Doesn't work on the PTR, shouldn't work tomorrow.

Reflective shield causing push back is rather interesting. I assume this means that it also breaks sheeps? I'm pretty unimpressed with enlightenment, so I was looking at reflective shield for a 41/20/0-ish build.

My priest: The World of Warcraft Armory

I don't know if anyone has posted something similar to this already, but here's a pretty generic 41/20 talent spec that I threw together.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Just something I filled out in like... 30 seconds with the updated talent calculator. Enlightenment + Mental Strength is like... a ridiculous amount of mana. I originally had doubts about taking Pain Suppression, but after thinking about it more, I've realized that 2 minutes is a lot faster than the old 5 minutes, and the massive utility of this talent is almost unmatched. Mostly I think Focused Will > Blessed Resilience, although I think since you sacrifice so much healing throughput with this build (no spiritual healing, unlike our beloved 28/33), that this build would be much more effective in a 5s environment rather than a 2s or 3s, where you're generally the only healer on the team. So a summary of the differences between the builds would look like this:

benefits:
- Focused Will + pain suppression + Enlightenment survivability, making us the closest thing to a cloth tank.
- Huge mana pool from both Enlightenment and Mental Strength, making us less vulnerable to mana burn/drain/viper
- Keep all old survivability talents with the exception of Blessed Resilience (and with 350+ res, how often are we getting crit any more anyway)

Draw backs:
- lack of throughput. without Spiritual Healing our heals are doing literally 10% less healing than they would be otherwise. however, with Focused Will on 3 stacks they'll actually end up doing 20% more healing while we're getting hit on (and we all know priests are the ones to get bitched first)
- less efficiency on Prayer of Mending. This one hurts a little bit. our PoM costs 20% more to cast with this build, and it's one of our best spells in pvp. Although once again, this might be covered with the addition of Enlightenment/Mental Strength
- we lose Blessed Resilience. this hurts a little bit too. that 6 second invulnerability to critical hits is nice. really nice. but like I mentioned before, when we get in full pvp gear we're pushing 400 resilience, so how often are we really getting crit any more? and also, for every time we do crit, we're taking 5% less dmg from everything (up to 15% less dmg, as per Focused Will). So it seems like the value of the two talents is a tradeoff, and might end up being a case of how much HP you have. For instance, if you have the hp to live until you have 3 stacks of Focused Will (pssst - Pain Suppression helps us live for a lot longer than we used to live), then you're probably not going to die, because at the point you're taking 15% less dmg from everything, and the healing reduction from MS/wound poison is mostly mitigated. Obviously this is all a priori speculation, since none of us have had a chance to really test the new talents, but personally I'm leaning toward Focused Will.
- the final draw back I'll mention is the loss of Martyrdom, although points can be shifted out of imp pw:s I suppose.

More things to discuss would be the possibility of Silent Resolve in place of imp pw:s

Well, that was a lot longer than I thought it would be. Personally I'll be running 41/20/0 for a couple weeks, just to test it out.

A different build to test in arenas. 45/16


I liked Ranind's general ideas, but I don't see the point of Divine Fury and Imp Healing. In 5v5 it's mostly mana burn and dispell with flash heals to back up the pally. PoM and renew+shield make up the difference for the mostpart, esp with Imp DS.

I kept everything for survive (even Imp Inner Fire, yikes is that dumb?). Although I think the talents in Disc can be messed around with. Maybe switch a point here or there for Martyrdom would compliment Focused Will nicely, or leave zero in Absolution as there is that increased mana pool now. Lots of things to play with.

The holy tree, if not going all the way to Spiritual Guidance, is still useful. I figure inspiration and Imp Inspiration (Holy Specialization) are a decent compliment, especially if your pally is getting wailed on.

I am waiting to see if PI and PS are worth it. The threat reduction won't be enough to warrant a raid spot, but the Imp DS is still there to get into those spots if needed.

Post what works!

eh, I have a few fundamental problems with not taking Divine Fury. Mainly it's this: every time you get a greater heal to land on your target, you have just undone a huge amount of dmg that the other team has worked to do. also, now that 2.3 is out, it would not be a bad idea (I already did this) to land a smite -> mind blast -> SW:D on a low hp target, for a very nice burst of dmg that can swing the match in your favor.

Other problems I see with your build is the 2/3 absolution and the 4/5 mental agility. absolution is a minor flaw, but mental agility is key. your instant cast spells should always be on cooldown. pw:s should be up at all times on whoever is getting hit. pom should always be jumping around. renew should be up at all times. you should be dispelling any relevant buffs (particularly on an assist train target). all of those instant cast spells will drain your mana pool really fast (even with mental strength and enlightenment), so I would still definitely favor maxing out the talents that will reduce their mana cost. Just because we can have bigger mana pools now, doesn't mean we should all of a sudden give away all of our other mana management.

Improved Divine Spirit I would call basically worthless, as the trend is pvp gear seems to be +0 spirit. DS for me is a cover buff, so that hopefully a felhunter or purge will eat that instead of my fortitude.

Last issue I had was inspiration, which I would call to unreliable to be worth taking in pvp, especially at the sacrifice of something like Improved Healing or Divine Fury.

I had also played around with the idea of taking Imp Inner Fire, but I decided against it for now, as the talent point placement was already very tight. I may move a point or so into later if the new armor penetration on the s3 weapons/armor proves to be a very big issue.

Just my two cents.

edit: the above mention of 2/3 absolution as a minor flaw is meant to mean a minor flaw in comparison with 4/5 mental agility. that additional 5% off the cost of dispel magic and, more importantly, mass dispel is quite a nice chunk of mana. and as mass dispel > paladins, I would think 3/3 absolution would be valued highly by every priest.

Does anyone know if Shadow Focus reduces fear resistance chances? For the first two point its obvious if one does not use any +hit gear, but is there any utility in arena beyond the first two points?

martyrdom I skip in general just because I don't like non-guaranteed things. the chance to resist interrupt effects bothers me. that's also another reason I favor Focused Will over blessed resilience. Too many times I've had a rogue crit me upwards to 7 times in a row without getting a blessed resilience proc. same thing with martyrdom. too many times I've had a mage cs a heal after Martyrdom procs.

I will say this for martyrdom though. it rocks face for getting those mana burns off against the warrior/paladin metagame.

edit: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft this is what the build would look like if I took martyrdom.

I've been playing as holy spec (usually something close to the common 28/33) for s1 and s2. The changes to Disc have prompted me to want to give it a try for s3.

I've noticed very few builds posted have any points in Reflective Shield. Since I have no experience using it I'd like to ask.. Why? Is there a problem with it breaking CC too much or is the overall effect just not that valuable? Or both?

back in the day when I was first tinkering with deep disc pvp builds (this was back in season 1) I took reflective shield. even with 5/5, it only reflects 750 dmg, with 3/3 imp pw:s. 5 talent points is a lot of talent points just to get the amount of dmg that your wand can in just as much time.

also, one of the attractive things about pw:s is that the absorbed damage does not give rage to warriors. kind of removes that little bit of 'cool' from pw:s if it actually starts to give warriors rage again.

I've posted this before in this thread, but here goes again. Imp PWS is a wonderful talent, obviously in 2s and 3s. You can't compare to wand, cos when you wand, you don't do anything else. The rage warriors will get from the reflected damage is so small you won't even notice. If you have the points to spend and not focusing on 5s, then Imp PWS is a great talent.

Good point. Martyrdom is a must talent.

I´d always go with martyrdom for PvP simply since the other alternatives on T2-Disc ain´t better in my opinion. Fortitude most will take, but it´s gonna be dispelled, Shield is nice, but not more. Silent Resolve ain´t worth the points in PvP.

So for now I consider speccing 42/19/0. It has some quite sexy things in it. Good Mana Pool, efficient Instants, very efficient dispelling, I´d never take PW:S, since the biggest threat will stay Warries, also with 2.3 and Hunter-Buffs online, and each an every point rage I give the Warri will directly convert in me going down faster and sucking in more Matchups. This goes especially for 2v2 and 3v3. In 5v5 the damage dealt by the shield is simply too low to really turn the tide.

But to be honest, I´m not sure if it´s worth speccing deep disc at that point of the game. 28/33 is just such a sweet specc, and I´ve been loving it nearly since BC. Simply cause it´s a very hybridish kind of specc, for it is the best for arena in my eyes, but it also enables me to raid with the priest without that much issues about having a PvP-specc and just standing there leeching from the PvE-specced-guys. With deep-Disc I´d have to throw a lot of PvE-utility over board.

But especially in the 5v5-bracket I could imagine several situations, where my shield-wall plus a well placed Power Infusion could turn a match and that makes it quite appreciable, I´ll give it a try I think

so far

Hunters were strong in BGs, especially AV, and now they have the arena buffs. Running forward to fear them isn't that effective as they likely have beast within or scatter shot, traps, and the new close range to keep blasting. LOS is still your best friend. If there is no LOS obstacle then run back...hunters don't like running into the melee area.

If you're one-on-one with them put up SW:P, mana burn them between heals, and go for a fear when they are casting aimed shot (unless they are red). Shield, renew up as much as possible. Kite behind los if in trouble. Ignore the pet.


Discipline spec is a blast in the BGs. Locks are the only one who I have no chance to outduel because of their unlimited health and mana tricks. The most hilarious thing is destroying the poor rogues who gank you when you are alone. I actually look to go one-on-one these days.

Either get in melee range or LoS. If you allow them to dps you from range, you will die no question. The new arcane shot and shorter min range adds insult to injury. Basically, if it's an open field, you will be wrecked by a good hunter as he has plenty of tricks to gain distance on you during your fear/trinket cooldown. If it's a place with LoS opportunities you can survive until your mana runs out.

With the new Preparation-like buff, make sure you have all your good and bad buffs up to protect your renews.

Here's a bunch of thoughts about the patch for us:

Well I was right about rogues being a nightmare this patch for me. It's probably different if you have a partner who can CC but for me at least I just can't get away long enough to survive anymore as every rogue we've come across has prep. The only problem is my brother and I don't have the right classes to make a better 2v2 so we'll just have to suck it up and deal.

I'm not liking silent resolve either, it just doesn't seem to work often enough to be worthwhile at least in 2s. If I'm in LOS for a second all my buffs go away just like before I had it anyway. It might be worth a little more in 5v5 when I'm proccing crap like mad so I'll wait until I've played that before I dump it. The way it boosts pain suppression is pretty nice too, 65% isn't really all that big of a resisitance in the face of purge spam.

Fear ward is pretty crappy now and I've stopped buffing it in prep since stopping 1 random fear a match is useless. Instead I use it like it read "makes you immune to the next fear effect, lasts 10 seconds" and just throw it on when I really can't afford to be feared. It works pretty well for that still.

I'm liking disc quite a lot though, we beat a couple warlock+rogue combos that put tongues on me and burned my warrior. Instant heals + pain suppression + pole dancing was just enough to get us across the line a couple times. Prepatch I'd have had to cast some flash heals and leave myself open for all kinds of nasty things to happen to me.

I keep forgetting to use chastise.

Ranked up our 2s just above 2300 tonight, safely in gladiator range on Ruin and this patch definitely did give us some nice buffs (I'd have loved to keep playing if I hadn't been team-hopping on 3v3s and needed a safe gladiator team). We were even able to consistently beat druid/warrior all night, but thats also partly due to the rogue changes. It could also be that many teams aren't used to our strategy since it is somewhat unconventional.

My impressions are pretty much exactly what I expected based on what I saw on the ptr.

• Chastise can be hilariously good when used properly in some matchups (both offensively and defensively). Chastise -> fear, Chastise -> mind control (especially with a MSD proc) or chastise -> mana burn (with or without MSD) are all amazing. I even got a mage to ice block from a chastise once. Stopping an extra cyclone every 30 seconds (or even more than one if it allows you to get in fear range when you couldn't otherwise) is great.
• Pain suppression is nice, but I played with it all the time before. The biggest advantage to the new version is that I can still play offensively when they focus my partner since it buys me more time to keep up with just instants.
• Focused will makes up for the 65% pain suppression survivability plus a little extra. It's nice but its certainly not earth-shattering. I did stoneform out of wound poison with a 3-stack FW and landed a gheal over 8k on myself once though, that was nice.
• The free spell damage is nice, but also not amazing. I'm sure it helped us burst down some druids in druid/warrior, but I always helped nuke prepatch so I don't notice a big difference.

The trick to surviving the double adren rouges that I've found is to pain suppression yourself just before one of the kidney shots (the first one is typically easiest to predict), and then trinket the 2nd. Spam fear every time its up and don't get it CoS'd. Chastise every time they're on you and you can't get away (chastise as they run back from trinketing/wotf'ing fear is nice, as it can sometimes buy enough time for cripple/wound to fade with a little luck). Stoneform a full wound stack and use desperate prayer when you have no healing debuff (this is very important) and kite while you're cripple immune. If you're not a dwarf on alliance you probably deserve to die. If you're horde you have undead rogues to play with so no pity.

edit: I've always questioned silent resolve and haven't included it in my (disc) spec for months. I'd recommend dropping it.

While I agree on the silent resolve skepticism, keep in mind that it got heavily buffed this patch. It should now affect procced buffs like BR, Martyr, FW etc. In addition the stacking nature of the FW means you as disc have more buffs that benefit from it now, hiding your casted buffs better. Does that mean it's worth it? Don't know. It's certainly not spectacular, but then again none of the alternatives in disc are.

It will be more relevant in 5s than in 2s though, since combined DPS/Dispel spam there is more common.

Grats on your rating Juli.

I love my night out in 2s with 43/5/13 and Moonkin partner. We went 8-2 and I agree 100% that pain suppression's biggest bonus is that it allows you to play aggressively at key times knowing you can pop it. Sadly I have no Chastise being a troll, but a fear ward is a nice little gift. Compared to the old 31-30 I ran with, this new build and the new plus damage seems extremely powerful both defensively and (relatively speaking) offensively.

What is your strat versus warrior druid, Juli? Although it might not apply to us very well as my moonkin has wicked los problems versus a good druid.

What we normally do is get the druid comfortable running away from the moonkin and shifting to avoid mana burns while we generally let the warrior have a decent time (a few token ccs).

Once they are confident in their impending victory (looks like the rest of your cheesey victories, you clowns!), we sleep the druid (first sleep of the match) while he's away from the warrior and then beat down the warrior, and cyclone the druid as soon as he arrives to spam hots. This is pretty iffy, especially given hamstring limits my kiting.... and the ultimate bs talent, spell reflect. And once we do it once and fail, they are a far more careful. It is sweet when it works though as warriors will happily follow me anywhere to their unsuspecting deaths.

We used to focus warriors and try to mana burn/interrupt the druid, but we could almost never pull it off against the best druids. Our new strategy has been to burn the druid down.

If my (human) rogue partner can catch the druid in stealth, awesome. If we don't find the druid by the time the warrior gets on me or perception runs out, we just go on the warrior. Whoever the warrior is trying to kill drags him into a "corner" of some sort, i.e. just down the ramp in BEM, behind a pillar in nagrand, inside a starting gate works well on ruins. This makes it so that when the druid comes out to heal, he will be no more than ~20 yards away and we can make a quick focus switch. On the switch it's good to blind (not dispellable anymore) or mind control the warrior; or both, he can only trinket one.

After the switch, I just keep instant cast heals up and mind control/chastise the warrior, fear or chastise the druid if he escapes my rogue, dispel hots if they aren't lifeblooms, and help nuke the druid down with SW:P/MB/SW:D. The rogue saves all his cooldowns while fighting the warrior, with the possible exception of evasion, and pops them all to try and burn the druid down. With extra spelldamage, the addition of chastise, the ability to play more aggressively with targetable PS, and AR/prep's double sprint, double vanish, and superior burst it has worked out well for us.

My rogue (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...=Medivh&n=Zrin) is running the warglaive set, which does help, but the proc was nerfed and I believe the strat would work with "only" season2 weapons. We've tried it with both full arena gear and a mix of tier6 and arena gear, and the pve gear works better with this strategy, but it cost us 1 or 2 matches against other setups. We just went back to full arena gear and were still able to pull it off just fine.

my priest

I see and hear so often about MC as a valid tactic but how do you guys manage that? I often try using that in eots when a lone warrior or rogue is gankign me near an abyss but when I get it of it almost always breaks before I can run them 3m further off the edge. Am I missign something for successfull MC'ing players?
Also when you're MC'ing said warrior.. what is stopping his healer from casting pretty much anything on you? Any damage on yourself breaks the MC right?

MC the warrior when your dps is killing their healer and has been kited away from you. MC the healer when you're killing the dps.

MC has a 20 yd range, if you walk them out of range it will break. It's also trinketable and WotF breaks it

You can't MC someone off of the edge in EotS...it auto breaks. The most fun is AB at the lumber mill.

In arena, MC is sort of double edged sword for a warrior when you're one-on-one. He can pummel it leaving you free to cast you holy spells, or blow his intercept cooldown, or allow it to land. All bad.

Cast pushback is a nice thing to have with reflective shield, sure..
The problem is, most classes can protect themselves against that pushback and gain certain positive effects from getting hit (warriors gaining enrage from a reflected bleed effect).

Teaming up with a rogue in 2vs2, chastice proved itself a really, really nice little spell.
Getting a Druid to stand still to get a MB off, allowing my rogue to catch up to a caster or just interrupting that Divine Favour-Holy Light after dispelling a DS are just some of the many uses.

Considering surivability, i think Focused Will beats Blessed Resilience everywhere except against Warriors in a 2vs2 arena environment. With its higher chance to procc and benefits against enemies which dont rely on crit, this might be just the specc for every situation. And dont forget, while getting a purge-spam a stack of 3 is always better than single buff.

I dont see myself not taking Martyrdom anywhere in the near future, its just too damn good to get those MBs off..