Blazingwater

I've recently gotten my priest to level 70, though shadow all the way, and I'm wanting to make the change to disc for some PvP fun. I've been looking around some places, and have seen a few builds good for various arena setups. I'm now planning to grind honor in BGs and do a little 2v2 or 3v3 action.

Does anyone know of a good build for this gameplay? I'm thinking WorldofWarcraft.com -> Info -> Classes -> Priest -> Talent Calculator right now, for increased survivability and some heal action (while throwing a few MB and SW:P around). I'm thinking the points in Enlightenment and Focused Power could be moved around a bit, but I think the rest is routine for talents.

A lil help here would be nice =)

(Btw, if you post builds, please use the wow.com template, as I'm having some issues with wowhead =/)

 

Xavias

Without telling you how exactly to spec, I think its pretty critical that you get Divine Fury for 2.5sec Greater Heals. It might be very wise to drop a lot of disc points and put them in Holy. A good 95% of Disc priests are 41/20 spec, btw.

 

Blazingwater

Ok, I'm going to include divine fury into the build.

Where would the rest of the points go? I don't believe the +crit to be extremely good, considering I won't be casting much of the time (focus fired). I would value talents in the disc tree more valuable than spell warding and holy reach (being enlightenment and imp PW:F (all for survivability in poor gear)), and inspiration and imp healing wouldn't be great considering I would be spamming Flash Heal.

Correct me if I'm wrong..

 

Calantus

Fheal is not your primary heal. Once your instants are on cooldown or already up you'll want to be GHealing in every situation that allows it as it's both higher HPM and higher HPS than FHeal. If you can't afford the time a Gheal would take (your target will LOS the GHeal, you will get CCd/locked out during a GHeal, etc) then you'll want to fall back on binding heal if you're also hurt. If not, only then do you go to FHeal. FHealing is a good way to run out of mana while only just keeping your target up.

As far as talents go you basically want this: WorldofWarcraft.com -> Info -> Classes -> Priest -> Talent Calculator

In holy some people go without the GHeal talents but I can't see justifying that unless you're tri-spec. Nothing in the disc tree past 41 points is better than the GHeal talents if you ever cast the spell. You'll also be finding yourself casting holy fire and smite more than you'd expect so it's very nice for that. For disc you need 3 talents in the 2nd tier, and then 4 more from anywhere to unlock PS. Most people pump points into silent resolve, then people either put filler points into imp fort and enlightenment OR put into reflective shield.

Personally my favourite spec is: WorldofWarcraft.com -> Info -> Classes -> Priest -> Talent Calculator

 

Tainter

Don't ever get Imp PW:F for PvP. Just don't. It's the most useless talent you could possibly imagine. Those 237 HP will not win you any fights. I very highly recommend Reflective Shield to you. It's very powerful in 1v1, i.e. solo BGs, and is much better than Silent Resolve in 2v2.

I'd put one point each in Holy Nova, Inspiration and Blessed Recovery. Holy Nova is necessary to kill snakes and it's great in BGs to stop flag capping and to flush out Druids and Rogues who just stealthed next to you. The other two give fodder buffs which some people waste mana and global cooldowns on purging or dispelling. Then get all the Greater Heal talents. I also have Searing Light because I consider myself an offensive caster and that extra bit of damage is often crucial to drop a dps during a CC combo.

 

What Do I Type Here?

Flash heal is plenty bad but it's not as bad as you make it sound. At 18 deep into holy and around 1600 healing it's 1372 HPS at 4.4 HPM, compared to gheal's 1732 @ 6.2. I mean, it's bad, but it's not the end of the world bad. Resto shamans are in a similar situation, and Siij put it pretty well in battlecast 8, "One question I've been getting quite a bit lately is why I'm not specced for improved healing wave? The answer is quite simple: I don't use that heal. It takes a long time to cast, so it's very easy to interrupt. It's very mana efficient, but in terms of the arena, time priorities come first and mana efficiency comes second. And if you want to be mana efficient you can just combat drink 9 out of 10 times." Those are pretty much my feeling mirrored for priests, at least when I have to defend 43/5/13 to random people. That said, I often (and currently) am 43/18 and use gheal whenever possible, but flash has it's place.

While being trained and healing yourself, it depends on who is on you. Bad mages/warlocks/shaman will miss a CS on a flash heal all the time, but never a gheal... even if you fake a pummel most warriors are smart enough to just run out and intercept a gheal, which they have all the time in the world for. Rogues are rogues and you can't cast vs them anyway, heh.

For healing a partner with gheal, simple positioning is the name of the game. Pretty much every spell interrupt is 30 yard range. Stand between 30 and 40 and you should be able to land gheals reliably.

 

Calantus

Yeah, I use FHeal a lot as well because you often have to. I didn't really want to give the impression it was bad, more that it's not what you reach for automatically. It's good because it's often needed, but it IS bad in pure efficiency so you should be trying to play such that you only use it when its speed is a real benefit. That is going to see you casting it often, but not always, and it's been my experience that most new priests need to learn to stop using it as their default heal or else they don't find the opportunities to use GHeal. It's just too easy to use FHeal 24/7 and then wonder why you're OOM.

Basically I think it's easier to learn the class by approaching GHeal as the default heal and learning the hard way when not to use it. Starting out I absolutely lost games because I tried to cast GHeal at bad times and those moments are burned into my memory so that I don't repeat the mistake. I've probably lost games being OOM when I had an opportunity to use GHeal earlier in the match that could have seen me last long enough. Probably. But I couldn't tell you when those times happened because it's much harder to notice that mistake without the benefit of FRAPSing the fight.

 

Blazingwater

Any reason you didn't pick up imp PW:S? I would think it would go along perfectly with reflective shield, or are there better places to be putting those points?

And also, when healing in BGs, how would you heal? Usually I just hit tab+f (targets enemy, then target's enemy's target), then hit PoM+renew if over 60% health and not taking much damage, or shield+FH+PoM etc. for targets under 60% health. Is there a better (more mana efficient) way to heal in BGs? I find myself not using GH too much, as when they would need that much heal, GH would heal too slow.

Last but not least.. Does reflective shield reflect damage if I put the shield on another player? I assume it would.

 

Calantus

15% is not a whole lot of extra shield. It would be a nice bonus if I had filler points to spare but I just can't see myself taking those points from anywhere else.

In BG healing I typically ProM every cooldown because that thing can do crazy healing in a big melee. Renew on anyone taking damage but not being spam dispelled, or to top people off. Shield for people who need the buffer right now or they die, or if they have a healing debuff. FHeal on anyone too low for a GHeal to land in time. Otherwise I Gheal. Sometimes you'll have a mage or a warlock who will actually interrupt you in which case you try to slip in FHeals to make it harder and juke if they're actually competant at interrupting (rare in BGs). The biggest problem as a priest in BGs is generally being jumped or running oom, people very rarely CC or interrupt the healers so you're mostly free to spam GHeals until someone decides to hit you.

The other thing is to look for opportunities to play offencively. Offencive dispels, mana burns, fears, and bursts on a low target can often be more important than healing.

And yeah reflective shield does reflect if you put it on other people.

 

ConditionKJ

When it comes down to it, there is more than one way to spec correctly depending on your team makeup. Also you have to take your gear into consideration. Less gear means you should drop something less important for the extra stats from enlightenment and IMP PW: Fort.

Here is my personal opinion for those who are starting out.

WorldofWarcraft.com -> Info -> Classes -> Priest -> Talent Calculator



This build gives you the extra stats without sacrificing anything extremely important.

Now if you are a bit more geared, I recommend something more along the lines of this.

WorldofWarcraft.com -> Info -> Classes -> Priest -> Talent Calculator


I always would choose Imp: PW: shield over reflective shield. In most 2v2, 3v3, and 5v5 comps, the extra 300 - 700 damage every 15 seconds will not be enough to make something stop attacking you and retreat for a heal. On the other hand, the extra 15% bubble health might be enough time for you to get another heal or another renew tick in.

 

What Do I Type Here?

I can say with pretty much all certainty that not having improved fort has ever lost me more than like 2 games. My feelings are that max hp is pretty irrelevant in any situation where you are able to heal yourself in between 100% and 0%, which is almost always. Shoot for 10k unbuffed and you will survive almost all bursts, and if you don't, any amount of hp you could get from imp fort/ enlightenment/ silly gemming won't help you, there's no coming back from from certain things. Get a mod like recount and you will see for yourself the ammount of overkill ( ) that happens on pretty much every kill for everyone. You're not going to be in a situation very often where you can say something like "haha, that execute only took me to 300hp, thanks improved fort! Now, the tables have turned and I'm going to win this match!" because, well, you're just going to get killed right after that unless you can fear or get a really good peel or something... as in, not something you should ever rely on seriously.

Those talent points are simply better spent on keeping yourself alive as long as possible during the transition from full to dead, I guess I should say.

 

Tainter

But of course you can have both Imp PW:S and Reflective Shield. And that's in fact what I would recommend for 2v2, BGs and duels.

Enlightenment and Imp PW:F are just crap. Please do yourself a favour and don't take them. I personally regret my S2 gear choice of going for as much HP as I could. My was I silly. Now I'm spending all my enchants and gems on stuff that will help me throughout the whole match, not just during one burst: I'm aiming for 493 res, 35 hit and then as much healing as I can get. I'm not getting any stamina enchant or gem. Once you're in complete PvP epics, no matter what season you should be well above 10k HP anyway.

The only reason why someone would try to push their HP up higher I think is for 5v5 if you know you'll get focused, like all those poor shadow priests. But even then, once the HP are gone they're gone.

 

ConditionKJ

I recommend not getting the reflective shield talent because there are far better talents in the holy tree that you need.
The 15% cheaper GHeals outweighs the reflective shield talent any day. I would also rather take 4 or 6% less spell damage, or, take the blessed recovery talent. In my opinion all three of those talents outweigh the tiny damage output that the reflective shield puts out. If nothing else, blessed recovery is another buff that must be purged off before removing your focused will, which is one of the priests' best help to survive. Plus the extra hot is guaranteed to help out with healing while your being focused by a rogue or warrior.

In short, getting reflective shield would prevent you from getting other, far more important "ARENA SITUATION" talents in the holy, and discipline trees.

 

Bliss

> This < is the spec I use on my priest now for 2v2. I play with a warlock, and I find that the dispell resist talent is rarely needed because our hardest fights don't have dispellers. Reflective shield is amazing for double dps teams and any team with a warrior. It's also pretty awesome for killing grounding totems, because if you have the shield up when the totem is dropped, it dies more or less instantly.

To me the only real decision you can make in the standard disc/holy spec is between dispell resist and reflective shield, everything else is just too important to get.

 

What Do I Type Here?

Funny. This may be unique to my playstyle, but of all the ways you can deviate from the standard spec to most efficiently beat warrior/druid 2v2, reflective shield is the most effective by a very large margin. This is especially true for nagrand, not so much for blade's, and even less so for lordaeron, but it helps a little bit in each.

This seems pretty obvious to me but a lot of people don't use it for 2's an I don't see an alternative that is anywhere near as good... considering the sheer number of warrior/druid teams you will face.

 

Vain

How important do you feel Mental Strength/Power Infusion is comparatively? I think Mental Strength is a mediocre (although not awful) talent that gets comparatively worse the longer the match is. Power Infusion (aka Mana Burn infusion) is quite good and may let you land another 1 or 2 burns, but you do have to spend 6 points to get there; if you don't get either one, then you could have both dispel resist and reflective shield.

 

Bliss

With a warlock I can't see dropping PI, we can just destroy warriors if they LoS their healer at all. My warlock has the skull from Illidan also, so he uses that when I PI him, makes fears almost impossible to interrupt. In something like rogue/priest I might be tempted to drop it since it can be hard to get burns off on good healers even with PI. We are getting close to 2050 though, and with the spellhaste mace I think PI will be amazing.

 

xarg

Look for the best DPSer you can find in the starting point, and follow them around. This will be far more effective than healing random people who aren't really accomplishing anything. It's easy to 2v5 people in pug battlegrounds and turn the tide of the game.

 

doggerel

For healing in BGs, I can't recommend the Grid addon enough. It shows you the health of everyone on your side in the battleground, and whether they're in range. Using it and Clique (another essential healer addon), you can keep a bunch of people up as long as you have the mana for it.

 

Tainter

Yeah, there are better talents in the Holy tree indeed. Oh, wait! Reflective Shield is a Disc talent. Getting Reflective Shield doesn't prevent anybody from getting Improved Healing. Check my spec if you like. 20 Points in Holy are obviously possible.

Let's talk about Blessed Recovery shall we? It sucks. It sucks so badly that it's almost as bad as Imp PW:F. Which classes is it supposed to help against? Against Rogues it gets overwritten by off-hand crits and then ends up ticking for a grand total of 10 health. Nice. The same happens with Hunter pets. If an Enhancement Shaman catches you in the arena then it's almost game over. And that leaves Warriors, who I have no problem with whatsoever. The talent sucks. I put one point in it because Inspiration is even worse and I don't need Spell Warding, because we destroy caster teams.

Reflective Shield does more damage than Blessed Recovery heals. I guarantee you that. My shield absorbs somewhere around 1930 damage in total, making it 772 - 965 damage (sometimes, like now, I have only 4/5 in it because of Searing Light when playing with a Lock). That is FREE damage. I use shield whenever I can essentially against targets with healing debuffs, because it's simply the most efficient. ~430 mana for 1930 healing AND 965 damage? That's tremendous. It's almost as much damage as casting a Smite. And because I cast damage spells quite a lot to pressure my opponents the shield damage is a welcome addition.

Right now I'm playing with a Hunter. We mainly have issues with Druid healer combos. Particularly the ones that can snare pets or outright kill them like Rogues and Warriors. Against those teams Reflective Shield is brilliant. The talent generally allows me to drag a dps away from their healer and start killing it. Often the healer will them expose himself. And once the dps is at 50% we kill it during a CC combo. Without Reflective Shield I wouldn't be able to damage enemy dps quickly enough on my own.

Lots of talking, but the verdict is: It's a very nice talent for 2v2 and any form of soloing. It really is. For 3v3 or 5v5 I might consider something else. But then I guess in the end I wouldn't drop it.

 

Blazingwater

How do you guys feel about the viability of focused power and silent resolve? A .5 sec mass dispel sounds nice..but is it worth the two points? And I'm not sure about putting 5 points into silent resolve. 20% is nice, but 5 points nice? It could make an enhance shaman burn some more mana purging..or stop an arcane shot.

Right now I'm using the build WorldofWarcraft.com -> Info -> Classes -> Priest -> Talent Calculator
I haven't found much use of imp healing, considering I rarely Gheal. I use ProM whenever it's up, renew targets taking a little damage, or flash heal when they get too low. Most of the time the Gheal takes too long to cast to save them, or they haven't taken enough damage. I put 2 points into searing light because, as has been said, the little smite burst can kill a target. Smite+MB+SW: D=Dead if on low hp, only taking 3.5sec for all of that. I suppose I could drop the 5 points in silent resolve and max out focused power and spell warding.. Then drop another point in imp healing or inspiration.

Any thoughts on this?

 

Calantus

I should slap you.


(It is very much worth 2 points. Take them from Blessed Recovery.)

 

Nurru

Depends on the bracket. .5 Mass Dispel doesn't find nearly as much use in 2v2.

< Aislinana> Why would it be my job to sleep with vontre? Don't I have standards?

 

Calantus

But it's worth the points if you can say that ".5 sec faster mass dispel sounds nice". It's only ever not worth the points if you never cast it.

 

Arvak-

A .5 second mass dispel is far more usable than a 1.5s mass dispel; it makes the spell near-impossible to interrupt with consistency. That doesn't even touch upon the spell hit bundled in, which is invaluable in 2's where you must often assist your partner at precise moment to score a kill. Not having focused power will cost you games by making you more open to ranged abilities and potential holy lockouts, as well as reducing your ability to land critical finishers.