Surviving as a Priest - Page 31

Disposition · 10/14/08, 9:33 AM

So what is everyone going with today? Am I going to be the only one with a heavy disc spec? I've seen a lot of people claiming to go shadow.

Shatter Combo w/ Fries · 10/14/08, 2:30 PM

Probably going to take advantage of how good lightwell is before people know its killable.

And then 51/10/0, skipping crit talents because I have 9% crit.

moowalk · 10/14/08, 3:45 PM

51+/5+/0 if you're on a team with a more attractive target. Penance is an amazing healing spell, but it can't be self-cast. 47+/14+/0 if you're the tank in most of your games. The new blessed recovery is decent, and desperate prayer will save lives.

I'll be trialling try some weird 30+/33+/0 spec which picks up blessed resilience and focused will.

Jaz · 10/15/08, 12:47 AM

Not a weird spec at all, it's probably gonna end up quite common in 2s, because as you said Penance is amazing but you're gonna be the target in 2s so it's just wasted.

Shatter Combo w/ Fries · 10/15/08, 1:26 AM

34/34/0 +3 is a very good level 80 spec but not so great at 70 when the meat of that spec is just out of reach.

Bury · 10/15/08, 3:44 AM

Any thoughts on surviving vs. Ret paladins?

Shatter Combo w/ Fries · 10/15/08, 4:23 AM

Originally Posted by Bury

Any thoughts on surviving vs. Ret paladins?

Trinket the first stun. Best case scenario is you are using [Powerful Earthstorm Diamond] and 5/5 Unbreakable will. They do stack, and it will make the stun less painful. Fear is actually on the small list of CC that paladins aren't completley immune to now, and most (I think) will not put the 7 points in holy for the fear duration reduction, in favor of reduced cooldown HoJs.
Spec wise, blessed resilience is very good simply because the ret tree is so focused on increasing crit chance.

I'm not 100% familiar with the new abilities, but I'm pretty sure HoJ is still their only spell interrupt, so gheals shouldn't be difficult to get off if you can survive the first Hoj > Repentance > arcane torrent combo.

Mearis · 10/15/08, 4:29 AM

Originally Posted by Bury

Any thoughts on surviving vs. Ret paladins?

Grab your ankles and think of England. Or - fight fire with fire and bring more ret paladins than the other team.

Non-ironically:

Pre-HOT yourself, they have no healing debuff, so renew is actually really good. Against ret paladins the deep holy spec is actually better since blessed resilience rules and so does blessed recovery. The rest is trying to live between fears, but between bubble/trinket and their partner, that might be very difficult.

Ænima · 10/15/08, 9:00 PM

How does this look for mostly shadow? Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Think this is a viable spec or should priests just go disc and call it a day?

Just a quick edit: I was thinking battlegrounds but I wonder if it will work for arena as well.

Crepusculu · 10/18/08, 9:25 PM

@Ænima
I would completely drop pain and suffering from that shadow spec, since no one really survives to make use of the SW:P refresh or death reduction. Instead, stick into dispel protection or innerfire.

I cannot really survive in any spec right now, so I'm not sure exactly what to tell you about viability. In battlegrounds, I've pretty much ditched my 515 resilience gear in favor of full pve with 0 resilience, since there is practically no difference in the time from 100 to 0 while under fire. This game has turned into the AWP-fest version of counterstrike -- just stack damage and ambush people, since its your only form a defense.

Ænima · 10/19/08, 12:32 AM

Originally Posted by Crepusculu

@Ænima
I would completely drop pain and suffering from that shadow spec, since no one really survives to make use of the SW:P refresh or death reduction. Instead, stick into dispel protection or innerfire.

I cannot really survive in any spec right now, so I'm not sure exactly what to tell you about viability. In battlegrounds, I've pretty much ditched my 515 resilience gear in favor of full pve with 0 resilience, since there is practically no difference in the time from 100 to 0 while under fire. This game has turned into the AWP-fest version of counterstrike -- just stack damage and ambush people, since its your only form a defense.

Hmm, 515 res... I imagine you have great PVE gear also? Are you shadow or disc/holy? When I was shadow, I noticed that people don't stay alive long enough for my dots to do much damage so I went disc/holy.

Crepusculu · 10/19/08, 2:02 AM

I throw on my sunwell dps set and nuke as shadow. I had tried disciple, but I couldn't really heal all that well due to people (and myself) falling over in seconds.

Tainter · 10/20/08, 7:53 AM

I'm currently Shadow with my former Disc gear. I picked up dispel resist from Disc and put the rest in shadow, skipping all the crit related talents. With only 7.5% base crit they just don't seem worthwile. My gear is heavily gemmend and enchanted for survival. I'm around 475 res, 11.5k HP, 30% physical damage reduction (without shadow form). For glyphs I picked the Dispel and Shield glyphs. The Shadow ones just didn't seem appealing.

I have no big problem with surviving in BGs at the moment. Of course if more than 2 dps are on me then I'll go down quickly if fear doesn't get them off. But that's supposed to be the case. I can survive casters pretty well. LoS, dispel and silence are powerful tools. Melee is a bit harder, but with the ability to drop snares and damage reduction after fear it's actually better than before.

Currently Retri-palas are quite dangerous. But in BGs they don't always have all cooldowns ready just to kill one Priest. I really miss faster Mana Burn here. I was also surprised at the damage Moonkins and Mages can dish out if they catch me in the open. It sounds silly but I almost got 3-shot by a Moonkin before I could get around the corner.

I'm debating wether Pain and Suffering wasn't a poor talent choice. I rarely dps one target for long enough to refresh the duration and I have very little spirit. But then. what else would I spend the points on? Mana cost reduction? Spirit Tap?

Mearis · 10/20/08, 8:26 AM

Manaburn is utterly useless for shadow, and very borderline for disc right now. Matches are over way too fast and there is far too much damage to manaburn productively. I am quite sure even in 2vs2 fast maas dispell is much better than imp manaburn.

Disposition · 10/20/08, 12:16 PM

Originally Posted by Mearis

Manaburn is utterly useless for shadow, and very borderline for disc right now. Matches are over way too fast and there is far too much damage to manaburn productively. I am quite sure even in 2vs2 fast maas dispell is much better than imp manaburn.

I share this same sentiment. Then drain and outlast aspects of pvp are currently out the window.

Anyone done any testing to see if resil is even working anymore? I hear mixed results on this subject.

Tainter · 10/21/08, 2:22 AM

That's an interesting question. Unfortunately PvP doesn't usually get enough testing on the PTR. Maybe I'll have a look at it later today. It seems as if people crit more now. With damage going up across the board but defenses staying fixed we're pretty close to what happened at the end of 60 now. Wrath gear will probably fix that issue by putting huge amounts of stamina on stuff.

Heldericht · 10/21/08, 1:50 PM

I don't know why you guys are advocating the use of blessed recovery.

In theory, its a great talent, now that it works like rolling ignites and stacks up with each crit. But in reality, with a measly 6 second duration, its tends to very easily fall off before it can provide even half decent healing with it's ticks. Specially when priests tend to put up PW:S every cooldown when under pressure.

Blessed recovery is useful as a trash buff to protect against chain dispels AT BEST. Don't waste more than 1 point on it.

As for lvl 80 PvP specs. 54/18/0 is the standard spec I'm leaning towards and that (or some slight variation of it) would probably be the norm. Pennance is way too mana efficient and useful to consider skipping.

Disposition · 10/21/08, 2:41 PM

Tainter keep me posted on your results, I am very curious.

Edit: answered own question.

Tainter · 10/21/08, 5:35 PM

Originally Posted by Heldericht

I don't know why you guys are advocating the use of blessed recovery.

In theory, its a great talent, now that it works like rolling ignites and stacks up with each crit. But in reality, with a measly 6 second duration, its tends to very easily fall off before it can provide even half decent healing with it's ticks. Specially when priests tend to put up PW:S every cooldown when under pressure.

Blessed recovery is useful as a trash buff to protect against chain dispels AT BEST. Don't waste more than 1 point on it.

It's being advocated for two reasons:

1) It is no longer broken and genuinely returns the advertised number of health. Unlike the silly overwriting that was happening before.

2) There isn't any other talent that provides additional defense against melee classes.

What I find unfortunate is that its effect is reduced by healing debuffs. The short duration on the other hand is a good thing. It makes it more powerful.

As far as I can tell it's not like the old Ignite. Healing that's done is done and doesn't get refreshed. I expect the following to be true:

Priest gets crit for 100 damage.
Priest gains Blessed Recovery.
Blessed Recovery heals Priest for 8.33 (after 2 seconds).
Priest gets crit for 100 damage again.
Blessed Recovery gets updated with 25 healing. Total now: 41.67
Blessed Recovery heals Priest for 13.89 (after 4 seconds).
Blessed Recovery heals Priest for 13.89 (after 6 seconds).
Blessed Recovery heals Priest for 13.89 (after 8 seconds).
Blessed Recovery fades.

I grant you that I haven't tested it on Live. But might do tomorrow. Will update then.

Esajin · 10/22/08, 2:20 AM

I've been (ab)using lightwell recently, it's very powerful as passive healing. The most interesting part of it is that it can be used while silenced, stunned, disoriented etc, and in that specific sense it's probably more powerful than pain suppression, but also more restrictive as its activation range seems to be inferior to melee range. It's also on a different cooldown as spellcasting so you can dispel the paladin's buffs or debuffs while healing yourself with it for instance.

I'm currently considering this holy tree as my baseline answer to priest survivability in these troubled instagib times.

I've only played BGs so far, it's not unusual for me to be zerged, but I survive fairly well.

Tainter · 10/22/08, 7:37 AM

A few quick tests about resilience revealed the following: The crit-damage reduction part is working.

I took a Shaman and a Warlock. The Shaman casted Rank 1 Lightning Bolt on the Lock. The Shaman has double damage from crits.

Rank 1 Lightning Bolt damage recorded: 16 - 18
Expected crit damage: 32 - 36

Lock resilience: 361
Damage reduction from crits: 18.31%
Expected reduced crit damage: 26 - 29

Recorded crit damage: 26 - 29

Works as intended. Perhaps I'll test the other part today as well. But I doubt half it would be broken. I think the real problem is that damage got a lot bigger, so the value of resilience has decreased.

Edit:
I did some more testing. Lock and Shadow Priest.

Lock resilience: 361
Chance to be crit reduced by: 9.155%
Priest crit chance: 9.13%

54 Mind Flay ticks.
0 crits.

Seems to work just fine.

Edit 2:
Of course there were some bugs on PTR with some classes consistently critting over 60%. Maybe that hasn't been fixed, but I can't confirm that.

Disposition · 10/22/08, 9:43 AM

Thanks for the insight.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this all balances out at 80, it is near impossible to live more than 15 seconds with two dps classes on you in 3.0 unless you get behind a pillar asap. And good luck getting behind a pillar if it is a rouge and ret pally on you.

Gourd · 10/22/08, 10:58 PM

Originally Posted by Disposition

Thanks for the insight.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this all balances out at 80, it is near impossible to live more than 15 seconds with two dps classes on you in 3.0 unless you get behind a pillar asap. And good luck getting behind a pillar if it is a rouge and ret pally on you.

For it to be any better at 80, there will need to be significant changes made. As it is now, on beta, it is absolutely no better than it is on live.

winst · 10/23/08, 8:53 PM

Just a quick one, didn't see if it'd been asked/answered yet and i didn't want to burn another 50g respeccing :

Does grace proc on each 'tick' of penance ? i.e. can i get a full stack of grace on my partner with just one penance ?

Gourd · 10/23/08, 9:00 PM

Originally Posted by winst

Just a quick one, didn't see if it'd been asked/answered yet and i didn't want to burn another 50g respeccing :

Does grace proc on each 'tick' of penance ? i.e. can i get a full stack of grace on my partner with just one penance ?

Yes, you can stack grace with just one penance.