One question has been bugging me for quite some time now:

I mainly play BG with my priest, and as of now I'm not sure if should take Unbreakable Will over Twin Disciplines, considering that the only instant-cast spell I use is PoM (okay I have renew ticking sometimes, but if you take into account that it doesn't actually heal very much when not specced...)

Also, when going for crit I guess I shouldn't specc meditation due to low spirit in the first place?

I've not heard of any healing priest, disc or holy, pvp or pve, speccing out of meditation. Even shadow priests have to put some points in. Mediation is required, not only that, but more talent points need to be spent to make some spells more mana-efficient, hence the debate over absolution vs mental agility. As for crit making it unnecessary, I'm unsure what you mean. Are you pvp'ing as holy and planning to rely on holy concentration? With regards to twin disciplines vs unbreakable will, I have taken both. Twin disciplines affects renew, PoM and I believe penance. In short, the main healing spells you'll be using other than shielding, so it's not useless.

As an aside, if a disc priest did spec out of TD, where would people spend the points? There are some talents I haven't taken at the moment such as absolution (I haven't found mana to be an issue so far, at least not from dispelling). I have found feral druids to be hell on four legs, how good is silent resolve protection against them? And finally, reflective shields. The nerf means it only works on yourself, but I find myself to be the primary target in 2v2 more than 3/4 of the fights, and I can't remember the last 3v3 where I wasn't immediately targetted. How would people rate the various optional talents against TD?

He's right in a way, if you were using full satin + dominance offset pieces there wouldn't really be any point in speccing into meditation. The reason you've never heard of any priest not speccing it, however, is because the general consensus is that a full blown crit spec and the gear to support it isn't really worthwhile.

I've also never specced TD for pvp, and I've never felt as if I had excess points and no good place to put them (here's an example spec for you ). As far as reflective shield goes, I actually don't find myself to be the primary target in 2v2 the majority of the time, but I spec it nevertheless. I do so because RS alone is the difference between being able to 1v1 and not being able to 1v1 the majority of classes, and even if I am not the kill target in most of our games, the utility that reflective shield provides is often invaluable. Lastly, while I consider silent resolve to be a very worthwhile talent, it will have no effect on your interactions with feral druids unless you're encountering them alongside partners with offensive dispel.

First, thanks for the answers.

Second, i made a specc without TD and with Med. for now. As I am mainly Battleground-Healing I altered the specc a bit, but the general direction is the same.

After playing 3 hours with it now, i found myself satisfied

Thanks for the reply Gourd and the example spec. My previous post was made at work and was a little hurried, I meant to say martyrdom for the interrupt decrease, not silent resolve, apologies for the confusion. As your spec takes it, can I assume you rate it?

Martyrdom, I've found, is one of those "you only miss it when it's gone" talents. It's a critical talent for being able to do things like casting Mass Dispel or Mana Burn (things Holy Concentration doesn't help) while focused. It's also extremely useful against Rogues for the -20% interrupt duration (basicallly makes kick last a full second shorter).

It's also useful as a trash dispel buff to help protect things like PW:S and Fear Ward, as well. Basically a must-have talent, in my opinion.

Depends entirely on what your metagame is like. Against priest/rogue mirrors, playing without silent resolve is suicide - against healer/warrior, martyrdom is probably better.

You can spec both without any substantial sacrifices (depending on spec).

I like my smite spec for pvp too much, and points are super tight in that.

I play smite spec in 3s, and I pick up martyrdom instead of reflective shield in a 54/17 build. I can see why you might not want to do so for 2s though.

The main difference between our specs: I don't take the 3 points in Mental Agility or 2 points in Absolution. Instead, I got 2/2 Martyrdom, 2/2 Renewed Hope (you have 1/2), and 2/3 Divine Aegis. I also go 4/5 Holy Specialization when you go 4/5 Spell Warding.

Though frankly I should probably drop Divine Aegis altogether and put some points in Mental Agility at least. With Renewed Hope soon to be non-dispellable, I'll probably drop that to 1/2, as well. Maybe. I suppose I should ask "how often do you *not* see it up when you need it?", but that's not exactly an easy question to answer.

Reflective Shield is always a must-have for me, even in 3s.

Of course, a lot of this comes back to "what comp do you run". As Mage/Priest, there's a bit higher requirement for me to contribute meaningful damage, compared to any other Priest/X comp. Having Martyrdom for casting Smite when a DK is beating on me is too important.

In my experience crit specs just aren't worth it at all. I can see how one might possibly be worthwhile in a 2dps 3s comp, but I've never found it to be worth the tradeoffs in 2s. For that reason, I prefer Mearis' talent choices.

Is there any kind of consensus on how much hit is appropriate for a PvP disc priest? I have 7.5% right now, which I assumed was more than enough for anything, but then my psychic scream resisted a paladin, and I subsequently learned that he had a 4% talent and a 2% blood elf racial, bringing the total hit required, at least for all blood elf ret paladins, to 10%.

But just browsing people's gear, I don't see many with that much hit. 6% seemed to be the amount I saw most often. I was just wondering if there was a rationale for that.

If you are getting spell resists, it's because you lack spell pen, not because you lack hit. 4% is the base hit cap if you don't count racials, and 6% is the cap against all races (discounting talents). There are plenty of people who wear both 4% or 6%, but no more is really necessary.

I was talking about a miss. I used the word "resisted" by mistake. ("My psychic scream resisted a paladin" doesn't even make sense.)

Is that retribution talent the only talent that increases chance to be missed by spells? I didn't notice any more while briefly skimming all the other classes' talents. And is taking 6% vs. 4% solely to compensate for blood elves?

I'm fairly certain that the +miss chance from talents cannot be countered. This applies to: Divine Purpose (ret paladins, 4% spell), Balance of Power (balance druids, 4% spell), Heightened Senses (Rogues, 4% ranged and spell), Improved Spell Reflect (prot warriors, 4% spell), and perhaps one or two other.

As for the racial?

Dwarf: 2% frost miss
Gnome: 2% arcane miss
Human: none
Night Elf: 2% melee and ranged miss, 2% nature miss
Draenei: 2% shadow miss
Orc: None
Tauren: 2% nature miss.
Troll: None.
Forsaken: 2% shadow miss.
Blood Elf: 2% all spells.

So the extra 2% miss on Psychic Scream applies to Blood Elves, Draenei, and Forsaken. Which effectively means it applies to a *TON* of the enemies you see in arena.

Personally, I don't spec for Divine Aegis nor Inspiration, making Crit rather worthless. Also all the time you spend in a full duration fear, repent, sap, blind, etc etc the spirit gets to work. Crit doesn't.

Hi!

I'm playing a priest and have a 2v2 team, Me as disc and my mate as boomkin (I know it's a bad setup, but we play well). When we started it was most for fun and to try arena because we have never played any arena before. But now we have improoved and my talents haven't. So I need to respec but have no idea how it should look like. Well I have some ideas, but it needs to be sharpend to max my performance.

So I wonder, can anyone help me with my talents? Playing with a boomkin is rough and needs much mana so we can survive those long fights that's needed for a boomkin to kill 2 well geared players. Do I really have to go 17 points in shadow to get my shadowfiend more often or can I go all in disc and some holy to maximize my healing. Please help me! =)

Right now my gear is messed up. I went for critt instead of spirit and don't have time to spam BGs to change the hateful items, so I'm aiming for deadly mooncloth gear and just need 250 rating for full deadly. So to get that 250 rating I need a better spec

I'm very thankful if someone could help me out here!
//Puupuu

Spirit is better for 2s, crit is debatably better in 3s for some setups (rmp, for example). Crit is better in 3s in quick matches, however that's reliant both on your team makeup and the team makeup of your opponents (which you don't always know). With the upcoming changes in the next patch, one might predict that the number of (3s) comps that crit would be ideal for or against will lower.

I never found the Penance/VieledShadows spec to be worth it. You're probably better off just going 60/11 and getting Absolution and Mental Agility at first--though once you have the mana for it I would consider 54/17 to be worth a look (with Searing Light and Glyph of Smite) for a caster/disc team. I play Disc/FrostMage and find the latter setup to be well worth it.

In terms of gear? Well the obvious statement is "suffer through Vault of Archavon 10 and 25 every week".

Then my specc should look something like this 56/11/0, But then I have 4 points I really don't know what to do with. I'm thinking, Grace and Reflective Shield but maybe something else? RS Isn't maybe a strong talent. My shield absorbs around 2.5k dmg. And 2500*0,45 = 1125. That means they can only take ~1.1k dmg by breaking my shield. And how great is Grace 2/2, heard that as PvE Disc you only need 1/2. Does it work for PvP aswell?

There is alot to think of ^^
Would be great if someone knows what I should do with my last 4 points =)
//Puupuu

I was running recount for all of my 2v2 games last night. Reflective Shield accounted for a large amount of damage (40-50% of my overall damage) averaged across a lot of games (playing as Mage/Priest). And I play very offensively, as well. I *strongly* suggest Reflective Shield for 2v2.

Grace I strongly suggest, as well. Not only is it an excellent dispel fodder, but it adds quite a large amount of burst healing. Consider that Penance stacks it to three with one spell: so even if you just cast Penance grace amounts to increasing the healing done by Penance by about 6%. Well worth it.



I attempted to run with a 57/14 build last night, taking 3/3 blessed recovery. The results were....extremely dissapointing. Even as a main target in most games, Blessed Recovery accounted for only 1.5% of my effective healing (via Recount) for the entire night. I thus conclude that it is a completely inferior talent compared to almost anything else you could possibly take.