Wand priest

[Brista]

I'm thinking about making a priest with Wand Specialisation and the rest of the talent points in healing

I believe it was a comment by Bolty, which I know can't find, that his Holy spec priest could competently solo simply by meleeing and saving mana for self-healing

Wand Specialisation improves damage by 25% so my thinking is that with this talent and Bolty's tactics I should be able to gain better damage than if I were meleeing while still being a strong healer for groups and duos

It also has the minor advantage that in groups where your saving your mana for heals I can contribute damage without effecting my mana pool

My first concern though: are priest weapons 25% higher in dps than equivalent level wands, in which case the build is moot

And has anyone tried it?

Edit: a quick search of purple items on Thottbot shows:

Highest dps One handed Mace 47.2 dps
Highest dps Staff 58.4 dps
Highest dps Wand 71.5 dps

[playingtokrush]

If you don't mind the wand key spamming, wands will outdamage melee weapons in most situations -- unless, of course, you have a crummy wand and a high quality melee weapon.

[vor_lord]

I'm thinking about making a priest with Wand Specialisation and the rest of the talent points in healing

I believe it was a comment by Bolty, which I know can't find, that his Holy spec priest could competently solo simply by meleeing and saving mana for self-healing

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I believe your best bet is the wand/dagger combo, which Concillian describes here (I think it is his additions to Bolty's healbot guide that you're remembering):

Soloing A Holy Priest

[Brista]

I believe your best bet is the wand/dagger combo, which Concillian describes here (I think it is his additions to Bolty's healbot guide that you're remembering):

Soloing A Holy Priest
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Thanks, that's the post!

Concilian rather than Bolty, very interesting write-up

[MongoJerry]

If you don't mind the wand key spamming, wands will outdamage melee weapons in most situations -- unless, of course, you have a crummy wand and a high quality melee weapon.

Not at all true. I thought we had this discussion before. An equivalent quality staff will typically outdamage a wand by about 25%. By placing points into wand specialty, it'll basically makde them about the same. Going with any one-handed weapon reduces your dps far too much, and usually staves have better stats than any 1H+offhand combination.

[Concillian]

Edit: a quick search of purple items on Thottbot shows:

Highest dps One handed Mace 47.2 dps
Highest dps Staff 58.4 dps
Highest dps Wand 71.5 dps
[right][snapback]71855[/snapback][/right]

Be careful, for wands have a cooldown of ~1.5 seconds that is not factored in to their published DPS figures. Actual DPS is much lower. Also AP comse from AGI for wands and STR for melee, the priest specific blue and purples seem more likely to have AGI.

[playingtokrush]

Not at all true.  I thought we had this discussion before.  An equivalent quality staff will typically outdamage a wand by about 25%.  By placing points into wand specialty, it'll basically makde them about the same.  Going with any one-handed weapon reduces your dps far too much, and usually staves have better stats than any 1H+offhand combination.
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Yes, I remember that, and despite favoring melee over wands in that discussion, I never fully convinced myself that a wand couldn't outdamage a staff.

In some brief testing, I used an Argent Crusader as my staff and a Bonecreeper Stylus as my wand. I was able to kill level 42 starving blisterpaws at roughly the same rate using just my staff or just my wand. On higher armor mobs (level 43 turtles), the wand actually outperformed the staff. I suppose caster mobs might die slightly faster to the staff than the wand.

Using the staff-wand combo killed things noticeably faster, but of course that requires a lot more attentiveness and timing. I was getting around 120 ms ping during my tests, which is unusually good for my connection. : ( Obviously, the higher your ping, the worse wands will perform in comparison.

I didn't feel like testing extensively, but I encourage you to test this yourself to see what sort of results you get. I was somewhat surprised how things turned out for me. Of course, thanks to Inner Fire, priests will be able to get more damage from their melee weapons than mages.

I, personally, would never take wand specialization as a priest (and especially not as a mage), as I don't always feel like spamming wand shots for maximum effectiveness. It's simply not a talent/weapon choice around which I'd care to base a priest build. However, I no longer think it's completely out of the question, and I'm sure someone with the stamina and will to work frequent wand use into his/her combat routine could make it work. You'd want to carry around at least two wands of different damage types in case of immunities if you intend to rely heavily on them.

[acidjax]

The wand cooldown seems to be 1 second with an added fraction of a second that scales depending on the speed of the wand.

You can equip a very fast speed dagger with a very slow wand and such get swings out of your dagger between each wand cast. Because wand damage ignores armor, the higher the armor of the target the more actual damage the wand is doing relative to a staff. Such passive defenses as parry also do not affect wand attacks.

With a staff you can get a high damage first hit from melee range (depending on speed). You will need to use multiple wand attacks (or with a fast main hand weapon) for the damage to match (and/or surpass) over time.

[Concillian]

The wand cooldown seems to be 1 second with an added fraction of a second that scales depending on the speed of the wand.

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THis is what I had suspected but not tested. So a 1.5 speed wand would be best matched with a 1.5 speed dagger so you get a hit every time during cooldown and you don't have to time the wand attack perfectly.

[acidjax]

THis is what I had suspected but not tested.  So a 1.5 speed wand would be best matched with a 1.5 speed dagger so you get a hit every time during cooldown and you don't have to time the wand attack perfectly.
[right][snapback]72440[/snapback][/right]

Well it seems as though the cooldown is always less then the wand delay. When you use the wand there is a fraction of a second that is the startup time. If you move during this period, the wand attack will cancel and not go off.

A wand with a description of 1.8 speed may have an activation time of 0.3 seconds and a delay of 1.5 seconds. I don't think the specific numbers are correct but suffice to say I believe that if you use a 1.5 speed wand with a 1.5 speed dagger, you won't get a free dagger swing in between each wand attack (that is fired off repeatedly as soon as possible).