Rephaim

Zadok,

I'd say have your SL Lock controlling/draining their healer and getting off a fear on the warrior whenever possible, while keeping him dotted up. You should be able to heal through a warrior for long enough for him to become un-immune to fear.

Another thing you may try is when he counters your holy tree, cast Mind control. If he doesn't back up and intercept, you can get him to at least blow his trinket, if not to run him on the other side of the pole to where you can start kiting him again.

BTW, Excellent name. Was the name of my first priest as well.

 

Zadok

Here's the thing with the MC....I used that both ways....

I have tried to use it to bait a pummel, which works sometimes, thus allowing me to freely cast holy heals on myself for a few seconds. I have also tried using MC when pummeled out of my holy tree, but the issue is that I have never had it last longer than a second (No exaggeration). With that short a duration, it's a complete waste of 750+ mana.

I can usually heal myself through the fear immunity, but the end result is always the same regardless of how long I live.....The warrior eventually kills me before the other healer dies/is oom/is spell locked

 

Cob-

The problem with Holy Priest PvP is pretty obvious. Every spell we cast and or gain is dispellable and/or chance.

Blessed Resilience: Chance/dispellable
Blessed Recovery: dispellable
Holy Concentration: Chance/dispellable
Inspiration: Chance/dispellable
Martyrdome: dispellable
Pain Supression: dispellable
Surge of Light: Chance/dispellable
Prayer of Mending: dispellable/Hopefully it bounces well
Renew: dispellable

and list goes on.

It's mainly the reason why I don't pvp. Getting spammed by a Shaman while being chased by any dps spec isn't fun. With all my spells and talents failing all I have is my Hp and Resil to act as a meat shield.

 

moowalk

This isn't a 'fix priests in pvp' forums thread. We have a weakness against offensive dispellers, all classes have their weaknesses.

Any class is going to lose a 2v1 pretty quickly if you can select the classes against it.

 

Cob-

Not trying to get priests 'fixed.' Justing giving the non-holy viewers a basic understanding as to why we all love to hate our priests.

 

Juli

Purge/offensive dispel are preventable and avoiding it actually makes the class more interesting to play for me. Junk buffs, line of sight, range, direct pressure on the purger from focus fire, indirect pressure from damage on the purger's teammates, and crowd control are all methods for preventing purges that rely entirely on player ability and coordination. It's not something you can't do anything about, unless you're outnumbered, have incredibly poor class composition, or it's a situation that the game is not balanced around (I get wrecked 1v1 against a geared enhance shaman in a battleground, but so what, he'd get wrecked on any competitive arena team). Purge may be a little too powerful against priests, but I'd say it's pretty close to correct; any tools added or changes made to make it less harmful to a priest would have to be counteracted by nerfs in other areas. Priests are powerful enough on the whole as-is, physical damage + purge is just one of our greatest weaknesses.

 

Locazo

I'm in the process of levelling a priest alt for arena. I've read this entire thread and have not seen anyone mention the Nigh Invulnerability Belt . Do any of you use it? Is it worth losing the stats from the Veteran's belt? It seems like it would be an extremely good "oh shit" button, assuming the backfire rate is low.

edit: Just to clarify I mostly mean for 2v2/3v3, I likely will not 5v5 on my priest.

 

• Calantus

I was building up to it but the many many backfires I got from my net-o-matic left so bad a taste in my mouth I dropped the profession in a rage one day (and still haven't picked up another) and I never got to try the belt. I've heard people extol its virtues but I for one can't stand the random chance to backfire and kill you. The other thing is the same reason that PS is not something I'm interested in: 8 seconds is not a lot of time for a priest when it's damage reduction only. Sometimes, sometimes living another 8 seconds would win the game for us... but sometimes it would backfire and kill me when I otherwise might not have died.

 

strikingwolf

I just started running in a new 3 v 3 and we got to the mid 1800s and just hit a wall and can't seem to advance.

We run holy priest (me) / frost mage / rogue. Supposedly this is one of the best 3 v 3 combos there is, but we find any team with a good warlock near impossible and a rogue + a dispeler or any other dps can take me down very quickly despite ~450 resilience. Does anybody have a link to a good priest/mage/rogue 3 v 3 video? Or does anybody play in one that can give out some advice on what to do when facing a team that has a combo similar to any of these:

- paladin/lock/mage
- paladin/rogue/mage
- spriest/lock/resto druid

I guess our biggest problem is my lack of survivability when faced with kick+cs or silence+cs or CoT+fear+spell lock when I have 2 dps on me. I try to kite, but it's near impossible with a rogue, mage, or lock on me. If I hide at the beginning of the match they focus the rogue as soon as he pops out (and of course a lock can see him right away) and I have to come out anyway.

 

roosevelt

The real question is why on a 3v3 with a rogue and mage, which provide for a significant amount of CC, you're getting focused without your teammates helping you. I have a 3v3 that I recently started on my priest alt, nothing special as of yet The Armory but we've done ok for never running 3s before. I stay out of LOS as much as possible and heal through instants and PoM alot, while getting out mana burns, dispels, etc. My teammates are responsible for keeping me alive if necessary, while they in general lock down a healer while burning a dps. Your mage should be able to exert pretty good control over a paladin healer, and your rogue should be able to lock down an opposing rogue or lock with relative ease while you keep PoM/Renew up all the time. If you're CCing a healer, mana burn a dps and vice versa. Be quick with dispels, especially on BoP/BoF/Iceblock/DS, and it can make for a quick kill of most anything.

With these teams especially, what gives you problems? We've found lock teams to be some of our easiest kills, as well as pallies in general being the easiest healers to go up against.

 

• Sunchips

Make sure not to leave fel armor on the warlock.

 

strikingwolf

Our rogue says he gets kited very badly by mages and druids, even with our mage doing his nova / pet / CoC / frostbite thing. We also had a huge problem today with double dispels teams. We played 30 games this afternoon and probably 15 of them had a pally and a priest, 50% holy 50% shadow priests. We are just at a loss when they've got two dispels because then sheep is worthless.

Our problem with the lock / spriest / resto druid team is spell lock + silence on me back to back with a cyclone on one of our dps for good measure = 1 of us dead. I am not sure how to prevent this. It isn't practical to take the felhunter out with 2 casters while it is munching on my buffs for health and we can't really CC the druid to stop him cycloning. The spriest we can sheep, but he'll blow his trinket to make the silence + MB SWD finish happen. We feel like we are missing some kind of obvious strat here. Alternatively, some of these teams run a mana burn + mana drain strat and while it takes them longer, they eventually tend to win.

Our problem with lock / mage /paladin is similar to the above problem with a spelllock / CS back to back allowing for them to finish somebody.


I should say that while I am sitting at about 450 resilience and 10k base health, my mage and rogue aren't quite as geared and our rogue has 16/45/0 build which, I think, is moderately pve oriented. Would it make a huge difference for him to respec?

 

Kryos

So, I've been reading through this thread and found parts of it very helpful. I play a paladin, but I've lvled my priest and begun gearing her out for pvp. I generally go 28/33 but respecced shadow for Kara. I've felt like Silent Resolve, 1 pt Spirit, 1 pt Inspirition, 1 pt Blessed Recovery has been pretty powerful at countering the issue of being chain purged thus crippling POM, Renew, Blessed Resilience, PW:S ect.

I'm loving pvping on this class because quite unlike my pally, you don't have to channel to heal effectively. So far I've found a priest a lot fun to play in small bracket pvp, though I haven't had the chance to do much 5s yet.

This might be a bit off topic, but I haven't been able to find it addressed anywhere else; what is the general consensus on wearing hit in arenas as a holy/disc priest? I feel like I do a lot of mana burning > (another reason why it's fun to play this class vs my pally!), but there is a base resist chance, and a lot of teams will either have shadow prot (which hopefully will be dispelled by the time I burn), or 15 Shadow Resist to Cloak. Is sacrificing some healing and mp5 worth it to get the Shatar vs Honor Hold helm enchant? Or sacrificing healing to gloves for spell hit? Hit also applies to your offensive dispells right? I feel like that would make it even more important to have the minimum hit cap.

In 5s I've found that in arenas Priests are tanks over anything else. Absorbing damage and utility (through Renew, Pom, Shield, Dispells, and Burns) seems to be more important than straight up healing output. When I play 5s on my paladin I feel like the priests survivability and utility are much more important that his ability to pump out heals-- that's my job. So, I think that capping hit and losing a bit of healing would be a benefit to the team if it meant the priest is better able to use his offensive abilities more effectively and reliably.

Any ideas? These are just some thoughts I've been mulling over while spending hours running around in AV this weekend farming honor gear >.

 

sprinkles

Yes, max'ing out your spell hitrating is something every good priest should try to do - a resisted BOF/BOP dispel can lose you games. You can easily get 29/38 (3%) rating by using head and gloves enchants without sacrificing too much healing power. You can nearly cap with an additionally heroic Slave Pens gem (mixed Sta/spellhit) instead of a 8resilience one in the bracers or neck slots.

 

Kryos

Yeah, that's what I was thinking Sprinkles. Especially because any decent paladin in arenas is going to have Stoicism which makes it even more difficult to strip buffs.

 

Rej

I'm the opposite - I have played a Holy priest for years, but eventually switched to a paladin for the sake of my 5v5 team. I'm leveling up my own paladin right now (almost 70), but jumped into using a friend's paladin for the time being.

(Note: Speaking from a Holy perspective, I did not enjoy Shadow as much)

I love my priest. It's a complex, intense class that requires a fair bit of skill to cover our rather large weaknesses. It sometimes requires a frenetic outpouring of instant-cast spells, juggling survival, mana constraints, positioning, and utility (read: dispels/manaburn).

Unfortunately, a priest requires the right kind of support to be truly effective. I've found that in a 5's team without a paladin (my team is not a fast burn team nor a control team), the priest becomes more of a liability without the right kind of support. Survival involved creative kiting (many times while on my mount), LOS tricks, combinations of trinket + fear in order to pull away for some precious seconds, etc. A priest left alone is very dangerous... which is why nobody leaves the priest alone. You are the team tank more often than not, and it's an idea you'd best get used to. It will impact your effectiveness, but there's not much you can do about that. Teams with priest-friendly synergistic classes (such as paladins, resto druids, mages, hunters) do much better, simply because they contribute to priest survival. Survival means you live long enough to influence the battle, and that's when your enemies curse your existence. Constant hiding/kiting/beatdowns mean you're taking up a team slot, but being little more than a punching bag.

The paladin, on the other hand, was an immense change. Far more simple to play, with powerful skills to counter some of the biggest challenges my priest faced. My paladin's biggest concern is being CCed - that was never an issue with the priest, because I was always the first burn target. =) With a naturally high level of efficiency, superb passive survivability, and a couple "get out of jail free" cards, my paladin immediately boosted our rating 100 points to 1950 (and this is with double warriors and a feral druid.. seriously). Such an easy class to become mediocre at, and inherently powerful. Unless we go 4-DPS (priest is a superior healer for that matrix), the paladin will be my 5v5's character.

But I digress. Holy Priest survival is all about team support. Without it, you're a liability. With the right classes (and skilled players using them!), you should be able to stay alive and contribute.
*In either case*...
- The first 20 seconds of the match are crucial - you must stay alive. Mount up and hang back/hide, but keep in mind that timing your entry is critical to the survival of your teammates too. Come in too late, and your buddies are in deep trouble (priests are also quite susceptible to all forms of CC). Come in too early, and you'll have a hard time shaking that warrior/rogue (if your buddies aren't the right class).
- Positioning is also key - using LOS can shake the hunters, locks, and mages, but you might lose sight of fellow healers/CCeres.
- A combination of fear + trinket can get you free and clear of melee - find a pillar and start kiting like a madman!
- Priest efficiency is rotten, so burn that Inner Focus and Shadow Fiend early - you'll be out of mana soon enough, so use those cooldowns when you aren't busy being locked down!
- Rank 1 Holy Nova is key to survival against openers from Rogues and Druids, should you be unable to hide early on.
- Learn to fake out Rogues/Warriors and draw out that Kick/Pummel. Learn to double-fake Rogues you've just faked once!
- Stack resilience and be sure to have plenty of Stamina/Int.
- Finally, plan it all out with your teammates. Melee on you - how should they react? Who is the most threatening that might make a good CC/burn target? When should they engage, and expect you to join in?

Have fun!

 

• Calantus

Rant time.

I've been waiting a while before saying this because I haven't been geared enough to know for sure until recently. But now I've been at the magical 400+ resil and 10k+ hp mark that everyone says makes everything better for a while and... it's crap. Oh sure, I'm invincible against casters now, but melee? I used to be an armor priest pre-TBC and I had great survivabilty against melee. Now a rogue will auto-kill me before I get a second fear unless I blow stoneform or get help. A warrior will maybe have to wait the minute or so it takes to run me oom with MS on, or they will burn me down quickly off the back of a couple mace stuns. Just one melee on the other team puts my life in severe danger. Rogue fights are entirely about keeping the rogue off me. That's 100% of my partner's job in that fight. Warrior fights... either it's a mirror match or we lose. There is no strategy to win beyond hoping they suck. I'd rather face a healer and TWO caster DPS on me than a healer and a melee DPS on me.

I like the priest class when taken as a whole but jeez is our survivability shithouse these days against melee. I'd trade some of our utility for the ability to be more than just a pure liability against melee. I wouldn't mind having 3 minute no charges inner fire back either. Much hate and bile for the idiots that complained about recasting it every 3 minutes. Now we get to recast it every 20 seconds.

 

Rej

Calantus - you are right. Survivability is tricky as a priest, which is part of the reason why by the first season, Holy Paladins already outnumbered Holy Priests in top arena teams.

Your class mixes aren't very ideal. Warrior/Priest was something I tried for a long time in 2v2, and we couldn't attain much higher ratings than what you have. It's a combo that requires almost perfect playing - any mistake will quickly cost you a match, and there are gaping weaknesses that you cannot counter and can only hope to avoid. If your 5's team is 4-DPS, then a priest is actually pretty good, but your team has to execute on that hard burn and take someone down before you drop.

 

• syeren

In order to 'balance' us in regards to other healers, we're weak to Melee classes and a are class which is based entirely on the support you receive from your team mates. It sucks if your Team mates can't provide you with that support (like Warriors,) and that is why you should try and play with a class that can support you by either locking down an enemy with stuns or CC'ing them off you

As for Warrior / Priest, myself and my Warrior friend hit about 2270 before we hit the brick wall that is Warrior / Paladin, however that was in Season 1, and in order to do anything like that, you're Warrior needs to be an excellent player (No offense intended) :P

 

Kass

Many people have talked about Warriors being one of the hardest classes to deal with in Arenas. I've personally found Rogues the hardest for me to survive. I'll be the first to admit I'm fairly inexperienced in Arenas (we usually only get our minimum 10 games in a week), but I hope to hear some suggestions as to how you all survive against Rogues.

3v3
My 3v3 team consists of 28/33 Priest, Frost Mage, and Mace Rogue. I'm not the best about working LOS, but after reviewing my combat logs, I typically just see Rogue (and maybe pet melee) damage 95% of the time. To me that does confirm that I'm improving on my LOS to remove as much unnecessary damage as possible. Nevertheless, the opposing Rogue almost always pops out of stealth and has me locked down before I can do much. Between the various Poisons (depending on his group's make up it ranges from Mind-numbing, Crippling, Wound), Daze, Kick and Mace stuns, I just can't seem to survive the opener.

5v5
My 5v5 team consists of Priest, Paladin, Warrior, Warlock, Hunter/Druid. I usually fare quite a bit better with a primary healer that can BOP me and also keep heals incoming even when I'm stunned. Nevertheless, if my Paladin is CC'd in anyway, and I've got a Rogue on me and any sort of DOTs, I just can't seem to live. I can usually survive just about any other combo of 2 DPSers, but I just can't figure out how to live through a Rogues stuns and damage.

I'm open to any suggestions as to how to possibly give myself a better chance for survival. I go into every match with Shield, POM and Renew ticking. I have 428 Resiliance and 11,000+HP. As soon as I notice I'm stunned, I usually pop my trinket and try to fear to refresh Renew, POM Shield and maybe get a Flash Heal off. Still, all that has to happen is for the Rogue (usually Undead) to pop WOTF and he's back on me and I'm locked down again. 9 times out of 10, my heal has been kicked and I'm dead in the water. Please help. I really don't want to keep being an auto-death whenever we face a Rogue.

 

diotox

For your 3v3, what are your teammates doing when the rogue is beating you down? They need to help you out there, the mage can sheep the rogue, or frost nova the rogue, your own rogue can lock down other rogues very well as a mace rogue, or he can use blind if the situation is really awful. Rogue/Mage/Priest is a very strong lineup with a lot of CC, your teammates really need to help you out here.

Also, when you get stunned, do NOT automatically pop your trinket, especially if it's an opening cheap shot on you when you have shield, pom, and renew up on yourself preemptively. While there are exceptions to this rule, you generally don't want to burn your trinket on a cheap shot. Save it for the 4 or 5 point kidney shot they will hit you with a few seconds after the cheap shot, and then trinket THAT. You want to make sure your trinket activation and your fear are as close together as possible, you can make a macro to do this that you can spam so that the two actions happen almost simultaneously. Something simple should work, something like

/use 13
/cast Psychic Scream

If I remember right, 13 is the top trinket slot, and 14 is the bottom one, but you get the gist. Now after doing that, you ARE near a pillar, right? Take off around that pillar to break LOS with the rogue so he can't hit you with deadly throw to catch up. Even if he pops WOTF or his trinket to break your fear, you should have gotten a few steps ahead of him, and then you run laps around the pillar to keep away from him, using nameplates on to see which direction he's taking. This will force him to blow sprint to catch you.

But all of those tips are things to do if you're totally on your own to fend for yourself. Obviously both you and the rogue can get help from their team, so get your team to help you out. Time your pvp trinket in sync with a CC ability from your team, such as HOJ+Trinket, or Intercept+Hamstring on the rogue right as you trinket. Your paladin can put judgment of justice on the rogue to prevent him from sprinting to catch you. In fact the rogue should really be hamstrung a good chunk of the time anyways, since that can give you the distance advantage you need to have time to possibly stop and cast anything, or maintain LOS with your own team to heal and dispel them before you duck around the pillar again.

Long story short though is that there is only so much you can do by yourself, your team really needs to provide support. Rogues get really boned by intercept+hamstring, frost traps and entrapment, and frost mages in general.

 

Juli