Hi there!

I know build discussions have been discussed ad infinitum and are more or less taboo in most forums, but I decided to be brave and try my luck on this one.

I'm working on levelling a priest to 60, and will be using this priest in a 3-man arena pvp team (the other two will be a mage and a warrior). The idea for this priest is to be a holy nuker without sacrificing too many healing abilities, since most of what I'll be doing in the arena will be keeping the warrior alive, shielding him or the mage, psychic screaming at people who get too personal with me or the mage, etc.

I'll be stacking up on +damage/healing gear, not pure +healing gear (think Mish'undare, Cloak of the Brood Lord, Mantle of the Blackrock Cabal, the blue/purple PvP set items etc) to maximize the damage output without sacrificing too much of the healing.

At the moment, the build I'm aiming for at 60 is this: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=dxMGsVVVobxxhbb

Let me go through the reasoning behind a few of the talent choices:
* I'll be getting Power Infusion to be able to buff the mage in the group, and occasionally myself if I want to get out a big Holy Fire in case it looks like we're winning and I can lay off the heals.
* I'll be getting Inner Focus for the oh-shit-situations where I need to get a big heal off in a right-this-minute-or-the-warrior-dies scenario.
* Improved PW:S to help keep the warrior alive, despite the slight reduction in rage generation it causes.
* Martyrdom and Healing Focus to be able to get those heals off even with a rogue hacking away on me.
* Force of Will and Holy Specialization to get 10% more crits on my heals, Smites and Holy Fires.
* Force of Will and Searing Light to get more damage output on my Smites and Holy Fires. (How do these stack, btw?)
* Holy Reach to be able to heal and DPS from further away.

The rest are either filler or obvious choises.

Now, my question is the following. Are there any talent choises I've made that are especially bad for the type of priest I want to play? Should I think more about stuff like Improved Healing, Inspiration, Spell Warding, etc?

Any help would be useful. Thanks!

Drop the idea of nuking in pvp and get survival talents and stam/armor.

As Snape said, your main concern as a non-Shadow Priest in the arena is going to be surviving the focus-fire as long as possible. Focus your talents around that goal. Chain-casting smite invites someone to counterspell your Holy tree and then you're either useless or dead.

Your three floater points in holy for blessed recovery or spellwarding don't really matter, they're both about the same in terms of worth. I would most likely choose something exactly the same as your build based on your suggested playstyle. The only lingering question would be if you value more armor from improved inner fire over the 6% mana reduction on instants(for you it would be pw:s and sw:p mostly). The reduction on instant casts sounds a lot better than it is, and when I pvp'd with a similar build to yours I took all the armor I could get.

A mage and a priest on DPS duty will get destroyed.

A mage and a priest in healbot form will destroy people.

p.s. Replace mage with warlock and destroy even more people ;)

There are too many occasions when I'll see a Priest running around hopelessly 'Smiting thy foes' and watching everyone around them drop like flies. Healing in PvP COMPLETELY changes the outcome of the fight and most of them don't even know it. Take it from a guy that intentionally ploughs into healers all the time: 2 or more healing classes dedicated to watching each others' backs (as well as keeping the DPS guys up) is the most painful experience in humility I've ever had in this game.

"Why...won't...you...just...DIE!!!"

Thanks for the quick answers, and Cedric: You're right, I should move those points to Improved Inner Fire; there aren't enough instant attacks in my spellbook to justify that talent, especially since I'm not going for Holy Nova.

As for levelling, I tried Shadow spec but got so bored of it. At the moment I'm lvl 27, with 5 points in shadow (Spirit Tap), 5 points in Discipline (Wand Spec [please don't kill me! :D ]). and placed the remaining points in Holy, along the same lines as in my talent spec. When grinding/questing, I open with a PW:S, pull the mob with Holy Fire (+5% crit already), throw in a SW:P and then wand the mob to death, which is usually before they even penetrate my shield, even on mobs 2-3 levels above me. There's basically no down-time as I rarely lose health and Spirit Tap gives me plenty of mana back when I'm grinding.

... so I believe the "shadow for levelling" to be a myth. Maybe "Spirit Tap for levelling"? :-D

Edit: And again, I'm going in to arenas/BGs with the intention of healing, not DPSing. I just want the build and gear that I have to allow me to grind and DPS inside the arena/BG when the match turns to the degree where I don't need to heal. ;)

Holy nuker suffers in PvP from lack of instants and counterspell shuts you down more or less completely for 10 seconds. It only works well in AV (where terrain prevents people from getting to you) with 3 piece ZG set bonus that gives you 42 yard range.

I agree in regards to shadow leveling. For my priest I was shadow until 55, I would bandage when low on health and heal via Vampiric Embrace if necessary. With Spirit Tap I had basically no downtime.

Hello, I'm a 'Holy Nuker' and I can tell you if you like to hit Smite over and over with the odd SW:Pain then that only really works in AV. I pretty much have that spec and the gear you wanted for PvP and I've been this since the Priest talent changes. (http://ctprofiles.net/767476) It's a nice build but works much more at being a supportive healer in a battleground; being able to throw out the odd Smite does at times indeed help, but you rely on not taking much back in the form of cc's. Like i said earlier thats great for AV and i do still enjoy the odd game where i can do that. If you want to play a damage dealing Priest i'd reccomend you spec Shadow though.

One of the things that "wanders" typically neglect when talking about efficient grinding is your DPS factors in heavily. If you're wanding for any more than the last few % of a mobs health, you're wrecking your dps, even if you put talent points in it.

Alot of classes can complete net-0 resource cycles, but most of them aren't killing very quickly at that point. Some classes can kill ridiculously quickly, but generally have associated downtime.

Shadow-priests kill ridiculously quickly and have near net-0 resource cycles, which is why folks say "shadow for levelling". My experience would put them on par with a non-beast spec hunter (which is to say, one of the fastest classes/specs around).

Smiting is generally terrible at 60, but I suppose it can work out alright if you have really insane +dmg. You won't have the gear that you need until you've raided quite a bit, so don't aim for a holy nuker build when you hit 60. As bad as the level 60 holy nuker idea is, it's a much, much, much worse idea to attempt to level as anything other than shadow. If I were you, I would respec immediately to something like http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/...02200100300000. Get weaving at 28-29, reach at 30-32, shadow focus at 33, vampiric embrace at 34, darkness at 35-39, shadowform at 40, wand spec at 41-45, any 5 disc at 46-50, inner focus at 51, meditation at 52-54. At this point, if it's easy to find very good instance groups, you can begin to consider going holy . . . but I probably still wouldn't. Shadow is off the charts as far as how fast you can grind. Walk up to something, mind blast, sw:p while strafing away, flay two or three times, wand until dead. You can do that for forty levels, and the percentage multipliers and spirit tap make it insanely efficient, no matter what your gear is like.