But if we're talking about duelling specs, I'd much rather go 43/5/13 for the reduced fear cooldown and possible blackout procs. It makes sense to compare apples with apples, not an optimized rogue beating spec, or an optimized priest beating spec.

Yes, standard duels, with standard useful PvP specs. The Rogue being Undead is not all that much of an issue for me, I guess because the Rogues I duel are almost all Undead. And for a Dwarf it should be even easier.

I am trying to plan out how to gear out once Season 4 hits, and I'm not sure what to do with my offspec pieces.

I currently have the s3 healing ring (Vindicator's Band of Salvation) and the s3 spell haste ring (Vindicator's Band of Subjugation). When Season 4 hits, should I upgrade both the same way I have them now; i.e. should I get the Guardian's Band of Subjugation and the Guardian's Band of Salvation, or should I stick with the Guardian's Band of Salvation and the Vindicator's Band of Salvation? I also have the Vindicator's Pendant of Reprieve (+healing and spell haste necklace). Should I change that to the season 4 Pendant of Salvation for more stamina, or should I stick with the spell haste?

(I have 75,000 honor and 80 marks of each type, so I am buying all offspec pieces pretty much right away)

In the same vein, I swapped out all my Steady Talasites (+4 resilience, +6 stamina) for Forceful Talasites (+4 spell haste, +6 stamina) in all my blue/yellow slots in my season 3 gear (5 gems total for 20 resilience or 20 spell haste). Should I continue to gem for spell haste in my new season 4 gear or is there a better option available?

I don't have my armory link available (I'm at work), but I have 412 resilience for reference.

What gear you get depends on what you want to do with it, of course.

If you 3v3 as solo healer then spell haste isn't that great because you'll mainly be healing, in which case you want healing output without gimping your efficiency. You will also need more resilience in case 2 dps jump you.

If you 3v3 with another healer then you want more spell haste because you'll probably dispel and mana burn as much as you can with healing not being all that important.

If you're a 5v5 dispel bot then you should stack up resilience until 450, I'll probably go for 500 even and then haste.

In 2v2 I would recommond healing over haste because mana is going to be an issue and against high rated teams you won't be able to burn much anyway. In 2v2 you also need the least stamina so you could socket pure resilience and healing gems.

I'm sure there are more subtleties to it, but since I don't know what you want to do I can't help you. Maybe you weren't sure either when you get a mix of gear...

I am be solo healer on a 3v3 team, a 2's team with a rogue, and on a 5's team of Rogue/Warrior/Enh Shaman/Resto Druid/Me. I've noticed on my 3's team that I don't have a lot of time to mana burn and dispell, as a lot of my time is sucked up by healing my teammates. That's a good point. And you're right about the 2v2 with mana being an issue, as I tend to end up running oom from healing myself if I have a warrior pounding on me while I have an MS applied to me.

In 5's I tend to dispel everything, and I seem to rarely end up the focus target for long, so I end up mana burning and dispelling buffs all around. I guess I end up doing a mix of everything overall and I don't want to re-gem every time I play on a different bracket's games.

I suppose I'll gem for +healing and resilience and forgo spell haste altogether.

I guess you're in a bit of dilemma then. For 5v5 you'd be better off with more haste, but for the other two brackets that's counter-productive. Now you can either mix and stay below your total effectiveness in all brackets or choose wether you want to be at your maximum in 3v3/2v2 or 5v5.

I won't be doing any 5v5 in S4 probably, so it's a bit easier for me. In the end 5v5 is almost a special situation for Priests that you either build for or don't.

Just took my priest and finally put him back on an arena team (he's in S2 gear, ouch) with 2 Rogues, one who is in all blues. I've found very little time to manaburn, and most of my "offensive" utility comes from dispelling the burn target. Frequently running into mana issues, but maybe that will be resolved when the 2nd Rogue aquires better gear.

Did some 2v2 games with the poorly geared Rogue last season just for practice, and found more opportunities to manaburn - but still not many. Back in S2 when I did 5's, manaburn was my most common job (since we had other healers). So the idea that +Heal for 2's and 3's, while +Haste is for 5's seems to follow what I experienced.

Hi all.
I'm playing Dpriest with in the new season, but i have a doubt about the spec, as i am a troll.
I've searched armory but i can't find a Dpriest troll (they are always undead).
So my question is: blackout worth the 5 points, or should i spec as undead priest (0 points in shadow tree)?

Currently i'm playing with ret+war ms, so i'm usually enemy focus and i spend the game kiting, and i barely cast GH.

armory link : The World of Warcraft Armory

Hey,
First off, a good half of this thread is outdated, perhaps it might be a good idea to start up a new thread.. or maybe just put a link in the first post to the page of this thread that starts at 2.4.
Anyway, I'm looking to get a bit of advice on spec. I'll try and make this short: Right now I've got 514 resil, 1627 +healing and run 2v2s with a rogue, 3v3s as RMP, and 5s with a demo lock, MS war, holy pally, and a mage.
I'm considering dropping Silent Resolve and Imp PW:F, and maybe a point out of Spell Warding to get 5/5 Divine Fury and 3/3 Improved Healing. my buffs get dispelled about 50% of the time, and I also go oom quite often due to flash heal/mana burn spam, so I'm finding it hard to make the call as to wether or not to keep my spec as is. I switched to this spec in the first place because half of the time i try and cast a GHeal it gets interrupted, or pushed back enough that my target is in critical condition before the heal goes off... but after reading this forum I've started to doubt the worth of SR and IPW:F... so yeah, any solid advice would be sweet.
Also I know that I have a bit more resil than I might need but that's because I catch focus a lot in my 2s and 3s.
Oh yeah, here's My Armory Profile

As I've been planning my end of season gear/geming/enchants, I've been looking for setups to balance being Resilience capped, hit capped, and maximizing healing after that. I was curious if anyone knew if talents such as Druid's Subtlety and Priest's Silent Resolve could be compensated for with more Spell Hit. Basically, when the decision comes down to a final gem slot, if a hit gem would put you over the cap(say 3.21), but socketing a different gem would leave you under(2.77), would socketing for hit and going over the cap have actual benefits when facing Druids/Priests, or would part of the points be largely useless?

Just curious if anyone has seen any testing done regarding overcoming "chance to be dispelled" talents and extra Spell Hit.

Yes, spell hit works against these mechanics and any others like it, including Cloak of Shadows.

Isn't it possible for your warrior to keep the ret-pala away from you by just applying hamstring continously? Just dispell the blessing of freedom of the enemy paladin and he will be very slow and you can kite at least the paladin around (or do the same with their warrior, but this is harder to pull off).

First off, if you want a new thread then make one. If you don't want to read old posts then start from the back or use the search function to find when Season 3 starts getting mentioned or something. Don't expect other people to do that for you.

Imp Fortitude is one of the worst Priest talents, if not the worst. It offers a whooping 237 HP per person for two talent points. It's crap. The worth of Silent Resolve can be argued, but I dropped it because whenever someone really wanted to dispel my buffs then they did. It is however nice to stack it with Pain Suppression. Since I do mainly 2v2 I prefer Reflective Shield as that does a nice (and free) amount of damage during the course of a fight.

I have Improved Healing and Divine Fury and I like them both. In 5v5 however a Priest isn't usually in a position to use Greater Heal. Instead the Priest's job should be dispelling and Mana Burning largely. This really boils down to the previous discussion about the difference between 5v5 and 2v2/3v3. In 2v2 Improved Healing and Divine Fury are very powerful. I also picked up Searing Light recently because any extra damage helps when bursting down a Warrior or Hunter early on. For 5v5 I wouldn't touch that talent. You have to figure out wether you want to be at your maximum efficiency in 5v5 or in the lower brackets and then pick talents, gear and gems accordingly.

You really shouldn't take much damage in 3v3 with RMP. Your two partners are so stacked with snares, roots, stuns and other cc that only ranged damage can get you, which you can los.

And finally, there's already an armory link in your profile so you don't need to link it again. I would suggest that you read the posting guidelines.

I don't have any experience with the setup, but try to stay out of range of the Shaman then you can fully utilise Blessing of Freedom. It's probably not as easy as it sounds though. Have your Warrior intercept their Warrior right when the enemy Intercept Stun wore off. In those 3 seconds you can probably get out of LoS of the enemy Warrior. If they chase you a lot without doing damage then you'll probably win eventually.

Could someone link a specialized 2v2 armory profile of a deep discipline build? Me and my rogue partner are in season 2 gear with some season 3 mixed in, but are finding it hard to win more than 50% of the games in our 1600 rated bracket. We need more experience of course but getting the basics i.e. spec and gems for 2v2 right.

Most appreciated pointers would be the choice: reflective shield or silent resolve, would reflective shield be a problem with a rogue partner i.e. messing up the warrior blind because of bleed? Any help would be greatly appreciated, I think it would be easy in my case as we are focusing on 2v2.

Reflective shield no longer breaks any form of CC, that's why it became so popular towards the end of Season 3. There are two specs linked earlier in this thread which where disc/holy builds and the choice was either holy nova or no holy nova depending on whether you like snakes or not!

Has anyone had tested the fail rate of [Rocket Boots Xtreme Lite] on the ptr? I heard they're being nerfed from the 300 damage to a chance of a 3 second stun. If this goes live, it'll be a huge nerf to anyone who relies on breaking cc with them. Also, if this does go live, what would you guys pick up instead of engineering? Personally, I'm currently enchanting/engineering and will probably go enchanting/jewelcrafting.

My guildmate said he got 0 failures in 15 casts, small sample size I know but it was enough to not worry me too much. I've seen many people quote 15%, but as we all know, 95% of all statistics are made up on the spot.

That said, I currently use rocketboots in the following situations:
a. breaking a sheep while SWD is on cooldown
b. i'm below 20% hp and about to die
d. i need to run over and fear a druid while i'm losing a mana war (I am not being focused)

And I cannot relate to the people who say they are going to drop engineering even with what looks like the worst case scenario of 20% failure. My options are:
a= Will no longer work. Ends up being I get sheeped, or I have the small chance to rocketboot out of LoS or range.
b= I die or have a 80% chance not to die.
c= if I do it while i'm at full hp and the stun doesn't really matter, it either works or it doesn't. His partner is killable (80%) or not killable (20%)

Would wearing the pvp boots have won the game?
a= nope
b= maybe, very very likely not
c= nope

I really think the boots should never have been able to break CC to begin with. It's just plain annoying that someone with engineering has an advantage in the arena over someone with alchemy for example. Sure I could change my professions, but then I guess I could change my class and race too. Either all professions should be viable or none should be usable. We'll probably be waiting quite some time for that though.

Ah, wouldn't it be nice if all the gimmicky engineer stuff had a 15 minute cooldown, making it unusable in the arena?

As to your question, engineering still has the belt which can be very powerful. The stealth detection goggles are also very helpful. What would jewelcrafting offer you? The trinkets aren't that great, as there are quite nice honor trinkets available.

I could not find anything about the amount of spell hit needed with tri-spec shadow focus. Would 38 spell hit be less important with the 10% less chance of my target to resist shadow spells?

You need 3% spell hit for PvP. Spell hit is important for: Fear, Mana Burn, Dispel Magic and your damage spells. Since you can dispel all shadow resistance buffs I only see room for spending 2 points in Shadow Focus. That gives you maximum hit chance with all your shadow spells and Mana Burn. Smite and Mass Dispel get maxed from talents, so the only thing left with 4% miss is Dispel Magic.

Wether you want to get 38 spell hit for that and drop Shadow Focus or not is up to you. Unfortunately there isn't really anything useful to spend your points on anyway. Shadow Affinity does nothing for PvP and you usually have a large enough advantage when you kill an opponent that you don't need Spirit Tap. That and PvP Priests don't have much spirit.

So after much talk I would say:
Get 3/5 Shadow Affinity, 2/2 Imp SW:P and drop all hit from your gear. I however will keep my 20 points in Holy, hehe.

Thanks for your advice Tainter.
I must say I agree with you, after some games with the -4 sec on fear cool down I noticed I don't get enough opportunity to proc blackout to make this build worthwhile. The reduced fear is nice vs double rogue teams but that is the only situation where I really need it.
I am back to the cookie cutter build, without Silent Resolve though, something I miss but I can live with it in the 2v2 bracket.
Now I have to choose how to get my 38 hit. I think I will try to get my hands on two 10 spell hit gems and keep 15 hit on gloves.