Healing Talents, and Discipline

[Dyntheos]

Lystral my Night Elf Priestess is focusing on Healing at this time, however some of the Talents available in the Holy Tree make me wonder at thier worth in investing 5 points in them.

Currently I have maxed,

Improved Renew
Spritual Healing
Subtlety
and Holy fire, for an offensive opener.

I can see that improved Prayer of Healing, and from what Mongo has said in his writings, that Spirit of Redemption is worth a look at. However if I am to gain these skills by continuing down this track, where to invest?

From my current skill investment I require 4 more points in the Holy Tree to unlock these skills, the question is where to put those 4 points?

Inspiration does not entice me as it seems a waste of 5 points, so I will skip that. So onto the available choices.

Cristcal Strikes. Is a 5 point increase in this area for a 5% increase in critical chances, worth the investment? ( I would most likely put 5 in here not 4 if I took this skill at all )

Failing Critical Strikes for healing, I have the choice of Improved Healing or Improved Flash Heal.

Firstly I am a fan of shielding to avoid casting delays, so I am not sure whether the benefit of taking Improved Flash Heal will be worth it when I shield if under attack or fade, and with such a short cast time, if you are hit, are you losing out on much?

Again the mana reduction for the other available skill of Improved Healing seems small compared to the investment.

So some advice here would be appreciated.

Extrapolating things a little further past an investment in IPoH and Redemption, are the top tier skills in this tree, those being Master Healer and Holy Nova, worth the final push?

The Divine Spirit Talent for the Discipline Tree, seems a worthy skill to push through the whole tree for, something which is quite tempting to do, as are many of the skills located therein, but to do so I would have to sacrifice Improved Power of Healing and Redemption.

I am looking to invest in Discipline after filling my Holy Tree slots, but I am wondering where the more points will go, and whether the ultimate skill in the Discipline Tree is worth the sacrifice of Redemtion and Improved Prayer of Healing.

[MongoJerry]

Failing Critical Strikes for healing, I have the choice of Improved Healing or Improved Flash Heal.

Firstly I am a fan of shielding to avoid casting delays, so I am not sure whether the benefit of taking Improved Flash Heal will be worth it when I shield if under attack or fade, and with such a short cast time, if you are hit, are you losing out on much?

Improved Flash Heal is a useful skill, because keep in mind that Shield can only be cast on yourself once every 15 seconds, and it doesn't take long for a mob to chew through your shield at high levels. I've found it particularly useful on the PvP server when fighting pesky rogues and warriors. I'm not saying it's the greatest talent since sliced bread, but it is useful.

Again the mana reduction for the other available skill of Improved Healing seems small compared to the investment.

It depends on your healing style and if you're willing and able to work Greater Heal into your healing repertoire. See my "Advanced Topics on Priests" post for more.

The Divine Spirit Talent for the Discipline Tree, seems a worthy skill to push through the whole tree for, something which is quite tempting to do, as are many of the skills located therein, but to do so I would have to sacrifice Improved Power of Healing and Redemption.

That's certainly another option. There's no one "best" way to distribute one's talent points -- which is a good thing.

[Lissa]

Lystral my Night Elf Priestess is focusing on Healing at this time, however some of the Talents available in the Holy Tree make me wonder at thier worth in investing 5 points in them.

Currently I have maxed,

Improved Renew
Spritual Healing
Subtlety
and Holy fire, for an offensive opener.

I can see that improved Prayer of Healing, and from what Mongo has said in his writings, that Spirit of Redemption is worth a look at. However if I am to gain these skills by continuing down this track, where to invest?

From my current skill investment I require 4 more points in the Holy Tree to unlock these skills, the question is where to put those 4 points?

Inspiration does not entice me as it seems a waste of 5 points, so I will skip that. So onto the available choices.

Cristcal Strikes. Is a 5 point increase in this area for a 5% increase in critical chances, worth the investment? ( I would most likely put 5 in here not 4 if I took this skill at all )

Failing Critical Strikes for healing, I have the choice of Improved Healing or Improved Flash Heal.

Firstly I am a fan of shielding to avoid casting delays, so I am not sure whether the benefit of taking Improved Flash Heal will be worth it when I shield if under attack or fade, and with such a short cast time, if you are hit, are you losing out on much?

Again the mana reduction for the other available skill of Improved Healing seems small compared to the investment.

So some advice here would be appreciated.

Extrapolating things a little further past an investment in IPoH and Redemption, are the top tier skills in this tree, those being Master Healer and Holy Nova, worth the final push?

The Divine Spirit Talent for the Discipline Tree, seems a worthy skill to push through the whole tree for, something which is quite tempting to do, as are many of the skills located therein, but to do so I would have to sacrifice Improved Power of Healing and Redemption.

I am looking to invest in Discipline after filling my Holy Tree slots, but I am wondering where the more points will go, and whether the ultimate skill in the Discipline Tree is worth the sacrifice of Redemtion and Improved Prayer of Healing.
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Skip Holy Fire in all seriousness. It takes 5 seconds to cast, has a refresh rate of 1 minutes, and barely does better damage than smite (and you can get two smites off if in the time it takes to cast Holy Fire).

Also, I disagree with Mongo on Improved Flash. If you really need to not be interrupted while casting a flash, cast PW:S first, it's two talent points better spent elsewhere.

Unlike Mongo, I am also a fan of going atleast 11 points into Shadow to get Mind Flay as it has a lot of utility uses (like stopping runners from getting away in an instance along with it's soloing and PvP aspects).

I also think that Improved Healing really is all the farther you need to go into Holy tree as most the talents beyond that, while nice, aren't necessary.

I'd also steer clear of Divine Spirit in Discipline. While it looks nice initially, at max level it only will give you about 10 to 12 more mana a tick, not really worth it in the long run.

My prefered build is something like this:

Holy
Improved Renew (5/5)
Spiritual Healing (5/5)
Subtlety (5/5)
Improved Healing (4/5)

Shadow
Spirit Tap (5/5)
Blackout (3/5)
Improved Shadow Word: Pain (2/2)
Mind Flay

Discipline
Unbreakable Will (5/5)
Improved Power Word: Shield (3/3)
Improved Power Word: Fortitude (2/2)
Mental Agility (5/5)
Mental Strength (5/5)
Inner Focus (1/1)

This build is more versatile that specing either Holy/Disc or Shadow/Disc as is combines some of the best of both the Holy and Shadow Trees while giving you the best from Discipline. This build allows you to be a great healer (not the best, but still very good), a good soloer, and a alright PvP (full on Shadow spec up to silence and grabbing Improved Manaburn from Discipline is probably best for PvP).

[Dyntheos]

Thanks lissa that's given me some direction. I feel that all the better talents appear to be the first few talents in each tree, so I'll be spreading things out as these cover the abilities I most use all the time, so it makes sense to put points in their direction rather than speccing to be a healer when half of the time I won't see as much benefit out of concentrating on one tree totally.

[MongoJerry]

I'd also steer clear of Divine Spirit in Discipline.  While it looks nice initially, at max level it only will give you about 10 to 12 more mana a tick, not really worth it in the long run.

Times the number of spellcasters in your party. And if you're the only one with it in a raid, well, that's a hell of a lot of benefit. Let's put it this way: If you found an item with thirty more spirit on it than the one you have, wouldn't you want it?

Also, I disagree with Mongo on Improved Flash.  If you really need to not be interrupted while casting a flash, cast PW:S first, it's two talent points better spent elsewhere.

Do you actually read my posts before commenting on them? *Rolls eyes*

[Lissa]

I did it again. I hit "Edit" instead of "Quote." These buttons need to be put farther appart. Understand that I will *never* *ever* edit a post because I disagree with someone. I will only edit a post if they are being a "wanker" and in that case, the entire message will be removed. -- MongoJerry

[Lissa]

Man, I thought the days of people advocating all-int priests had long since passed.  In PvP situations, where fights are quick and the casting is non-stop, then the all-int build works.  In PvE, though, it's all about the long fights and for that, priests need spirit mana regen and they need to learn how to burst cast and how to take advantage of breaks when they occur.  In a long fight, an all-int priest will run out of mana and at that point the party will be hosed.  A skilled high-spirit priest, however, can keep a party going for a long time even when the mana tank appears to be empty.
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I don't appreciate this at all Mongo. Just because you don't agree with me doesn't mean you have to edit the post. This really pisses me off. Don't you ever edit one of my posts again because you don't like it.

And you are still wrong. With the near non-stop casting, there is very rarely a time to get any mana regen in during a fight, you of all people should know this with all the 5 man groups you have run in various high end instances. If you don't have someone there that is doing secondary healing, you are doing the vast majority of healing and then total Mana is king above regen because the regen boosts are so tiny (10 mana per tick isn't going to get you anywhere, you should know that, even if you get a large number of ticks, 100 to 200 mana isn't going to do much of anything).

[Dyntheos]

I'd like to see the original post by lissa, or is the above the general gist of it?

[MongoJerry]

I don't appreciate this at all Mongo.  Just because you don't agree with me doesn't mean you have to edit the post.  This really pisses me off.  Don't you ever edit one of my posts again because you don't like it.

I will never ever intentionally edit another person's post for content. This is another case where I hit Edit instead of Quote. I'm still getting used to where stuff is and how things work. I'm not used to the idea of having that extra Edit button next to other people's messages. I apologize profusely for removing your message instead of replying to it.

Your opinions on int vs spirit are still wrong, but that's a different discussion.

[JanusTich]

I originally posted this as a reply to a PvP talent build discussion at the worldofwarcraft.com priest forums, and decided to repost it here, slightly edited, since several of my decisions were helped by the Lurking Lounge forum and MongoJerry's ideas in particular:

These are three popular templates:

Master Healer holy / discipline build - slightly more geared for PvE than the other two. There are a lot of arguments between the Greater Heal vs Flash Heal camps and for the value of a 0.5 second reduced casting time. I won't get too much into that, but I feel Greater Heal is quite useful, particularly against a hard hitting boss when healing the main tank. In that situation, Flash Heal just doesn't recover enough hit points - yes, I can spam it, but it's more mana efficient to start casting Greater Heal when the tank is around 50% (or 75% if the mob hits really hard) to recover his entire bar, while regenerating mana in between on top of the hp/mana efficiency inherent with Greater Heal (with talents). From what I've read, this situation becomes even more heightened at higher level instances and bosses, making the 0.5 second reduced casting cost an awesome boost. This is the build I would play if I were on a PvE server.

Mind Flay shadow / discipline build - often varies from build to build in the amount of shadow emphasis, but almost always enough to get Mind Flay and sometimes Silence. Shadow talents give a huge boost if you primarily solo, hence the popular strategy of many priests who use some variant of this build till about level 40 or so and then respec to one of the other two. The two applications that this build really shines at are soloing and PvPing in small teams (duos or threes) where you might not have a team member to rely on for snare or interrupting spells.

Meditation discipline / holy build - I consider this the PvP version of the Master Healer Holy build mentioned above. PvE oriented healing talents like the ones for Greater Heal and Subtlety are dropped in favor of talents that help both PvP and PvE. Generally speaking, this usually means dropping Master Healer and some points in Improved Healing to pick up Improved Mana Burn and Meditation. Well suited for 5v5 or more group PvPing, since most of the time spent in PvP is constantly casting shield, renew, flash heal, and pain dot.


My current build that I'm leveling is a Meditation discipline / holy build like I described above. I rarely solo as I play with a regular group of five, and my focus is on PvE instances. I'm trying this build partly as an experiment to test the usefulness of Meditation and spirit oriented gear at higher levels, with the intent of respeccing if the results disappoint me. Here's the breakdown (some of the numbers in the talent descriptions may be a bit off as I'm using WoWVault's calculator):

Holy tree (23 points)
# 5/5 Improved Renew
Increases Renew's amount healed by 15%.
# 5/5 Spiritual Healing
Increases amount healed by 10%.
# 5/5 Holy Specialization
Increases critical effect chance of holy spells by 5%.

It was a choice between five points in Holy Specialization or Subtlety (reduces heal aggro by 20%) to get to the deeper Holy talents, and I chose Holy Spec since it would help in both PvE and PvP. Criticals don't go well together with something that needs to be as reliable as healing, so I consider Holy Spec a talent that gives a boost to Flash Heal more than anything. Also, this was a better way to test Subtlety's usefulness - if I picked Subtlety now, I would never get a sense of how good or bad it is whereas without it, I'll know right away if aggro management becomes a problem.

# 2/2 Improved Flash Heal
Gives 70% to avoid interruption caused by damage when casting Flash Heal.

I'll just address directly an earlier post (in the worldofwarcraft.com forum thread) by Eternity, since I've grouped with him and we've discussed the viability of Flash Healing in PvP combat. His style is to rely more on Shield and contends that if you're relying on a 70% bonus to interruption to cast a Flash Heal in PvP, that probably means you're losing anyway. My experience has been so far that the Shield can break very fast and that 70% bonus is quite welcome if a melee class is hitting me.

# 2/2 Improved Prayer of Healing
Reduces mana cost of PoH by 20%.

At level 60, this lowers the 1000 mana cost by 200. I'm not using PoH that much now, but I've heard it comes in handy at higher level instances.

# 3/5 Improved Healing
Reduces mana cost of Heal and Greater Heal by 9%.

At level 60, this lowers the 960 mana cost by 86. More importantly, this lets me get:

# 1/1 Spirit of Redemption
Heals 318-360 after you die and another 343 over 21 sec.

I've heard a lot of arguments against Spirit of Redemption ("if the priest is dead that's usually game over") but I'm all for it. The amount it heals supposedly scales at higher levels, so it's something around 1000 hp healed at death and another 1000 over time at level 60. I'll paraphrase MongoJerry of Neriad fame by saying that close battles where you barely eke out a win or loss happens more than most people think, and any chance that you have of preventing a wipe is something to take. Wipes are very expensive time wise, so even if Spirit of Redemption saves my party one out of five wipes, I'll take it gladly.

Discipline tree (28 points)
# 5/5 Unbreakable Will
Resist stun, fear, and silence by 15%.
# 3/3 Improved Power Word:Shield
Reduces time of weakness by 15 seconds.

For those who may not know, Improved PW:S is a must, particularly for PvP.

# 2/2 Improved Power Word:Fortitude
Increases the effect of Fortitude by 30%.
# 5/5 Mental Agility
Reduces instant mana cost by 10%.
# 5/5 Mental Strength
Increases maximum mana by 10%.
# 1/1 Inner Focus
Reduces the mana cost of the next spell by 100% and increases crit chance by 25%.

Seems like a useful emergency ability for one last Prayer of Healing or Greater Heal when out of mana.

# 2/2 Improved Mana Burn
Reduces casting time of mana burn by 0.6 seconds.

Mana Burn has a long casting time to begin with, so 0.6 seconds is not enough to make it usable in every situation. But the spell is useful enough for PvP that I'll take whatever help I can get to make it more viable.

# 5/5 Meditation
Allows 15% mana regeneration to continue while casting.

Like I mentioned earlier, this build is largely for me to see how effective Meditation and a spirit oriented gear build is at higher levels. From the talent description, I'm not sure if that 15% regen happens during the 5-second rule, so I'm assuming it does. Aside from that, this talent would seem to go great on paper with group PvP, since you're constantly casting without a break. Whether or not it scales well at higher levels is the question.


As for the order in choosing talents, I started with Improved Renew and Spiritual Healing, since renew is such a cornerstone. Then I began the Discipline tree, mainly to get Improved Shield as fast as possible for PvP encounters. Mental Agility should be a high priority; as Eternity pointed out earlier, most of our important spells are instants (renew, shield, dot). After that, I'll probably finish the Discipline tree to get Meditation and then fill in the rest of the Holy tree at the end.

Keep in mind that many different builds are effective. For example, if you're keen on Flash Healing as your main heal, then a Meditation build would be good since you'll be casting more often than someone more oriented toward Greater Heal. A good build is dependent on your playing style - do you solo ever or mostly? Do you have a steady group to play with, and what's their makeup? Are you often PvP hunting in a duo or small team?