mana cost of your next spell by 100% and increases its critical effect chance by 25% if it is capable of a critical effect.

Force of Will - 5/5 points
Increases your spell damage by 5% and the critical strike chance of your offensive spells by 5%.

Divine Spirit - 1/1 point
Holy power infuses the target, increasing their Spirit by 23 for 30 minutes.


Holy Talents (19 points)

Holy Specialization - 5/5 points
Increases the critical effect chance of your Holy spells by 5%.

Improved Renew - 4/5 points
Increases the amount healed by your Renew spell by 12%.

Improved Smite - 5/5 points
Increases the damage of your Smite spell by 10%.

Spiritual Healing - 5/5 points
Increases the amount healed by your healing spells by 10%.


Shadow Talents (0 points)

None

- mjdoom

Edit: One other question I had that I forgot to include in the original post is whether Force of Will will also increase the amount healed by my healing spells. Does "Increases your spell damage by 5%" apply to healing spells? Anyone know?