Eks

I've been blowing my gold respeccing to test different builds out lately and I figured this would be the best forum to start a discussion up.

This is what I have as the baseline spec with a few talents that I added for filler just to be able to fill out the rest of the tree.
- 3 points in Improved PW:S are not "necessary"
- 5 points in Spell Warding could also go in Divine Fury

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Initial points of interest:
1) Spell Warding vs Divine Fury (also Searing Light)? I see this argument going back and forth for the different brackets. Gheal's efficiency without improved healing and other deep holy talents is very lackluster. Using flash heal in its place should be the way to go for most pvp scenarios. The fact that divine fury affects smite & holy fire makes it interesting though, priests in 2s and even sometimes 3s will see a huge benefit from. It's also a prerequisite for searing light, which is useful in the same light.

2) Imp PW:S worth it? From what I've read, this talent is bugged and only affects the base value of shield, resulting in 3 points for ~300 absorbed increase on PW:S. Seems like a giant waste, but it needs to be replaced with something early in the tree for prereqs. Martyrdom? I'm leaning towards yes on martyrdom mainly for mana burns and the -20% duration on interrupts while people are on you.

3) Imp Renew? Renew is something that I almost always keep up in pvp. I'm not entirely sure how well this scales with spell power and such. Is it better than 3% crit? Or other talents in the disc tree?

4) Grace, Renewed Hope? Renewed hope seems like it's almost a static +4% crit on whoever you're healing, since weakened soul should be on anyone we're healing. Grace is a 9% swing in healing when it's stacked up. Plus it gives the target another 3 magic buffs that have to be eaten through by purge spammers.

6) Mental Agility? I dropped this mainly because I don't think longevity is going to be a problem, especially early in the season. Mental strength & rapture should be enough to get us through most games. HPS and survival talents are more important than mana reduction at this point imo.

Feel free to correct me or dispute anything I've said. These are the final specs I came up with for the different brackets:

2v2 - Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
3v3 & 5v5 - Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

 

Chirality

Divine Fury, I think, is mandatory if you ever want to play any hybrid-style role. A 1.5second Holy Fire is huge.

The way that crit tends to work on PvP (eventually) has always indicated to me that crit-based talents are only marginally useful in PvP. This extends to Divine Aegis, as well.

I agree on Mental Agility and Absolution--though with some hesistance. The mana costs of Abolish Disease and Dispel Magic are absurd.

To me though, the real question, at least in the beginning of the season when I have no PvP gear, is not individual talents in Disc but rather: "Blessed Resilience?!?!?!" Focused Will was nerfed....will Blessed Resilience be worth getting in addition to Focused Will just to survive? Assuredly Priests will be the first target in nearly every match, as we have less defenss at 80 then we did at 70.

Edit1: Hybrid max defense spec:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=bxIMuhMtMcsZsxth0baw0h

Edit2: Other talents of note

Improved Renew (and the Renew Glyph) will probably be pretty standard. More instant heals are always good.

I regard improved inner fire as required at this point, for the armor and extra charges, mostly. Silent Resolve and Martyrdom, as well. Assuming that Improved PW:S is actually not-bugged and useful, I think we have to get that as well...Which leaves little to no points left for Mental Agility or Absolution...and maybe not any left for Improved Mana Burn.

Reflective Shield is amazing at 3 points. But deeper down in the tree, something has to be left out. I tend to leave out a point in aspiration, and possibly renewed hope if I want Searing Light.


Edit 3:

mmo-champion reporting: Well....that's bullshit. Doubt I'll take reflective shield now.

 

Eks

Back in the day when we had 6-7% crit pre-talents I agree, it was pointless to rely on crit talents. Now that we're pushing 15-20%, I think crits will play a bigger role in our healing. Granted, I do agree with you to an extent since they're a proc based ability, making it kinda random.

With the way I play, I think absolution is a must have talent. We were doing a lot of in-guild 2v2 skirmishes last night and dispel was easily the ability I used the most, both offensively and defensively. I'm not looking forward to the dispel glyph nerf as I was relying on that for a lot of heals against mage teams.

That's actually a pretty interesting spec, haha. I may try it out over the weekend. You lose a bunch of deep disc talents, but it may be worth it with what you gain in holy. I remember reading about the procs of blessid resilience, blessed recover and focused will conflicting (ie. only getting 1 max per crit on you), is that still true, or was it ever true? I didn't really look into it too much back then since blessed recovery sucked and I stayed away from deep holy for pvp.

It's still a great dueling and small bracket talent, but I'm not so sure it's worth it in 3s and above now.

 

Chirality

The other spec that might be very interesting is 50/0/21 for Silence over Pain Suppression. I absolutely loved playing Disc/Silence in s3/s4 with a Mage or Rogue partner, and the changes to Improved Fade (now Vieled Shadows) makes the spec even more interesting from a longevity standpoint.

As for Divine Aegis--the lack of Reflective Shield working with Divine Aegis, and Divine Aegis' sketchy behavior with Penance, make me think this talent is not particullarily useful. I would much prefer Grace. Furthermore, although most raid-based healing gear has crit now, the PvP Arena sets for healing priests do not have that much crit. And I would still prefer the spirit on the healing set to the crit on the shadow set.

In a month or two, when my priest is more geared with arena-specialized gear, I expect to not worry much about Divine Aegis.

Gems: Resilience gems all the way?

 

Gourd

I never found the silence hybrid to be particularly effective with a rogue, although I felt that it was (and that it likely will continue to be) viable with a mage, hunter, or warlock. That's not to say that I was entirely unsuccessful with a rogue as that spec, I think the utility of both silence and mind flay synergize better with the other comps mentioned. I would love to be able to pick up some of the talents in the tiers above silence such as improved fade, imp psychic scream, and blackout, however I don't think I could justify sacrificing desperate prayer or the lower-tier disc talents to do so.

I also do not plan to pick up divine aegis, as I don't believe that divine aegis is at all strong enough to compensate for the sacrifices that you must make in both your spec and gear in order to support it.

 

Chirality

I agree with you that the Silence hybrids were not as good with rogues as they were mages, but that was primarily due to Pain Suppression and a few Holy Talents.

Now that you can get Pain Suppression and Borrowed Time and Silence, at the cost of pushback protection (no longer huge but it still matters a bit), improved renew, Divine Fury, and Desperate prayer, things are a bit different. I suppose it depends on how much glyphed/talented renew stays as a core healing ability in Arena.

Penance is an amazing spell for healing your partner, but it requires the right type of composition. I would surmise that Penance/Holy builds will do well in 2v2 with a Rogue, and Silence once again with a Mage.

But then again, what made those builds really viable was the change to s4 (or was it s3?) gloves (-3 second cooldown on Psychic Scream). The ability to get your Fear cooldown to 23 seconds was a huge part of making the hybrid disc/silence spec viable.

 

Supermerkicus

I find silence to be a real one trick pony - the CD is so long that I tend to use it once and only once in a given battle.

I think you'll have a lot more mileage with PS, especially considering the kind of damage being thrown around now, and I don't think DA is worthwhile at all - you're going to have MS effects up pretty much always and those 1k-2k bubbles just won't mean much in the world of 7k crits.

Penance throughput is absolutely amazing for PVP but leaves you wide open for a lockout on your healing spells and I don't think Priests will be left alone much in S5.

 

Paracelsus

With most classes able to do burst damage in the 20k range and able to sustain 5k dps, renew ticking away at around 500hps is hardly even visible in a fight these days.

As far as talents, I'm pretty much down to one question. Has anyone figured out a build that lasts through a stunlock yet? 18k health, ~450 resil, and I'm done before getting to push a button, let alone before anyone can peel off me. Is living long enough for the rogue to have to kick my heal too much to ask?

 

Gourd

I wouldn't go so far to say that you'll survive through a stunlock with more than one person beating on you (or even just a rogue, depending on his gear), but in terms of pure survivability I've found this to give the best effect (and variants of it, such as this.)

 

Mearis

Hoisiery's spec is by far the best one for pure survivability, but it is absolutely terrible at outlasting (which doesn't seem like a big deal now anyway).

I would go one step further and completely skip mana-saving talents, and go with this:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

max throughput and max burst, but you go OOM insanely fast. I think games over ~1 minute won't happen anyway for the first week or so.

<manly> then my sister calls and proposes the one thing that has never before occured in my entire life

 

Gourd

As you said, it's hardly a build for outlasting, but I've found outlasting to be the least of my concerns at the moment. The reason I wasn't so inclined to pick up imp pw:s is that it's apparently only scaling from the base absorption of the spell again, making it a whole hell of a lot less appealing. I've gone back and forth in my head as to whether a 34/37 or 37/34 variant appeals to me more for the start of the season, but I'll probably just try them both before drawing any conclusions; enlightenment does appeal to me though.

 

metanoia

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

I'll be using this spec.

Furthermore I believe this will be the most used spec among all brackets when looking at SK100 rankings after S5 has been in full swing for a few months.

 

Gourd

This spec seems to lack focus to me, so I had a few questions for you.

Why improved fort? I've never considered it in a pvp build as dispels completely negate your talent points. Perhaps if we did not already have fort as a baseline skill, this might seem more reasonable to me.

Why no divine fury or borrowed time? Certainly penance is a great spell for healing your allies, but wouldn't you want the cast time reduction on gheal for yourself? Also, since it appears as though you're going for a build that sacrifices sustainability for temporary strength, it seems strange to me that these talents would be skipped, if for no other reason than their offensive utility.

If you're taking 5/5 holy spec and 2/2 renewed hope, why not pick up divine aegis? Personally I wouldn't opt for any of these because I feel DA is a weak talent, however if you are going to opt for a more crit-oriented build I'm not sure why you'd skip it.

 

Incoherence

Not exactly build discussion, but is there any reason at all to pick up the spirit PvP gear over the crit PvP gear? Seems like even a full spirit set would add a very small amount of regen (and discipline builds aren't that keen on spirit anyway), so adding more chance to crit would be more useful than bumping your regen from 450/100 to 600/150.

 

Alsn

To be honest, back in the day alot of battles were decided purely by who ran out of mana first and very often not on who healed the most during the game.

Simply put, no matter how low your crit/spell power is you can usually keep someone alive anyway but without any mana the battle is 9/10 times already lost.

Then again, spirit is terribly weak in pvp stat economy wise. Also, I'm not sure but does rapture restore more mana on crits assuming you wouldnt already get the 2,5% from a hit?

 

stoops417

Personally i'm going to go for the crit based set of pvp gear to start with, then use all the spirit based non set items (neck,rings,back,ect). That should give enough regen while still having alot of crit to work well with Disc talents.


Also if ever i decide to take a shadow vacation, then i'm not trying it in a set with very low crit.

 

Catchup

Hi all, i hope my english reads all right through this ...

Wanted to post my spec and ask for opinions about it. I wear almost endgame PvE Gear (Naxx25, Malygos, Sartarion), already mixed with some PvP Gear, which gives me about 300 resilence. I play a discipline spec in Raids also and therefore rely alot on crit/int (roughly 25% holy crit) ... not so much spirit. Arsenal Link (might wear PvE or PvP gear).

My current PvP Spec would be 60/11/0 : Talent Calculator

Few points I would like opinions about:

- Silent Resolve, in theory seemed like a must have to me but practically never helped much against dispells from others, not included in my spec. - mistaken ?

- Meditation; I see this beeing included in most specs postet here and I cant really see why. For my gear manareggen does not rely on spirit but on rapture and mp5 stats. Are you speccing it for the extra spirit buff? To me thats 4 wasted points, but please proof me wrong.

- Absolution vs. Mental Agility ... Now for me Mental Agility seems very important, in PvP I do mostly instant Casts and cannot see how you would not spec that, it also affects dispell magic and is imo superior to Absolution. Of course Absolution is nice to have, but I find more use for those points further down in my tree.


Thanks for reading, I hope some reply.
cheers.

 

farlin

Would anyone mind posting some key bindings? I feel like the biggest thing holding me back in pvp is key layouts, but I am not even sure where to start to fix them.

 

Cahrin

Post your keybindings, and we can give you some possible optimizations. Some general tips are to make use of:

a) non-number keys (q e r t f g z x c v etc.)
b) ctrl or alt or shift in addition to easy-to-hit keys (i.e. shift/ctrl/alt 1-5)
c) mouseover macros can be very useful, as they save you a bit of time on key presses/clicks - takes a TON of getting used to though (I'm still adjusting, and I've been using them for months)

 

LucidityAxel

Instants and spells I use frequently are on 1-6. I also use ASD for spells, Q and E as strafe keys, and W to toggle my camera backwards so I can quickly see who is chasing me.

I have to take my hand off my mouse to use the right side of the keyboard, so 7-0, "-", and "=" are for spells that I use less frequently or have to stop moving to cast, like Flash Heal.

Shift 1-6 is for spells I need access to quickly but don't cast very often due to cooldowns or other reasons. Fade, Fear, Inner Fire, etc.

Shift 7-0 is for spells I cast very, very seldom. Shift-8 is my GHeal, for instance. I seldom cast it, and when I do I am standing still and don't need to use the mouse.

 

Cahrin

Played some 3s yesterday (Deep Disc/Enhance/Deep Sub Rog) and I was actually really surprised with how powerful Disc felt. I'm not speced this way currently, but I'm going to try out this build this weekend. I may move some Holy points around to get 5/5 Holy Spec, but I have a ton of crit right now since I'm using mostly PvE gear. In 3's at least, Imp MB is not all that important (I spend what little offensive time I have dispeling, not MBing). This may change once MB is moved to a percentage-based amount. I suppose an argument could be made for MBing a Ret Paly, but as things are playing right now, I haven't had that luxury.

Gourd, how are you finding the FW/SR build plays? Strengths/weaknesses? I don't see it having the necessary output for 3s or 5s, but I can see it working well in 2s.

I'm wondering if this is an appropriate place to discuss gear/gem choices as well?

 

Kint

Is this a troll? If not, stop using 7-0 for anything, ever. Shift 8 for gheal?! Use ctrl1-5 and rtghbvcxz too with shift, alt, and/or control modifiers as well.

 

karlusdavius

Simple question here, how are those of you who haven't specced into Rapture coping? is mana a problem with big spike damage?

 

Gourd

Deep holy was nice due to the high number of double dps comps without healing debuffs, but I really didn't . Nevertheless, if I was going to go deep into either tree at this point with 2s (or 5s, for that matter) in mind, it would be holy. I realize that the vast number of priests have been going disc for all brackets currently, but in all honesty I think this is just due to familiarity more than anything; people are used to going disc. I think that deep disc and deep holy are both perfectly reasonable choices for 3s (depending on comp), but I personally don't find the survivability that disc provides to be nearly worthwhile enough to compensate for what you lose in holy - although I want to emphasize again that I'm strictly speaking in regards to 2s.

As you said, I also would absolutely never go FW/BR in any bracket other than 2s (nor would I spec it in certain comps, such as priest/balance or priest/ret). That is, under ideal circumstances... I did about 30 games of 3s as this spec with a rogue wearing <50 resilience and a destro warlock in <400 simply because we weren't going to play for more than an hour or so, and despite saying "guys this spec is going to be terrible in 3s", they didn't care much because they figured our warlock would get gibbed in 2 seconds either way (which ended up not really being an overstatement).

But I digress... At this point in the season, with the gear I currently have, I've found this to be the overall one of the most effective specs. Certainly I've had games where I've wished for guardian spirit or pain suppression, but overall I've kept going back to this spec because in most games, I feel it's the one that will benefit me the most. The other spec that I found to be strong was a pain suppression + spirit of redemption build - I haven't played enough games as it to form a concrete conclusion, however it was very effective against teams with exceptionally high burst but low survivability. The main drawbacks of going fw/br are what you would expect - your mana efficiency is terrible and your throughput isn't much better. With the exception of paladin teams, I haven't had a consistent problem with losing due to mana, as generally someones killed before this is possible (it would be a problem with hunter teams as well if they didn't kill my rogue in under 4 seconds, and that's assuming their partner is controlled). Once I get more gear I'll rotate between specs much more frequently to assess how I feel about them, but for now I think this one is fairly solid for 2s.

 

MissnL1nK

I am running with a Disc Priest at the moment in 2's, I am a DK. Has anyone tried this combo and does anyone seeing it being viable at all? We only play this comp because we are good friends and play what we have for anyone wondering.

My better smells like french toast.