End game healing priest build

[Brista]

I've been thinking of the following build for my end-game healbot build. The slightly unconventional angle is to eschew Renew as a main healing spell. I plan to use Greater Heal and Holy Nova as my main heals. Generally speaking, I'm finding in situations where I might use Renew lots of people have taken some damage so Holy Nova might prove more mana efficient. In those situations generally the tank hasn't locked aggro so Holy Nova with it's no-threat feature is appealing to me

Class: Priest
Level: 60


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Discipline Talents (20 points)


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


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


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


Wand Specialization - 5/5 points
Increases your damage with Wands by 25%.


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



Holy Talents (31 points)


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


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


Subtlety - 5/5 points
Reduces the threat generated by your healing spells by 20%.


Inspiration - 5/5 points
Increases your target's armor value from items by 25% for 15 seconds after getting a critical effect from your Flash Heal, Heal, Greater Heal, or Prayer of Healing spell.


Improved Healing - 5/5 points
Reduces the Mana cost of your Lesser Heal, Heal, and Greater Heal spells by 15%.


Master Healer - 5/5 points
Reduces the casting time of your Heal and Greater Heal spells by 0.5 seconds.


Holy Nova - 1/1 point
Causes an explosion of holy light around the caster, causing 112 to 130 Holy damage to all enemy targets within 10 yards and healing all party members within 10 yards for 182 to 210. These effects cause no threat.

Level 50: 164 to 190 damage, 263 to 305 health
Level 58: 212 to 246 damage, 339 to 393 health



Shadow Talents (0 points)


None

Simple enough really - the build is designed so that I can use Greater Heal with every possible talent improvement, plus Holy Nova in a short burst of casting then sit around wanding until it's time to heal again

Of the things I'm missing out on Meditation (15% mana regen while casting) is the main one that I'd like but I do find I can do a lot of spirit regeneration during fights as sole healer. I'm hoping as I gear up towards 10+ person raids that my opportunities to spirit regen will increase so Meditation will be less useful. I can't get Meditation without dropping Master Healer. What attracts me to Master Healer is that I do sometimes overplay my hand when waiting till the last possible moment to start healing (especially in poor groups where I know that as soon as I cast my first heal half the pull will rush over and eat me). Also getting my spurt of casting over quicker means more time in Spirit regen

I guess I could skip Improved Power Word Fortitude which has the lazy person's advantage of allowing me to skip the chore of buffing if there's another Priest in the raid. If I trim Wand specialisation down too that would allow me to put 5 in Mental Agility (10% cheaper instants). I'm not especially inclined to do that as in the really tough fights I don't cast much that isn't Greater Heal. Fade maybe, and my new toy of Holy Nova.

I still have pretty unreliable groups so while sometimes I'm with a great tank, sometimes I'm still stuck with tanks who hold aggro no better than a Rogue. Hence some of my choices: Subtlety, avoiding Renew, the no-threat Holy Nova. This also dictates my style of let tank get to 20%, chuck 2 greater heals on, wand until tank at 20% again. Hence the slant towards encouraging crits on the greater heal, since I usually use 2 at once. The idea of course is a kind of brinkmanship where basically I'm really stingy with the heals in order to do the minimum threat possible to try to keep my threat down below the rather feeble threat generated by many of my groups

[Kevin]

Ah so a priest that heals the way a druid or a paladin does. :) You won't be a lazy mode healer like many other priests are. :)

Well not completely. I do heal that way with my druid in 5 mans. I have 3 ranks of my healing touch (3.5 second cast big heal) on my bar, 2 ranks of regrowth (my 2 second cast front loaded HoT wich is kinda my flash heal), and the my top rank of rejuvination (my instant cast HoT).

I have two methods of Healing that depend on the situation and I realize that while I said I try to avoid casting Healing Touch in the thread where I posted my build that isn't as true as I thought it was at the time. The two methods are let the HoT's do all the work, or anticipate the healing touch. You can tell the rate of incoming damage on player and you can then anticipate when to throw out that longer cast healing touch to keep them healthy and happy. You can do what you plan and wait to cast it even later on, but I've found that gets too many players twitchy and if there is anyone else around who can heal they generally will wich can cause me to lose a big chunk of mana if they land very close to each other. I don't heal by selecting the target first and I only use overheal protection in CTRA in raids with more than 15 people in them.

So yes, this healing style will work just fine and it will be mana efficient as well, but you will have issues with other healers dropping heals in on you and players getting antsy about you not doing your job. It's ironic that if you were a druid and healed like that though that you would probably get complimented on how well you are healing.

Holy Nova is good. Aleri has it, I've seen it save wipes. I love watching her zoom over by the people who are most injured and fire this off then start casting the prayer of healing to finish the heal now that she has time or do her greater heal or her a renew or a flash or whatever. I really envy both of the priests AoE heals as druid and a paladin healer.

Same thing with a paladin. I main healed Maraudon with my L45 paladin the other day, with my healer gear I'm was at 3600 mana or so and I didn't have spiritual focus to insure that I get a crit heal till halfway through the place. You heal by anticipating the incoming damage and casting the rank of Holy Light that is most appropriate. Sometimes that is a -3 rank spell because you need to heal this person now so you can heal this other person later and a Flash of Light won't cut it. This is very much like the druid. However the druid has the option of throwing an instant HoT or a relatively fast cast front loaded HoT out at the other people that may be getting hurt that a paladin doesn't have. My paladin as healer does end up casting almost non stop unlike my druid or priests who have a lot of down time between heals, but I also have a blessing of wisdom running all the time to get me mana back all the time as well. I don't worry about aggro on myself as a paladin healer. My healer gear has me in a shield and even with some of the items being cloth, leather, and mail right now I still have 44% damage reduction vs an even level mob and around 1800 HP. Since L46 tanks are looking at 54% damage reduction with 2400-2900 HP that isn't that big of a difference. With concentration aura up and the talents damage isn't going to stop me from healing either. I only have to worry if I get aggro from something that can shield bash or stun or knock me down, but that is still less dangerous for me than for a druid who gets aggro from that type of mob. A priest can be lazy and fade. :)

So, personally I think your pursuit of healing like this will make you a better healer. But unlike the druid and paladin who have to heal like this, you still have "oh #$%&" options to cover you. Though I do need to move my blessing of protection to a different hotkey to make it easier for me to cast, at least paladins have that oh #$%& option. I also just got Blessing of sacrifice which looks to have some interesting applications for healing as well. I need to see how that interacts with damage reduction and such but becoming an extended HP battery for an AoE'r if you don't have protection available or if there are lots of casters that are getting the AoE looks to have some use. Of course I'm retribution/holy. I think a healer paladin would benefit from getting deep enough in protection for blessing of sanctuary and improved blessing of protection. The extra points in toughness to have to stand up even longer while healing and maybe getting 15 points into retribution so you can get deflection for 5% more parry so a 24 holy, 12 protection, 15 retribution build might be a really good way for healadin to go. That's another thread though. :)

[Treesh]

If I trim Wand specialisation down too that would allow me to put 5 in Mental Agility (10% cheaper instants). I'm not especially inclined to do that as in the really tough fights I don't cast much that isn't Greater Heal. Fade maybe, and my new toy of Holy Nova.

<snip>

I still have pretty unreliable groups so while sometimes I'm with a great tank, sometimes I'm still stuck with tanks who hold aggro no better than a Rogue. Hence some of my choices: Subtlety, avoiding Renew, the no-threat Holy Nova. This also dictates my style of let tank get to 20%, chuck 2 greater heals on, wand until tank at 20% again. Hence the slant towards encouraging crits on the greater heal, since I usually use 2 at once. The idea of course is a kind of brinkmanship where basically I'm really stingy with the heals in order to do the minimum threat possible to try to keep my threat down below the rather feeble threat generated by many of my groups
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Mental agility also affects your shadow word: pain, your dispell magic, your cure disease and abolish disease, your fortitude buffs, and your inner fire. Even without using renew much, you'll still get plenty of use out of all your instants. Also, even without wand spec, if your tank is poor, you'll be pulling aggro off him just by wanding anyway. You can do really good DPS with just a wand without the specialization anyway. It'll make life easier for soloing though.

The only issue I see with your choice of playstyle (and you can easily adapt for those times when you need to) is when fighting the critters that hit the tank with mortal strikes, but again, you can just change how you heal in those situations and your build will still be fine for it.

BTW, crit heals on tanks seems to be fixed again. I noticed it yesterday and the day before iirc. Gnolack is getting inspirationed quite frequently now. It's almost like he's back to his low defense skill. So getting holy spec and inspiration isn't fruitless and the holy spec will really help make your holy nova much more effective. BTW, it's especially effective in AoE situations. Have a mage who's AoEing? Do the shield, when it wears off and they take some hits, pop a nova and then start the "real" healing if need be. If you've got two mages and a warlock AoEing? Even better. :D I hope you have as much fun with nova as Aleri has. :)

[mjdoom]

BTW, crit heals on tanks seems to be fixed again.&nbsp; I noticed it yesterday and the day before iirc.&nbsp; Gnolack is getting inspirationed quite frequently now. It's almost like he's back to his low defense skill.&nbsp;
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I have also noticed some more procs of Inspiration lately but I chalked it up to dumb luck moreso (this was mostly procs on Galreth). If it is indeed fixed that is a very nice thing and makes me even more inclined to put it in to Flyn's spec if/when I respec him for end game raiding.

- mjdoom

[Treesh]

I have also noticed some more procs of Inspiration lately but I chalked it up to dumb luck moreso (this was mostly procs on Galreth).&nbsp; If it is indeed fixed that is a very nice thing and makes me even more inclined to put it in to Flyn's spec if/when I respec him for end game raiding.

- mjdoom
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I'm glad it's not just me who noticed that lately. :) But yeah, within the last few days I've seen more inspiration procs on the tanks than I have in the last few weeks. Glad to have it back.

[Icebird]

I'll be interested to hear how it works out.

I'm tentatively planning to respect to 31 discipline / 20 holy with my priest so that our guild has at least one priest with the Divine Spirit buff. They seem to be pretty rare on our server.