Alright, thank you for the feedback, really all I was looking for. Most of what you said seemed like it was a general communities thoughts, and it makes sense. I did go for the imp spirit tap for extra mana, but I suppose it wouldnt really be worth it, and maybe black out would be interesting to try. I'll definitely be trying the hybrid spec below mine with a SoR glyph when we do arenas this week and see how it works out. Seeing that build is I think more of what I was wanting to go for, minus the part where I really did like GS as a great clutch survivability button. But yah, I suppose I agree in that its not really worth it to go so deep with PvE talents to get to it.

I was browsing the top 100 priests today. I know that "this is the spec that brutal gladiator xxx uses" posts are mostly useless because they are based on specific teams and playstyles, but there are some things to note. 57/14 is by far the most 'successful' spec I guess you would say, with a few 20/51s, and only two or three FW/BR hybrids. Looks like very very very few took divine fury, if any at all. Everyone I checked was using 5/5 spell warding. Additionally, it looks like the jury is out on crit builds, was about half and half in terms of people taking Aegis and 5% crit versus other things.

I'm pretty pleased with disc as a spec (but that's definitely not saying priests are fine overall). Aside from the obvious bugs, balance issues, and just plain numbers that need to be tweaked- the foundation is really very strong for pvp compared to all the other healers (part of me continues to believe core paladin flaws will be very magnified whenever games start to last more than 20 seconds).

Borrowed time is, as far as I am concerned, the most powerful pvp talent we have available to us in any tree. The things you can pull off with the haste are pretty amazing, it feels rogue-like with how fast you can dish out the globals and micromanage instants. It's certainly has become the most exciting talent I've played with so far. It's adds a huuuuuggeee level of depth to an otherwise relatively shallow cap of doing things every 1.5 seconds. Hopefully damage will even out so we can actually go toe to toe with it in our bag of tricks more often.

Angel + Glyph is the entire reason that priests are even remotely viable right now in arena.

Whenever we get killed within single CS we tend to agree with this, but I second what Shatter Combo w/ Fries reported. There are almost no top-rated (2k+) priests that have SoR. I guess its all about kiting skills and partner peeling abilities...

I'll start with this one (playing 2x2 with mage):
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
Actually i have very bad equip right now, so i was trying to max my survivability versus burst damage, so mb i'll change some points to DF+SL later, but i think this build much better for starting.

about Divine Aegis:
these shields don't stack. They override each other so is it really worth 3 points? So if your penance crits twice in a row, you will not have a 2*0.3*amount absorb. It will be 0.3*amount only.

And one more question:
Does disc. priest should wear +crit armor set instead of +spirit? +crit will improve our offensive spells, DA and other talents too, so it seems thar +crit armor set will be preferable on higher ratings (1800+) with aggressive style. Am i right, or spirit is much better?

Hello,
I followed ur discussion very intensively and i am thinking about new ways of putting my skillpoints every day. It´s my first arena season with my priest, in the past i played my mage in arena. I tried a lot specs, at the moment I´m playing deep disc with a rogue in 2n2(1800).
Whether priests should take crit or spirit items in pvp is a significant question. I decided to take crit on non-set-items and spirit on the set items, but i´m also thinking about taking crit on all items. We all now when u play against double damage teams or damage-palas, or whatever does hard damage at the moment, games won´t take very long. That´s why I think crit is in the moment better for priests. With a high crit rating and a nearly always criting PoM I can survive much longer. There are many new ccs and silence-effects in the game, so every heal is important. I have 22% crit in PvP at the moment(5% skilled), but i will loose about 2% when i have deposited my last PvE items. Furhtermore I made very good experience with Divine Aegis, with 20% crit in PvP it´s really nice, especially in cooperation with Reflective Shield.

I thought a long time about taking Divine Fury and Searing Light or not. After playing with my rogue together a few games, i mentioned that it would be strong, but 7 points are too many for dealing more damage with one spell, because i never use gheal in arena. Instead i do mind blast - SW : D, or I try to concentrate on ccing the mate of my enemy. In general there is not very much time for damage or cc, because the amount to heal is huge. I don´t now, from where I should take these 7 points, but I think later in this season or in next season this talent will be mentionable again. Of course everything is a question about the way u play.

Someone in this discussion said that there are no priests in high-rating with SoR. That´s wrong. It´s rare, but one day ago the priest with the best rankings had a 50/21 spec. With the glyph the spirit is strong, but i think i can´t abdicate Penance. In 2n2 it´s really strong, in 3n3 i would spec SoR, because the possibility that u die very early is very high and healing 21seconds longer without getting interrupted is very strong.

Let me say a word to some talents from which i think they are useless. There are namely 2 many spec. Improved PW:S and Blessed Recovery. I think about Improved PW:S someone talked about in this discussion. He looked up how it really works and he found out that it´s a very little amount of +absorbing it gives our shield.
Blessed Recovery was weak the last seasons and it is still, i tried it out, because i thought "hey, crits a really high at the moment, why not?" I really was disappointed but the truth is I can invest the three points better.,

Here is the spec, I will try soon, at the moment I have a similar spec with little changes, but till now this is the best i can think of (for 2n2). I hope for ur feedback.
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Ysaya(Hellava)

You forgot Death Knights. There is an overwhelming number of them in any bracket at any given time.

Gemming for resilience (primarily) will do you far more good for survivability than gemming for stamina, until you hit the resil cap. With 10 slots for gems in my gear, my gems (despite my awful shoulders) makes up 180 of my resil. If I had a full gearset it would be just over 200. A few thousand more HP allows you to eat a couple more crits (depending on the attacks), but I feel its just better to prevent them all together by gemming/gearing against it. Fwiw, I'm about to regem my gearset slightly, for gem socket bonuses. Also, Resil acts as a buffer to manadrain. I'm not a dwarf. Viper sting and I are enemies, at best. Good hunter teams annihilate priest teams, on the whole.

Mearis, I've run without it in all three brackets. For the moment, the SoR glyph is pretty awesome, but its gone next patch (unless thats changed), so relying on it seems rather meaningless. Also, based on the teams I run it just hasn't been necessary. If I ran less CC heavy teams it might call for it, but as mentioned earlier in this thread the majority of the top priests feel its not necessary, and I agree with them. Without penance and PS, your utility seems slightly nerfed. You lose burst healing, haste, mana returns, etc. My experience in 2's/3's is that our losses aren't usually because I died, but because one of my partners did. Cutting out my strongest burst healing spell, and fastest spell just seems unnecessary. Not to mention, by having penance alone, you save gcd's from not having to gheal (not to mention borrowed time). The more offensive pressure you can muster, the better. And having utility is really what this class is all about, not single minded survivability.

Also, in regards to holy spec - the reason I dont take it, is that with a full mooncloth set (as opposed to satin), you'll end up with sub 8% crit. Going from 8-13% is just far too insignificant to lose .5s off both offensive and defensive spells. Let alone Searing Light. I've updated my spec slightly for 2's/3's:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

I'm still unsure as to 2/5 Mental Agility vs. 4/5 Rapture. I also like putting 1 pt in BR just for more trash buffs, and 1pt anywhere else is just insignificant. As is my gearset has virtually no crit, and I just cant see Divine aegis as being terribly useful.

It seems to be slightly different in our battlegroup. Double dps + healer seems to be a lot more prevalent in Stormstrike. Literally all of the top20 in our battlegroup run double dps + healer. So targeting opposing dps is far from uncommon. As such specs generally necessitate diversity, rather than pure survivability.

Also, my point on viper wasn't really to point it out as a necessity, but rather as just a perk.

Also, Ysaya, have you even read this thread yet?

Most of your spec is fine, but I really think Enlightenment sucks horribly. 5% stam/spirit/haste at the cost of .5s off of some pretty awesome spells just seems like a hardly worthwhile trade off. You're spending 5 talent points for 59 stam, 18.5 spirit, and 5% haste. That just seems like a drop in the bucket to me when compared to the utility of Divine fury. Not to mention searing light. Even without searing light, holy fire does more damage than MB, so I don't see why you'd MB over it.

Running rogue/priest in 2's, I really feel like penance has saved a lot more games for us than SoR glyph would have. Not just in terms of healing my rogue, but also in terms of offensive pressure. Even against good shaman, I can usually get 2 penance volleys off when healing before I get hit with ES, which is still a lot of healing.

I've been changing up my spec a bit every time I spec back to disc, and last night I tried dropping some points out of Mental Agility into Imp. PW:S, and at first I really noticed the difference in mana, but the games vs. war/sham where the warrior was rage starved the entire round each round made me feel a little bit better about it.

The huge downfall of penance is when I get focus fired due to us being unable to bring enough offensive pressure/control. In these cases it does nothing. Conceptually, I just don't like SoR/SoR glyph, because it's so theoretically easy to counter just by running away/resetting (although in practice I realize this doesn't happen as much, especially sub 2000 bracket). The worst is mirror matches. I just get owned by their rogue way faster than the other priest gets owned by mine. But we haven't seen any mirror matches since he upgraded out of blue daggers so maybe that will change.

What deep disc tools exactly help you tank rogues? Blessed Resiilence is clearly better than anything past 35+ in disc.

Perhaps I wasn't clear, but I was trying to say that when a rogue is on me is probably the time where being penance spec helps the least.