priestly talents

[Jumai]

I'm pretty sure I've mentioned here before my current high-level toon is a rogue. She's great fun solo, but frankly, not so much in groups. She doesn't seem to have a role in grup pvp, but my experience in anything above 3v3 is basically nonexistant, as when more players start fighting, my computer punishes me for abusing it by locking down my screen for a good 2 minutes. She's also a mammoth PITA to finda group slot for, since mages are pretty much better at instances and there are rogues crawling out of the bleeding drainpipes these days. So anyways...

I started a casual alt out of boredom, an undead priest. I discovered I really enjoy healing, and that the lack of wand autoshoot is the bane of instance play (or at least highly frustrating). But I'm all over the place on talents.

My initial instinct was Discipline. Meditation looks hot on paper, and I've read what Envie wrote about it once before. But the more I stared at it, the less I liked it. Improved PWS is a soloing luxury and an AOE boon, to be sure, but mental agility seems weak in everything, especially pvp. The first rank immunity talent is much weaker when running Undead, as it only really helps against rogues, and perhaps paladins and their vile Turn Undead. Mental Strength is solid staying power.

Then I did the math on Meditation. It just seems like a waste of points when you look at it seriously. At 300 spirit, you get 10 mana per tick while casting, unless I have done something terribly wrong. And a tick is 2 seconds? 300 free mana per minute...? My priest is 29 and in RFK right now, so I can't say I've had any experience in tough instances. More to the point, while it could arguably be a strong force in terms of staying power during sustained combat, PvP tends to be much more bursty, and the fact I could have kept it up another HOUR would mean nothing if my heal per second just couldn't keep up with the punishment my tank is recieving.

Perhaps logically from this vantage, I turned my attention to the Master Healer talent, the (sadly, unless you count pain + vampiric embrace while healing) one and only talent that reliably increases your ability to lay out the hit points in a short time. My vision of chaincasting 3-4 flash heals and being that little bit stronger while doing it than I would be otherwise says to me this is a strong talent. Especially since, again, nothing else I can buy does this to any real degree.

The problem with this talent, of course, is the fact it demands 25 points of pre-requisites. I feel comfortable, if not really satisfied, taking 5 Holy Specialization and 5 Spiritual Healing. I spent 3 points in renew, and I didn't feel cheated, my patterns right now are using Renew to great effect. I'm happy with Improved Renew. I took improved flash heal, and found it to be a luxury I would no longer choose to be without. This talent is VERY strong.

I began to balk on Improved Healing. 15% cheaper greater heals *sounds* nice, but phrased as buy 7 get one free, it loses something of its lustre. Chaincasting, to get the "free" heal from this talent, you need 32 seconds. That's not a long time but 32 seconds of chaincasting greater heal? Even when four people in RFK managed to aggro 5 mobs (with a bear druid tank no less) I didn't find myself needing to push that much down the pipe. We won that fight, by the way, thanks very much to a quickwitted shaman who whipped out the Earthbind totem and allowed me to aggro-kite 3 mobs while squeezing off renews and flash heals.

Around this time during my thought process, I wound up face to face with NineTailFox, who is sort of a friend once removed. MadMageEater and I became pretty good friends during the dying days of Purge (mostly on rogue talent night, neither of us slept that night/morning, so many duels, so much testing), and he relayed some second party advice from her (she's his wife). Aside: I refuse to refer to them as ninetailcat and casterphage, the naming policy is naziism. She was playing his toon when I sent him some messages and we ended up chatting quite a bit. She buys holy to improved flash heal, and spends the rest of her points in shadow. I don't know her exact build, but she runs both silence and vampiric embrace. Her perspective is somewhat unique, as she typically duos with MME (pvp and pve), so her priorities were a little different than what I've previously encountered. She reccommened against master healer due to the points it drains in pre-requisites. Now, if you've seen these two pvp, you respect their opinion, so I am definitely considering at least dabbling in Shadow for a dps boost and silence (I'm also attracted to the lower cooldown on fear, despite the range on it) mostly on her word.

I'm extremely curious about combat res. Obviously, I can't have it just yet, and the chances of me being in a high level group pvp situation to really test its potential given the level of my toon and the age of my hardware is near nil. I'm going to have to compare advice on this one until such a time as I have the two requisites for trying it for myself (soon I hope).

I'd love to hear some constructive arguement on priest talent builds. I'm sure I've given you enough material that you can find something to object to :p and I know there are a few different opinions on this board. To reiterate, as I can be vague and assume you infer correctly, solo play and xp is a minimal concern of mine, I'm worried about group pve, and all pvp but mainly small group.

I'll try not to fill any more harddrives with my windiness tivoli.

[Eko]

I need Cliff Notes for this kinda post.

[Real]

Good write up, i wish Blizzard supplied WoW character with like 5-10 more Talent points and ide be able to make myself a very sexy set up =|

[Tivoli]

Here is my current spec that i am playing with.

Discipline Talents (21 points)

# Unbreakable Will - 5/5 points
Increases your chance to resist Stun, Fear, and Silence effects by 15%.

# Improved Power Word: Shield - 3/3 points
Reduces the duration of your Power Word: Shield's Weakened Soul effect by 15 seconds.

# Improved Power Word: Fortitude - 2/2 points
Increases the effect of your Power Word: Fortitude spell by 30%.

# Mental Agility - 5/5 points
Reduces the mana cost of your instant cast spells by 10%.

# Improved Mana Burn - 2/2 points
Reduces the casting time of your Mana Burn spell by 1 second.

# Mental Strength - 3/5 points
Increases your maximum Mana by 6%.

# Inner Focus - 1/1 point
When activated, reduces the Mana cost of your next spell by 100% and increases its critical effect chance by 25% if it is capable of a critical effect.



Holy Talents (30 points)

# Holy Specialization - 5/5 points
Increases the critical effect chance of your Holy spells by 5%.

# Spiritual Healing - 5/5 points
Increases your Mana regeneration rate by 50% after getting a critical effect from your Flash Heal, Heal, Greater Heal, or Prayer of Healing spell. Your Mana may regenerate at a 50% rate while casting. Lasts 10 seconds.

# Improved Renew - 5/5 points
Increases the amount healed by your Renew spell by 20%.

# Improved Resurrection - 2/2 points
Reduces the resurrection sickness penalty of your Resurrection spell by 25%.

# Improved Flash Heal - 2/2 points
Gives you a 70% chance to avoid interruption caused by damage while casting Flash Heal.

# Improved Healing - 5/5 points
Reduces the Mana cost of your Lesser Heal, Heal, and Greater Heal spells by 10%.

# Combat Resurrection - 1/1 point
Brings a dead player back to life with 50% of their health and mana. The target does not suffer from resurrection sickness.

# Master Healer - 5/5 points
Increases the effectiveness of your healing spells by 10%.

If i did duo or solo a lot a would probably go with a shadow spec since i would only have to keep 1 or 2 people alive so i could spend more mana on damage output, but i'm usually in a group of 5-10 and i heal everyone so i don't have the mana to throw around SW:Pain or Mind Blast for the most part.

Master healer and imp renew stack up and with my current gear my renew ticks for 233, so i use it quite a bit, combat res is pretty nice when you have the opportunity to use it, something goes bad in an instance and the tank dies, or just in PvP to get someone right back into the fight.

Inner focus is a free spell, which i have used quite a bit, and with a +25% chance to crit on the spell as well which will help if you are low on mana to get spirittual healing to proc. I did have inspiration for a while, but i changed that out to get master healer, 25% more base armor only on a proc or 30% more from renew healing, and 10% more HP from all heals outweighed the damage that the armor prevented, and you had to have a crit heal to gain it's effect, so it wasn't something you counted on, but i can count on my heals always doing 10% more.

But it's all about playstyle, i am pretty much always grouped, so this is what works best for me. I can still solo pretty well, not as fast as a shadow spec, but just as efficiently, i usually have little downtime keeping renew on myself and using wands/melee + SW:Pain.

[Jumai]

Thanks for the reply Tivoli.

You kinda gloss over Mental Agility. Do you just buy this to get Inner Focus, or do you find it strong enough to be worth use? You say you renew a lot, so 30% stronger, 10% cheaper renew is definitely powerful ability stacking, but with PWS being as inefficient as it is, I don't ese myself using it more than I can help later.

On Prayer of Healing. I just got this skill, I'm sort of horrified at the cost. At least three people have to be hurt for it to be worth casting, and that implies your tank can afford to get what amounts to a flash heal at half speed while you drop the Prayer, on top of which it's STILL more efficient to drop a Renew on the two non-tank injureds and then just press greater heal. The talent for it is very strong but I still don't see it being worth using. Does anyone have an opinion on this spell?

I'm also looking again at the shadow line. I tried Mind Flay and didn't find it much help, but that was a while back. My staff is definitely doing a lot less damage than it once was, and this was the level before a Flay replacement spell. On the other hand, the spells that make it really powerful, shadow form, shadow waeving and darkness, are too far into the shadow line to tempt me. Is Mind Flay without any of the shadow power talents enough of a boost to justify taking it? I feel kinda torn after the 30 points in holy that I am still learning towards. A mind flay that is balanced to be used with a bunch of +damage sans those talents, or some mana efficiency.

[BrandX]

On the PoH issue... i find this spell to be best combined with inner focus. 5 Party members + 25% increased chance to crit mean more often than not you will proc spiritual healing, and also PoH rank 4 (I think its 4 anyway) heals for 1000 damage, as much as a flash heal. I guess that's why Tivoli doesn't use the improved PoH, that saves 20% off the spell cost. Also cause improved Flash Heal can save your life if you get attacked and you have weakened soul.