The last discussion on the 1.10 Priest talents occured before they were released (unleashed?) on the main servers, so I figured I'd bring it back up. We've had time now to put the new talents into use and practice, and figure out what we like and don't like about them... at least I hope.

I started planning on the 21/30 spec, but after talking to the guildmates, nearly everyone had (and still has) divine spirit, so I figured it wasn't needed, and came up with this: http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/...00000000000000

Major points of confliction between our priests exist between the following:

Silent Resolve: Yes or No? For Horde i'm sure it's more valuable than for alliance. The main places it seems to matter are Razorgore, Suppression Room, Tech Packs, Phase 1 Nef, Sartura, and to a lesser extent fankriss and the pulls before him. It may also come in handy past huhuran and naxx (stuff i've never done).

My personal take, the only times it matters are when things recently either dropped aggro, or just spawned, so no one has a lot of hate built up. A few points will put you at a lower point in hate than others that can handle it more, with alliance side being paladins, horde side shaman. Since the point is to put you relatively lower than the paladins, salvation won't matter since both classes will have it, and the point (at least the way I see it) is to be below the other healers/anyone with AoE aggro.

Martyrdom: I think of this as more of a pvp talent than a pve talent. Usually if I get crit, I die anyway, and won't have the time to heal myself, even with focus casting, and as we get farther, it just seems to get worse (Sartura).

Mental Agility vs Mental Strength: I've been telling everyone to go for mental agility. Your healing endurance seems to come more from regen than your mana pool, and mental agility makes each piece of regen more valuable, especially in dispell heavy fights.

Divine Spirit: Valuable for the raid, really only 1 needed.

Power Infusion: We have a few we use during vael should a warlock/themselves get BA, and plan on using them on huhuran. The rest of them are used on random people who tend to pull aggro often, in an attempt to get them killed. I can't see a raid ever benefiting from more than 1 or 2.

Holy Spec + Inspiration: Again, great for a few priests, useful on tanks, but I believe it to be necessary for everyone.

Spell Warding: I can't get over how amazing this talent is. It's basically that much less resist gear I need for every instance, and even in pvp there's rarely a time it doesn't help. I plan on respeccing to get a 5th point into it.

Blessed Recovery: No one with it has said anything good or bad about it, and I've yet to try it. Still doesn't seem worthwhile to me.

Spirit of Redemption/Spiritual Guidance/Spiritual Healing/Lightwell: After the "number of fixes" applied in 1.11, the only one that really affects me is the res timer. I've done the button mashing thing quite a few times attempting to actually cast 10 seconds worth of spells. I've yet to get more than 2 GHeals/Prayers + a renew off. Yeah, it's definately helpful, and I still welcome the change over the old one since now I can choose my target, but it doesn't seem to work as well as it's intended to.

Spiritual Guidance seems helpful for grinding, or a small boost in healing. I wouldn't recommend it over spiritual healing. Spiritual Healing is great, yeah, it's only base increase of the spell, but it's the highest increase from talents we've got.

Lightwell: I use this thing often, and I'm quite happy with it. In raids, it gets a lot more use than my Spirit of Redemption, and if I'd have to pick 1 of the 2, i'd definately go with lightwell... if only that damn pre-req wasn't there. Sure, it could use some upgrades, the 10 minute cooldown is pretty harsh, but it's very very rare that I'll cast one and it'll disappear before the charges are used, and that's in normal fights. Any kind of fight that includes a silence effect, it becomes even more valuable as it's the only source of healing for a small period of time. Most people who use it (fight dependant) thank me for it as they continue to dps while still recieving the heal from it. The biggest thing that annoys me with it is the fact it breaks on absorption...

You guys some more experience with the rest of the end game, and probably a better idea of the direction they're headed, along with the chance to go into naxx on test... something I can't see myself getting the chance to do other than in a pug, that (if the instance is as tough as they say) won't last on the first boss if they even get that far. I'd just like a glance over for any major flaws in my logic, and some advice on the spec I plan on changing to soon (knowing both inspiration, and divine spirit are pretty well covered by others): http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/...00000000000000

Lightwell is still bullshit, leaving Divine Spirit an excellent one point investment.

Silent Resolve is unneeded on alliance, there are better alternatives available, but you might skip Martyrdom if you never PvP, leaving you 1 or 2 points for SR.

MA vs MS isn't a tradeoff. If you climb far enough to get both, you probably will. MS is still a marginal talent, and isn't worth climbing up the tree for unless you're going for PI. MA is still good, even though I drop to 1 point to be able to pick up Imp IF and Martyrdom, since I enjoy PvP from time to time.

Martyrdom is indeed a PvP talent. Minimal PvE usage, but amazing point for point payoff in PvP.

I can't possibly see a raid on overall benefitting more from PI than 21+ points in Holy. There's a reason PvE speccing mages don't get AP.

At 3 points, Inspiration is now a lot more viable without building your spec around it. It's an excellent talent on it's own, Holy Spec is just icing on the cake, and doesn't improve the uptime on the buff by that much. Holy Spec is still a filler talent if you need to climb.

Spell Warding is highly dependant on your content progression. It's a great talent if bosses that challenge you deal dangerous amounts of spell damage to you as a priest. It's a marginal talent if bosses that spell damage is merely an inconvenience or will be healed anyway. The mana saved from it is negligible, but surviving a spell damage burst is amazing. Spec accordingly. It's a better filler talent than holy spec anyway, so I'll usually always have a few points in it.

Spiritual Healing is still amazing but lacks any form of scaling. Spiritual Guidance is decent but good for climbing to SH.

Spirit of Redemption is worth trading 1 point of Spiritual Guidance for in most cases, but the forced 10 second wait has made me spec out of it. It's not a great talent, but worth a point when you get to it, at least if they allows us to click it off in the future.

My current spec is this, with two points coming out of holy nova, inspiration or imp renew to fill up spell warding when we were working on certain encounters.

are you sure you can't remove it early? It seems like every alliance priest I gank who turns into an angel quickly disappears and releases (not before I have time to /wave at them, of course)

I specifically remember the last one gaining inner focus just before releasing, if that helps

You can right click it off. Of course, being the fucking retard healbot i am, I normally end up staring at the screen in disbelief when our tanks fuckup positioning on the firemaw fight and i am somehow the only healer in the clump to get smoked.

I'm 21 / 30. My priest has been up to the emperors. I raid from the perspective of a warrior - We like inspiration, we like it a lot. So I've kept it :) I go into fights planning to heal a lot and regen a lot.


SG is awful for pure healing. It's like +100 healing if you're spirited the fuck out. Wonderful talent for dpsing or grinding, where spirit is already helpful and +100 is probably a 25 to 20% increase to your bonus stat. But from a healing standpoint, AQ priests approach 900ish healing - And +100 isn't a lot. Spiritual healing does scale, but only when we get new skills. It's a great talent and something I would hate to give up.

SoR is a pvp talent. It does very little in PvE since it's so brief. In PvP it's really frustrating to see a priest stay up just a little longer. I do wish it would let people dispel/shield while angel'd.

I have never spec'd into Lightwell and never will. The talent needs serious revamps for me to change my mind.

If you don't spec DS you should be giving the priests who do gold or candles. It costs money to cast prayer and it takes time. It's not something you ever want a raid to be caught without, so no, you can't get away with one in a raid group. At least half should have it.

MA is so much better than MS it's scary to even consider one over the other. +mana pool is a nice cushion, but eh.


I think Spell warding is fantastic. I lived through a shadow flame this week because of it. Which is more funny than important.

I can't believe none of you have imp PoH, for 2 points that's one of the most powerful talents in the holy tree imo. Huhuran below 30, the anubisaths after huhu and on viscidus great in all these situations. Basically any time at least 3 people are taking damage in your group.

I'm currently using a 16disc/35holy build. While I do pvp a little now and then I completely min/max my talents for pve. And if I should need to grind something which I don't do alot I 2box a rog that does 3times the dps I do anyway. So this is pretty much pure raid healbot spec.
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/...00000000000000

I agree probably at least half your priests should have divine spirit, but we had that many in our guild that wanted to spec into it and I could see myself spending alot of points in holy so figured lightwell would be worth 1 point to try it out at least. While I do think lightwell is a fairly weak talent and could use a buff I don't think it's quite as bad as some make it out to be. It gets decent use in some fights. But yea if I wanted to take points out of somewhere spirit of redemption and lightwell would probably be one of the first places I'd look to.

Couple comments about some other talents.

Inspiration. I've always said that when we got to a mob in the game that really put out a real assbeating through pure physical melee damage I'd spec into this, Vek'Nilash was that mob imo. Especially now after the talent revamp where it's only 3 points I think this talent is good.

Holy Nova. This is just a toy imo with the amount of dmg/healing it does for that manacost.

Spell warding. I'm considering this, would need to figure out where to get 5points from though which wont be easy ;)

Silent resolve. Seems the popular opinion is that this isn't needed. I don't know I think with the amount of times I'm pulling healing aggro it is worth the points. Granted most of these situations are on trashmobs, which I guess you can argue aren't as important.

Mental agility. I didn't like the thought of losing this at all first, but after thinking about it a bit more I came to the conclusion that I'm really not using that many instant cast spells that aren't buffs that I couln't live without this. Alliance so paladins are doing our magic curing on any fights we're doing atm, I guess if theres some fight in naxx where priests needs to cure alot again and mana is an issue might need to reevaluate this.

Edit: wrong link...

I'm 25/26 for the sheer versatility of the build - http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/...00000000000000

I can't bring myself to get SH - 10% that never gets better really amounts to jack with how much +heal I run with at the moment (and I am by no means omfg geared out - select Tier 2 and some AQ drops mostly focused on regen, with proph gloves/belt.) Spiritual Guidance I got to justify me getting more and more spirit - whereas before I weighted in favor of M/5, now I weigh items more closely to spirit - in the effect that if an item has 5m/5 or 20 spirit - i'll always take the spirit.

Spell Warding does own, its saved me with a couple hundred HP left to spare more times than I can count.

The only quibbles I have with 1.10 are -

Light Well. WTF. sucks. Even with the new changes.
Survivability in high end group pvp - didn't get addressed.
overall need for more actual talents - some of our tiers only have 4 points? incomplete imo - should at least be 5 points on every tier.
Spiritual Healing still doesn't stack with gear. If it stacked with gear, I more than likely would get it. Currently imo its rather junk.

Holy Nova is (by and large) a toy for raiding, but it's one of those abilities that you didn't have as a priest before - and any talent that gives you entirely new abilities tends to be pretty powerful.

Nova's gotten me out of situations I couldn't otherwise survive by providing me with a second instant heal, an AoE damage source, an instant damage source, and an instant group heal. That flexibility is worth the 1 point to me.

[edit - I hate my keyboard]

Oh, I have it. And I do like it, but it seems to be a matter of taste. I've been told by some priests that they're more comfortable renewing and flash healing their group than using PoH. Ehehehe.

In most situations I just don't like PoH. I don't really know why but it's just a personal opinion. I can see why some Priests really like it though.

Can't compare heal r2 to PoH imo, since as you point out it heals vastly more hp/sec if we're talking healing a whole group. With my current gear Heal r2 heal 471hp/s with 6.8 hp/mana, assuming you need to heal 5ppl vs an AE that hp/s gets cut to a fifth so 94hp/s. PoH r5 hitting 5 people heals 455hp/s for 8hp/mana.