Purely from a PvE perspective:
Shields are only used during an emergency. Most Priests follow up a shield with either a renew or a heal. In other words, shields are a lifesaver because they buy you (or other healers) time to land a proper heal.
3/3 Imp. PW:S adds 140 absorbtion to the shield, bringing it from 942 to 1083.
I am beginning to think that even an untalented shield (with 942 absorbtion) would buy a competant healer(s) enough time to heal that person.
Before I posted this message, I checked Priest CTprofiles of some uber guilds. Interestingly, almost 60%+ Priests had Imp PW:S. I am not sure if this statistic means anything. But then again, most of EJ's Priests DONT have the talent. hmm...
However, I believe there are many guilds like mine who assign priests to shield a tank before an expected spike, for example shadowflame from Nefarian and the drakes.
Therefore, I would safely say that the additional 140HP is pretty worth it in combating that spike damage which might just gib your tank. There might be other circumstances where it might be useful, but I just cannot recall any offhand.
I don't think the question is that much about Imp. PW:shield being good or bad as it is about talentpoint allocation in general in early Discipline.
I believe it's fair to say that Meditation (13 points total in Discipline) is something pretty much every priest will want, and from there it's not too hard to build up with Mental agility and so on.
However the first and the second tier of discipline talents need to be filled in some way to get 10 points so you can actually pick up that Meditation. Unbreakable Will tends to be favoured over Wand Specialization, but as for second tier there's nothing that's accepted as "obvious choice" - atleast not the same way as in other parts of the tree. If you have Blessing of Salvation available to you, getting Silent Resolve is quite a waste, but if you don't get any Silent resolve, then where do you put those five talentpoints to? It's either 2/2 Martyrdom and 1/3 Imp. PW:Shield or 0/2 Martyrdom and 3/3 Imp. PW:Shield. Already having 70% avoidance from all heals from Holy, alot of PvE people seem to feel Martyrdom isn't that great for them.
Personally I'm sticking to Silent Resolve over Imp. PW:Shield (which I feel is rather weak improvement to a single spell I don't use *that* much), but that's mainly due to not usually having access to a Tranquil Air totem, silly people saying others need totems more.
The 15 percent is applied after the 10 percent bonus from +heal/dmg gear.
Assuming.. let's say +700 heal gear -
942 + 70 = 1012 absorbed
(942 + 70)*1.15 = 1164 absorbed (152 gained from talent in this case)
It's not that big of a difference but it does help it scale a tiny bit faster.
As you pointed out yourself above, it is an emergency spell. 150 HP can and will make the difference sometimes (see Maexxna). I would reccommend it if Mental Agility is part of your build.
As you pointed out yourself above, it is an emergency spell. 150 HP can and will make the difference sometimes (see Maexxna). I would reccommend it if Mental Agility is part of your build.
Funny you mention Maexxna, the exact same thought is keeping me from speccing out of Imp. PW:S.
Threadjack: after some time in Naxx, how do other Priests feel about the utility of PI compared to the healing advantages of deep Holy?
I firmly beleive its a shitty and overrated 31st point talent. It is just way too situational to be useful, and you give up too much in Holy to get it.
As someone who played an Arcane Power mage, I know what situations deem the use of "situational spells". And I simply cant think of any encounters which require "burst healing". Maybe Huhuran to an extent, but meh.
Moreover, getting PI means you have to waste 5 points in Mental Strength. When I see a Priest with 5/5 Mental Strength, I can assume with certainty that he doesnt know the mechanics of the Priest class.
The only time I ever PI myself is when I solo, but mages and warlocks love me for it :)
Last night I tossed it on a mage in AV, who proceeded to charge into 15+ alliance to get to most out of it while spamming AOEs - he was dead before he got the second AE off.
I laughed :)
In fact, I don't see the point in even having deep Holy priests. Lightwell? Maybe if it wasn't on a 10 minute cooldown. Spirit of redemption? Riiight. Not that they are...excessively shitty talents, but being able to boost a nuker's DPS by 20% every 3 minutes is going to help your raid a fuck of a lot more in most situations than either of those. As Gurg posted on the Fires boards, past a certain point DPS > Healing, and I think Discipline wins this fight hand down. None of the deep Holy talents are 'impact' talents, where PI, imho, really is.
If I were a raiding priest I'd take this spec, with the only variation I can see being Holy spec instead of spell warding for more frequent Inspiration procs. Hell, if we forced specs I'd probably have all the priests take this spec.
[Edit] Well ok, and improved PW:S was a throwaway point :P -- on topic!
I've had and used PI extensively. And while the boost to power is nice in some situations, it doesn't provide the overall steady healing power of the heavy hitting Spiritual Guidance/Spiritual Healing combo. Those two talents are the only real reason to go that deep in the Holy Tree imo. I may pick it back up after reaching some ridiculous amount of +heal (1300 or something). I can tell you, getting waters and healthstones eagerly (and voluntarily) handed to you in exchange for PI was quite nice.
to get it you either ditch fortitude or subtelety. if you feel you can't ditch one of them then don't get it. there's pve situations where the extra hp on the shield is pretty nice, especially when you assign people that has specced it but like someone said, in most situations the normal shield is good enough.
That said it's one of those talents you want/need in pvp so if happy priests is a factor the answer is simple as long as they can manage their agro. Since the patch my 20disc/31holy priest is a tough mother ****** in pvp and does excelent in pve so I'm happy.
Looks like I am thread jacking my own thread. But I have to reiterate this.
From a purely PvE perspective:
PI, as a standalone talent, may not be that bad. However, PI requires you to waste 5 points in Mental Strength. MS is a horribly flawed talent, and an utter waste of points.
Conversely, Holy tree has talents that truly and fully supplement the Priest class. For instance,
Spell warding is a GREAT talent, 10% outright dmg deduction from spells is great for raid encounters. This will let you survive a shadowflame, survive 1-2 extra waves of Blizzard during Emps, Kri poison volleys, etc. A PvE Priest has no excuse not to get this talent.
Anyway, moving deeper into the Holy tree, Holy Reach and Improved Prayer of Healing are another set of talents that complement nicely. Best part is you can have 1 point in each and still get "value for money".
Finally, and most importantly, Spiritual Healing/Spiritual Guidance combo are definitive talents for healing. Lightwell is a gimmick, and Spirit of Redemption is just decent.
Maybe I'm just 'spoiled' by my shitty gear, but why is mental strength so bad?
With my lack of 3-piece trans and mp5, I need to rely on a big mana pool to some extent to compete, and MS seems decent enough for that.
Em, yeah no divine fury? OK, I'll ask, how much +healing does spiritual guidance give a top-end priest? Spiritual healing only works on base healing values last I checked, making it basically useless for your high-end priest dropping ranks, right? That is why I don't see the value in that end of the tree, feel free to correct me with some numbers. I just don't see either of them being better than a raid full of PI priests.
[Edit] Yes I'll agree on the throwaway value (for most situations) of mental strength. If I were a priest I'd be glad those were the only points I was throwing away ;)
[Edit II] vvvv Um yeah....uh....with priest mechanics what they are, being the reason you don't like mental strength...why would you not take Improved Healing, and obviously Divine Fury helps you use gheal more regularly if you're into that kind of thing...I didn't even notice that.
No Divine Fury and no Improved Healing seems like a very odd build. I thought just about all priests were relying on Heal/Gheal as the bread'n'butter -spells? Is there some special reason why those talents are skipped favour of (for example) Impr. Renew, Holy Specialization and Spiritual Healing?
Divine Fury is a MUST for any priest in my opinion, I play a druid myself and I'd simply go and shoot myself if I didn't have the druid variation of this talent.
Not taking it severely limits your healing effectiveness and the variation of healing you have at your disposal. Divine Fury is an awesome talent, worth every single point. There is absolutely no reason not to take it unless you plan on spamming flash heal in every single fight and priests doing that are dumb priests in my druid opinion :)
And yes, to stay a bit on topic - I don't see it as being a particularly good talent, however the choice is either 3 points in silent resolve or 3 points in improved pw:s. I'd probably go for the 3 points in PW:S, earlier discussions on reducing threat on healing spells have convinced me that there is little point in reducing threat from healing.
Martyrdom is just out of the question, if anything in PvE (raid) crits you and you subsequently will have any need of martyrdom chances are if it hits you again you will be dead anyhow.
In fact, I don't see the point in even having deep Holy priests. Lightwell? Maybe if it wasn't on a 10 minute cooldown. Spirit of redemption? Riiight. Not that they are...excessively shitty talents, but being able to boost a nuker's DPS by 20% every 3 minutes is going to help your raid a fuck of a lot more in most situations than either of those. As Gurg posted on the Fires boards, past a certain point DPS > Healing, and I think Discipline wins this fight hand down. None of the deep Holy talents are 'impact' talents, where PI, imho, really is.
Yeah, to clarify this is what I was asking about. If you want clicky burst healing, wear a Hibernation Crystal - I was referring to the benefits to raid burst DPS from PI when I said "utility".
Havent been to maexxna myself, so i cant comment on the encounter. But as i see it, in general PvE it sounds like a lousy talent to me. You could go for 1 priest picking it up and being the one responsable for pws.
Going offtopic, i really enjoy these discussions on priest talents, specially when people comment on the cookie cutter ones. I'm currently analysing mental agility and spiritual healing as to their utility.
Spiritual Healing is one of those talents that looks great at first, but since it doesnt scale with gear it soon gets crappy. It is made even worse due to the current healing strategies most people employ. I use heal rank2 for almost everything and the upgrade it gives me is somewhat minor, considering its location on the tree (as oposed to the old one). I think of keeping it mostly for the improvement it gives on gheal rank 5 and flash heal 7 for large heals.
Another one that makes me wonder is mental agility. Most people pick it because it is somewhat of an obvious choice. The spells that get improved with the talent are the buffs (usually used out of combat or thru an inner focus when in combat), pws (rarely used) and renew (which i dont use a lot myself because i've been lacking in luck, so i havent got a rank 10 and people use on top of the others, so the mana is usually wasted). Holy nova can be affected as well, but it is more of an utility talent than anything else, you dont need to cast it multiple times except on vael.
Would you guys drop spiritual healing or mental agilty for damage mitigation talents such as improved inner fire or spell warding? inner fire has a limited use, but is nice in pvp and mitigating attacks from those small nasty adds like bugs on cthun trash, anub scarabs etc and big aoe physical damages like impale or even screw ups when you get cleaved. And spell warding is awesome as most damage a priest takes is spell based anyways.
The spells that get improved with the talent are the buffs (usually used out of combat or thru an inner focus when in combat), pws (rarely used) and renew (which i dont use a lot myself because i've been lacking in luck, so i havent got a rank 10 and people use on top of the others, so the mana is usually wasted). Holy nova can be affected as well, but it is more of an utility talent than anything else, you dont need to cast it multiple times except on vael.
Dispel...the reason basically every Horde priest I know gets this talent. The talent scales as well because dispel is 18% of base mana per cast now.
Would you guys drop spiritual healing or mental agilty for damage mitigation talents such as improved inner fire or spell warding? inner fire has a limited use, but is nice in pvp and mitigating attacks from those small nasty adds like bugs on cthun trash, anub scarabs etc and big aoe physical damages like impale or even screw ups when you get cleaved. And spell warding is awesome as most damage a priest takes is spell based anyways.
Not really. The reason I die is because the tank dies. Makes it seem like more healing or mana would be better. The only thing I can really think that will cause an odd death for me is when Noth decides to bonk me on the head after a blink.
The biggest sole use for Mental Agility atleast for me (as a Horde priest, lacking paladins) comes from Dispel.
If we had cleansebots for that role, I might reconsider dropping it in favour of something else, but atleast right now it seems to save me good amount of mana on several encounters - almost certainly more often than I would have use out of Improved Inner Fire or Manaburn in raiding.
Spiritual Healing on the other hand is something that I think should/could be swapped for Spell Warding for raiding purposes, seeing we priests get hit by extensive amounts of AoE damage in modern encounters.
The spells that get improved with the talent are the buffs (usually used out of combat or thru an inner focus when in combat), pws (rarely used) and renew (which i dont use a lot myself because i've been lacking in luck, so i havent got a rank 10 and people use on top of the others, so the mana is usually wasted). Holy nova can be affected as well, but it is more of an utility talent than anything else, you dont need to cast it multiple times except on vael.
Dispel...the reason basically every Horde priest I know gets this talent. The talent scales as well because dispel is 18% of base mana per cast now.
Your base mana at 60 doesn't change so the talent doesn't scale at all, except when you get a new level.
I'm just curious.
Would spirit tap be of any worth to have as a raiding priest since it doesn't require you to have the killing blow? Would it activate on fights like Fankriss, the bug Trio and possibly even the exploding bugs from the twin emps?
Originally Posted by missiletoad
I get enjoyment out of constructing buildings out of my fries and demolishing them with my chicken nugget army as I make monster noises. But you people. You people are FREAKS.
07/04/06, 3:30 AM
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