healing priest talents

[swirly]

So I have a 70 holy priest that I rarely ever play. I take her into 5 mans, heroics, and raids occassionally when I happen to be on and a healer is needed. Usually that doesn't happen though since there are other people with healers who are better geared, more experienced, and actually want to take their characters places. I don't really have a character who I PvP with and so I was thinking I might make her my PvP character. I'd still like to be able to use her for that same PvE role though and I'm unlikely to devote a serious amount of time to PvP. So I'm looking for a spec that is decent for both. Since I don't plan on much devotion to her things don't have to be perfect in either case. Looking for very casual play here. I do want to keep her healing oriented though so I'm not looking at shadow stuff really.

I just went through the talent calculator and came up with this build. My first thought was that the guild in general is running low on priests with divine spirit and so I figured I should keep that for the rare raiding times. It makes me feel more useful. :) So I first went down the discipline tree for that picking up some talents that I thought might be useful for the two roles. Then I went over to the holy tree and worked my way down that as far as I could. Some of the talents I chose I wouldn't have ever chosen before since they aren't so useful for PvE. I figure the PvP gain is worth it with this new duo role idea.

So I'm looking for opinions. How is that build? Are there things I should change? My PvP experience is very limited so any comments are welcome.

[Concillian]

My build does fine for when I heal, though I will soon be re-speccing for raids and PvP. I do fine healing heroics, though I'm usually with a well overgeared tank. Clearcasting is more of a longevity talent, and heroics aren't really longevity fights. Your healing gear is right around where mine is. Having primal mooncloth is almost like having T5, so you are pretty well overgeared for heroics, so you don't have to be any kind of optimal build for that.

33 holy / 28 disc was basically "the" season 2 healing priest build (with a couple points able to move around but not much. 1/3 blessed recovery is popular because it's mostly thought of as just a buff to make dispel spamming that much more difficult)

season 3 popular priest builds will likely be a mixture of that build and Full disc builds for the new talent there (which is even better for dispel spamming).

I'd probably tend towards blessed resilience as better for low resilience, but haven't really tried a build with focused will yet.

Holy priests have a very steep gearing curve for getting into PvP. You will get ROLLED by rogues and warriors until you get a significant amount of defensive oriented PvP gear. Make friends with Rogues and Hunters and Mages, they are the best classes to play with, because they can keep things off you better than most other classes, and that's something priests just can't do by themselves.

I'm logged out in my PvP gear, so you can see where that is with a few blues before Season 3 starts and I spend my 4000 arena points and 55k honor.

I think you can spec into a full PvP build and do just fine for what you'll be needed to do.

[Kevin]

So I have a 70 holy priest that I rarely ever play. I take her into 5 mans, heroics, and raids occassionally when I happen to be on and a healer is needed. Usually that doesn't happen though since there are other people with healers who are better geared, more experienced, and actually want to take their characters places. I don't really have a character who I PvP with and so I was thinking I might make her my PvP character. I'd still like to be able to use her for that same PvE role though and I'm unlikely to devote a serious amount of time to PvP. So I'm looking for a spec that is decent for both. Since I don't plan on much devotion to her things don't have to be perfect in either case. Looking for very casual play here. I do want to keep her healing oriented though so I'm not looking at shadow stuff really.

I just went through the talent calculator and came up with this build. My first thought was that the guild in general is running low on priests with divine spirit and so I figured I should keep that for the rare raiding times. It makes me feel more useful. :) So I first went down the discipline tree for that picking up some talents that I thought might be useful for the two roles. Then I went over to the holy tree and worked my way down that as far as I could. Some of the talents I chose I wouldn't have ever chosen before since they aren't so useful for PvE. I figure the PvP gain is worth it with this new duo role idea.

So I'm looking for opinions. How is that build? Are there things I should change? My PvP experience is very limited so any comments are welcome.

I have not actually done any real PvP with a priest but some observations from facing various priests and playing with various priests.

Improved mana burn is big, in arenas there are times when you get left alone. It can be very useful in BG's as well as there are even more times when you can be left alone and can really healp neutralize anyone with a mana bar (this includes hunters). Admittedly I still feel that 80-90% of the time (in BG's) you are more helpful to the team casting heals but in that 10-20% range getting in more mana burning is one of the next most valuable things you can do. In arenas, depending on the team mana burn could be more valuable than your heals at times. Holy Nova has it's uses as well such as getting a rogue/druid out of stealth with rank 1, another instant heal option that can help do damage especially if you are in the same group as someone defending you and there are 5+ enemies on you, yes it's not a lot of damage but it does help kill people, it helps keep you alive a bit and it might keep someone esle alive. Margins can be as small as 1 HP in BG's. When my shammy was still in enh and I was in mixing it up I got down to 5 HP, got healed by a holy nova, then was knocked back down to 15 HP before my self heal landed and we stablized the situation. Without holy nova I would have died and we would have lost the node and we probably would have lost the match. It can matter.

If you can give up divine spirit, circle of healing can be quite powerful for a lesser geared priest because it is one more instant cast heal that can help them survive the burst of the rogues/warriors while helping keep your defenders alive. Treesh ran a circle of healing PvP build with her priest for a bit and while she was PvPing with a lot of greens and low resilience she survived situations that better geared priests without circle of healing couldn't because the circle that she cast to keep herself alive also kept someone else alive that was killing the player on her. It's not mana efficient but if the idea is simply to survive the burst until your friends can get something killed it can help. It becomes less valuable as you get more gear as you will simply survive better anyway. Holy reach really helps this spell out too as it makes it more likely to heal an ally. But again the value of this starts to drop as the gearing goes up I would think, but I've had it while healing in 5 mans and it's quite nice for some of those situations as well.

Surge of light is another one where you might be able to use it to kill someone on you or around you after you toss a heal since it can proc off of healing spells too. It makes AoE with Holy Nova quite fun as you can keep a mob targeted (usually the elite in the pull with the non elites) while you are hitting holy nova you get a crit from that then can slap in more damage from that free smite then nova again, get another surge proc, rinse and repeat. Pure nova spam may end up as more DPS but using the smites when you are nova spamming will up the mana efficiency of the damage a lot.


And yeah I'm looking at things a bit non-traditionally here for you. I used an enhancement shaman to very good effect in battle grounds by thinking of things differently. I basically would put on a bit of healing healing gear, mostly druid leather that had the +str, +stam, +int and +healing (though there were a few pieces of mail like that) so I wouldn't give up a ton of AP and I had more healing power. I would do a lot of healing at the initial contact with the enemy. When they or I was low on mana I would then weapon swap from the 1H + shield to my DW weapons with windfury and still do major damage to the now weakened and LoM or OOM enemy clearing them up quicker so that we could recover and move to a new point or fight back the next attack. I would end 15 minute EotS matches with over 1K healing and over 1K damage done quite frequently. I was very hard to deal with by many classes in 1v1 situations because I could get lucky burst damage and I could sustain healing myself pretty well. It wasn't that effective in arenas but there were times when it was helpful. Mana free burst damage of 3K+ can be quite nice even if I still had the 1H + shield on I could still burst for nearly as much. I got scoffed at by a few "pure PvP" folks for playing the way I did, but it worked. So some of my priest thoughts for you are looking for things that might help you with that. And I did keep nature's swiftness in the resto tree giving up the wonderful ability to get mana back with shamanistic rage. With the changes to shamanistic rage that choice is a lot harder to make. As reducing damage by 30% for 30s out ove every 2 minutes seems more valuable than the once every 3 minutes NS heal or chain lightning, etc. If I were to PvP as enh now I would not give up shamanistic rage.


If Conc or Bolty chimes in here listen to them over me though they have a lot more experience with it. I was just offering some offbeat options that might not be as effective but could still be a lot of fun.

[Bolty]

Concillian's covered most of the basics:

1) Until you get gear, you'll need Blessed Resilience to survive even a few seconds. Priests are as gear-dependent in PvP as Warriors are in PvE, which is to say, you're complete dogmeat until you get geared up. Prepare for an unfortunately miserable time until you get some gear. :(

2) Holy Concentration is a pure raiding talent, and with the new Meditation change to 30% regen while casting, really just isn't very important anymore considering the sacrifices you're making. Yes, a pure healing build would get it without question, but that's not your aim.

But I'd like to add:

3) Divine Spirit just is so blah now. Mages have no desire for Spirit anymore as a stat, now that Evocation isn't based on it. Warlocks have no spirit to begin with. Paladins don't care, and Shamans barely so. Overall, the damage boost you'll provide is far too miniscule, and as you get more and more PvP gear, you'll get less and less spirit. No PvP gear has spirit on it, and for good reason. I'd take those points out of Imp. DS, personally. However, keep the point in DS, as it's one more buff the enemy has to dispel off of you to get to your "real" buffs, and you get to keep that +50 spirit boost for PvE.

4) Under that same principle, Spiritual Guidance isn't worth the points. For a whole-hog healing build, it's nice for sure, but your points are better spent elsewhere for a hybrid.

I'd recommend a build like this. It's a more classic 28/33 build.

Advantages for PvE:
Improved PW:F
Meditation and Inner Focus
Divine Spirit
Boosts Greater Heal
Spiritual Healing
Healing Prayers and Mental Agility for dirt-cheap Prayer of Mending

Advantages for PvP:
Spell Warding
Holy Nova (your anti-rogue, anti-hunter talent)
Spirit of Redemption (you're going to die a lot, so this will get a lot of use)
Blessed Resilience (absolute must-have for your gear level)
Improved Mana Burn, the must-have spell for arenas
Focused Power, for owning Ice Block mages, Paladins, etc.
Healing Prayers and Mental Agility for dirt-cheap Prayer of Mending

1 point is in Blessed Recovery as an anti-dispel measure to help protect better buffs like Blessed Resilience.

As always, YMMV. Once you get a bunch of good PvP gear, I'd recommend what will possibly become the Season 3 Priest Flavor-of-the-month build, 41/20. This is even more slanted towards PvP, sacrificing Spiritual Healing (ouch, admittedly), Healing Prayers, and Blessed Resilience but gaining Power Infusion, the incredible Focused Will talent, and Pain Suppression. Hey, don't knock Pain Suppression - I've already used it 4 times in just the first night to save someone in PvE (once myself). It's a great "oh snap" button when the wrong person pulls aggro...if that person is you in a heroic, where you can get 1 or 2-shot by most mobs, it can save the day.

-Bolty

[Treesh]

3) Divine Spirit just is so blah now. Mages have no desire for Spirit anymore as a stat, now that Evocation isn't based on it. Warlocks have no spirit to begin with. Paladins don't care, and Shamans barely so. Overall, the damage boost you'll provide is far too miniscule, and as you get more and more PvP gear, you'll get less and less spirit. No PvP gear has spirit on it, and for good reason. I'd take those points out of Imp. DS, personally. However, keep the point in DS, as it's one more buff the enemy has to dispel off of you to get to your "real" buffs, and you get to keep that +50 spirit boost for PvE.

I'm addressing this here because I don't want to clutter up another thread with my thoughts on DS and imp DS.

For PvP, yeah, I ditched imp DS in a heartbeat with Taiza. Even on the healing PvP gear there's no spirit. Why boost something that you don't have?

Now, to address Necrali (in another thread), for raids, there is still a purpose for improved DS. Tree druids love it. They're spirit based with their healing, same as the healing priests. There also used to be a call for imp DS with the holy DPS as well (or at least for my Taiza, spirit-whore that she is), but since the changes to evocation, you're finding less and less gear with spirit on it for DPS so the holy dps priests are getting less and less of a bonus with it.

For PvP, circle of healing is definitely worth it. I lived through a lot of stuff that I really shouldn't have (and kept other folks up as well) in both arenas and battlegrounds. I have crappy PvP gear, but simply having a non-dispellable, instant cast spammable heal can really turn the tide. It's better than holy nova for healing (duh!) and doesn't break CC, but is a great "Oh crap" skill in PvP.

Crap. Time to go. I'll have to finish this up later.