Tainter

I would say stay shadow or go for a Disc damage gib team. 1.1k healing is very little. I don't think you'd be able to keep anyone alive against 2 dps. The other problem is that your spell damage isn't being used for anything in a drain team. Your Mana Burn doesn't benefit from it.

I'd say your best shot at Disc would be to grab some damage talents like Searing Light, have your hunter spec BM and try to gib a squishy opponent. It's not great because a Disc Priest can nail an opponent in line of sight of the Hunter. If that fails you can then try to drain one of the mana users. Against two dps you need to be really defensive, but chance is that one of you will die a good number of times.

If you can't join them?
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Squished

Great thread, read through every page of it.

Is the latest PI worth the 6 talent points required to get it? I'm a relatively new 70 priest but it seems to me that a 10% larger mana pool contributes nothing to survivability or mana efficiency.

Then, PI obviously helps somewhat when you're getting bursted and need to spam everything you've got, but it hardly seems worth the 1.5 sec GC, 150+ mana, and 6 talent points.

I only run BG's at this point, not ready for arenas yet, and as such survivability is much more important to me than giving offensive buffs to others. I ask this strictly from the point of view of survivability -- and to a lesser extent, mana efficiency.

Edit: oh, and if it is worthwhile, what situations is it usually used for survivability? e.g, Spell 1 -> Spell 2-> PI -> Spell 4 -> Spell 5 -> Spell 6

 

doogless

You'll gain back the Mana you spend on the spell from the 20% mana reduction during PI, and PIed Mana Burns win games (of course it can be used when you need more HPS as well).

 

moowalk

PI doesn't invoke the GCD. I agree that if it did it'd be useless for self casting.

 

Tainter

I like PI, it has certainly won me a few games.

In BGs I mainly use it on myself to keep someone alive through 2+ dps when I'm not under push-back pressure.

In the arena I use it for Mana Burning during fear. It's also useful for bursting a Warrior or Hunter down in the opening moments of the game. In that situation I cast it on whoever isn't being attacked. And finally it does increase healing output, so I pretty much have to use it against any double dps team that's worth their salt.

A spell combo typically looks like this: Pain Suppression on whoever needs it, Power Infusion on me, Healing trinket if I have it equipped, Shield and PoM on target, Flash Heal if less than half health, Greather Heal otherwise, Renew when health has stabilised.

Edit:
About 10% more mana: It's great. I lose many a game by running out of mana before the enemy healer. And I would lose even more games if I had 9.1% less mana. The main problem here is that Priests aren't very efficient. (I'm looking forward to Wrath, looks like Disc will get lots of free mana!)

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Zure

You'd gain a bit of time in the crunch by reversing this order, as PI lowers the GCD created by PSup.

 

ConditionKJ

If you think an extra 1100 mana ( for me anyway) doesnt effect your mana efficiency I dont know what your idea of being efficient is. Consider your alternatives, you can get both reflective shield and Silent resolve, and still keep the 10% cheaper instants. In my opinion for a 2v2 situation, i would rather the 1100 mana over the chance to resist dispell. In a 3v3 or 5v5 i would rather extra mana over the reflective shield.

The extra mana would help you outlast, and also allow you to play more aggressively without using too much of your mana pool.

For me, one of the biggest uses for PI (next to spam mana burn) is to get a big heal off in a short amount of time. If your team mate is being focused and a flash heal wont be enough to keep him up, you can always pop PI and Gheal him up quick.

And the when you use PI to heal, it matters when the heal cast ends, not when you can start the next one. So even if u have to flash, it will come off quicker even if you cant cast another one for .3 seconds. The fact of the matter is that its useful in tight situations.

Also for those who appear to be confused, Power Infusion decreases cast time, it doesn't give you spell haste. GCD is not reduced.

 

Tainter

Zure is right. PI first. I just figured out why I use the wrong order as well. When I get focused I go PS first for the dispel resistance, then PI, otherwise I might lose it to a keen Shaman, Priest or Mage.

And PI does indeed decrease global cooldown. With PI on me and spamming Flash Heal (1.27 cast time with no spell haste) I don't get any "spell not ready" messages when spamming the button. It's permanent casting, so it MUST reduce global cooldown.

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Imp

Awefull amount of information on these pages, I really learned a lot by just reading through the threat.

A friend of mine persuaded me to start with him on the 2on2 ladder when S4 went live...never played arena before... (he's a SL/SL lock, with me speccing 47/14/0 or the like).
So, the last couple of weeks I was learning a whole new method of healing ...mainly focusing on myself. Basicly I have to admit, I was never PvP-healing befor. I read the whole 30 pages, but one question remains to me:

I often read about "faking a flash heal, or a greater heal, to get the melees to use pummel or kick (or other interrupts)".
How do you fake a flash heal? Do you start casting, interrupt and hope, the pummel/kick lands directly after, so it is useless and you got your freedom for some seconds, to get a heal or two on you?
Or do you "fake" with another spell school, hope this one will get pummeled/kicked, so you can use the holy spell school?
Any brief instruction of "faking heals" would be very, very welcome.

In PvE I normally don't fake any heals, I stopcast them, old story, nothing new. But the "fake healing" is something completly new to me. You know, I am the typical "raiding-over-all; PvP-no-thanks"-healer (I go regularly for MH or BT).

 

Rej

"Faking" a heal generally involves starting a cast-time heal then canceling it partway through. The idea is that you cancel the cast right before the Kick/Pummel/Counterspell/Earthshock/Spell-lock lands, thereby negating most of the threat.

Another way to draw out the interrupt is to start casting Mind Control. If they interrupt, you're free to heal. If they don't, then somebody gets MCed.

 

Grungo

On the opposite side of the coin, if you attempt to fake a heal and mistime it, and *do* get locked out of your holy school, Mind Control is often the next best option.

 

Imp

Thanks a lot guys, that's all I wanted to know. Sounds just like a matter of practice to me. So duelling, duelling, duelling...thats how I learned the "PW: D to counter CC"-thingie recently

 

doogless

1.5 second casts don't trigger the GCD, only instants do.

 

Juli

Make sure you MC the player that is going to be interrupting you, and not someone else. A smart player will sometimes go ahead and let you cast that MC and interrupt it as soon as it completes, leaving you with 750ish mana less than you started with and a wasted 3 sec cast. Also remember to face away from non-dagger rogues when healing if gouge is not on cooldown.

I believe it may also be possible to time an interrupt right as the MC cast completes so that the interrupt lands after your mana has already been consumed, during the channeled MC (similar to when a heal completes even when the combat log says interrupted). I'm not 100% sure on that though; might be worth testing.

 

• Calantus

No that definitely does happen. It also happens with mace stuns or the hit taking off duration.

 

Tainter

You can use that same lag to drink in combat. Wait until you're about to drop out of combat (~2 seconds left), then start casting a Greater Heal and spam your water button. If you did it right combat will drop, then the heal will finish, then lag will allow you to start drinking a fraction of a second before you're back in combat.

If you can't join them?
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Tainter

Oups, looks like I mixed that up. I'll test later if global cooldown is reduced by counting the number of Inner Fires I can cast during the duration of Power Infusion.

In any case, you can spam Flash Heals continuously. But if you think that you have an extra second and won't be interrupted then go for Greater Heal for more output and efficiency. Or if you're hurt as well then you might as well use Binding Heal for better efficiency.

I think Binding Heal is generally underused in PvP. I almost never see anybody using it. Binding Heal is about as efficient as an untalented Greater Heal. It is harder to interrupt than Greater Heal and it has more healing output per second. Flash Heal is less efficient and has comparable output on a single target. If you're about to Flash Heal yourself or a target and you're both more than 3k health down then use Binding Heal instead.

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traejan

I notice a lot of questions about surviving against rogues but I'm still at a loss. I'm a warrior currently partnered with a disc priest. We're new to arenas in season 4 and my partner's gear isn't stellar (fairly bad actually. not quite 1000 heal and like 215 resilience). We played about 80 games tonight and went something like 2 games over .500. We lost a LOT of games to rogues just completely chewing up my partner. His gear won't really allow him to just sit there and try to heal through it for any length of time. I'm wondering what we can do as a team to mitigate that. We've had varying degrees of success with me focusing on killing the rogue's partner and hoping my priest can survive long enough for me to kill him. When my priest dies i can usually solo the rogue by switching to defense + shield. I've tried chasing the rogue around and beating on him from behind while he harasses my priest. Piercing howl + hamstring + intercept can give him a little bit of separation to heal at times. But usually not enough when he has a stack of poison on him. And if the rogue has a competent healer we basically have no chance. Is one of those strategies generally better than the other? In a lot of cases he just accepts that he's going to die and tries to dot up our opponents to make it easier for me to do the heavy lifting after he's dead. Especially against teams like rogue/hunter, rogue/rogue, etc.

I'm going to help him overhaul some of his gems/enchants and he's going to try to farm some more S2 gear. Will adding a few hundred healing and 100 resilience really make a noticeable difference in this situation?

 

Rockstar

The short answer is yes it will. But the armour in s2/s3 will allow him to counteract much of the armour penetration added from s3 onwards. My PvP main is a disc priest with 470 resilience and I found that at around 330-350 resilience my survivability increased significantly - of course when I hit that amount of resilience armour pen wasn't introduced into the game, so I presume 400+ has to be a fair benchmark along with a decent armour value.

 

Squished

Could some people post the new cookie-cutter spec for when the new talents come out, but pre-WotlK? Along with explanations for why you picked certain talents and why you skipped others. As per the title of this thread, the #1 goal is maximum survivability in PVP.

I'll start it off..

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?prie...00000000000000

I really wish I had a beta key to try the new talents out, but my guess is that Penance will replace many of the greater heals we cast, so I'll be dropping Divine Fury.

I can't seem to fit in meditation and divine spirit pre-wotlk, and they don't contribute to survivability other than having one more buff to dispell, and it's a very expensive spell to use for that sole purpose.

Enlightenment is more attractive now that it has spell haste, but a pvp'er should be focusing on instants so he can constantly be running LOS. I do, anyways..

Rapture looks nice, but it's not gonna keep you alive any longer during the heat of battle, and it doesn't even include 2 very important heals, PoM and Renew.

Divine Aegis is a pure survivability spell, but relies on crits which don't happen often if you're instant-cast based. Can penance crit? if so, I might try to squeeze divine aegis in. Oh wait... it can be dispelled.... Oh wait, it relies on the RNG.

Grace... i took it, but it seems pretty meh for an instant build. Go for enlightenment instead?

Borrowed time - pure survivablility, instant based, and enhances the most efficient heal besides PoM when healing through mortal strike.

Penance - You can target yourself, right?



As an afterthought, is holy viable again? Guardian spirit, the 51-point talent looks to be holy's answer to Pain Suppression. I threw this together:

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?prie...00000000000000

Holy spec: couldn't fit it in.

Blessed recovery: scrounging for every last survivability talent i can.

Spiritual guidance: couldnt fit it in.

Lolwell: Had 1 point to toss somewhere to get to the next tier

Serendipity: looks nifty, couldnt fit it in


Comments please! Please post your own specs and explanations, and feel free to flame my ideas, I am after all posting this to learn not to teach!

 

ConditionKJ

Lets face facts here, for Discipline priests there is no cookie cutter build, it all depends on what bracket and comp your running. I think this fact will only become more true in WOTLK.

I would however say no to Holy in an arena situation. I dont think blessed resilliance and guardian spirit even comes close to outwaying the new Disc Talants. I would still say that Focused Will is the most important survivability talent the priest has. Also Blessed recovery is pretty much crap. I put 1 point in it now just so theres another buff to be dispelled on me.

There are a lot of really good talents on the bottom of Disc now. However, im not sure if the reduction of your cooldowns
is worth not gettin the other good talents.

Enlightenment is a nice new idea with a haste talent, but im not sure its worth more than the incredible buff of Imp Inner Fire.

60% more armor from inner fire is absolutely fantastic towards your overall survivability. Also the changes from 5 points to 3 points of Silent Resolve and Reflective Shield are amazing. You can now fit them both in instead of having to comprimise.

In my opinion your mana survivability counts a long way towards your health survivability. So I would say that Divine Spirit and Meditation are a must for pretty much any bracket. However, if the 4 talents prove less usefull now, your best bet seems to put some points into Renewed Hope and Divine Aegis, aswell as rapture and borrowed time.

If you have very large PW:S and mana return from them, then it might outway the Meditation and Divine Spirit talents.

Being that one of your survivability talent is completely reliant on healing crits, is it a good idea to not only get Renewed Hope, but to get some Holy Spec? How many points? do you sacrafice Improved Healing, or the ability to Gheal all together? that would leave you some points for Holy Spec for sure.

Like many classes, arena gameplay and techniques will be completely different in WOTLK then they are now in TBC. That being said i feel that we wont know any really solid specs until we have all experienced the new talents, and tested them in real arenas.

 

tasha

Priests will stay priests :
- No escape talent as discipline, nor holy whatsoever.
- High vulnerability to purge/dispel spam. Granted Silent resolve is good now, but half your talents are based on buffs.
- Keep hugging that pillar !

As I see it, the biggest news remain in more offense abilities. Healers will have basicaly the same spellpower, or close to, as a caster dps. Holy fire is becoming a second, more punchy mind blast, if talented.

I read in a blue they want holy to be a viable pvp spec... Well, I would love Test of Faith and maybe a few other things. But since disc is about instant spells, damage prevention, and offensive pressure, it will remain the tree to fill up in order to get the best out of your priest.

About spell crit : This stat is only good as long as you can sit here and cast. I may be biased because we are in the Season 4, age of melees, but I don't want to rely on that. I wouldn't take divine aegis for arena considered the fact above, and that it is affected by mortal strike/wound/aimed shot (rapture effect from PW:S is much better). Same goes for Renewed Hope, there are other good talents everywhere in disc. Meditation all the way !

 

Jeddius

Here's my armory link:

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...lgun&n=Jeddius

What do I get next? I have 2200 arena points right now. My rating is only 1500 though so I can't get any S4 stuff. Should I get the S3 chest? That's what I was thinking. Also does anyone have advice on any chants/gems I should have in my gear? Thanks so much for the help. Maybe if I ever find a good rogue I'll get a decent rating!

 

Socialcrab

I think at this point in time the Honor belt would be a big upgrade for you. My friend did a 2's Hunter/Shadow priest...he did "ok" but he made it into the 1600 bracket. The Belt isn't to, too hard to get. If you don't have any gear you want to buy you could always spend points on gems.