New 1.10 Group PvP Tri-spec

[Belarin]

After the Imp Inner Fire nurf, I've been considering this as a new "expect to be incessantly purged" tri-spec. It picks up two of the most brilliant group PvP talents, Silence and SoR, while still getting the most important fundamentals from the Disc tree.

Belarin's Tri-spec: http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/priests2/talents.html?5002020000000002045513000001000050232 4103010000

Holy Talents - 21 point(s)
Healing Focus 2/2
Holy Specialization 4/5
Spell Warding 5/5
Divine Fury 5/5
Holy Nova 1/1
Blessed Recovery 3/3
Spirit of Redemption 1/1

Discipline Talents - 9 point(s)
Unbreakable Will 5/5
Improved Power Word: Fortitude 2/2
Martyrdom 2/2

Shadow Talents - 21 point(s)
Blackout 5/5
Improved Shadow Word: Pain 2/2
Shadow Focus 3/5
Improved Psychic Scream 2/2
Improved Mind Blast 4/5
Mind Flay 1/1
Shadow Reach 3/3
Silence 1/1

I know I always have the stupidity to suggest builds w/o Imp Inner Fire, Vhell. :P But seriously, for an alliance priest I think this may be a worthwhile tradeoff. One simply can't out-heal the burst damage from an AP/dual truncating mage, but one can silence it.

And, the more I think about the new SoR the more amazing I think it is. I rarely get 10s of uninterrupted healing even as it is...

Compared it to the mana benefits from the Disc tree and 30% more purgable armor, I think it is a good trade.

-Belarin

[Noristat]

I really disagree on not taking healing focus. Other than that, looks pretty decent..

[Isaac]

Not entirely certain what you are attempt to achieve here.

It seems to me the only thing this build yields that is beneficial is slightly more damange on Shadow Spells, Silence, and the ability to snare (whilist attracting the masses with the Blue Line of "I'm here, do it now, kill me!").

I personally do not believe it is viable to lose all so much mana efficiency with so few talents in the Discipline Tree. 1.10 provides all Priests an enormous gift in the form of Meditation and Inner Focus. Those two talents being so easily obtainable simply begs for 14 points in Discipline with any build.

If I wanted to be a good healer in both PvP and PvE and do decent, mana efficient damage, that's very easy to accomplished with the Holy Tree in 1.10. Through the drastically improved 1.10 Smite and its accompanying talents (some of which also improve heals), healing Priests will be able to do significantly better damage without sacrificing significant healing output.

And, if tri-specing is the only way to go, you'd have a hard time convincing me not to do 25 Holy, 5 Shadow, 21 Disc with the big 3 of spirit (Spiritual Guidance, Spirit Tap, and Divine Spirit). That makes for a rip snorting good time chain killing things I do believe and is dramatically more mana efficient than half-assing the Shadow Tree.

[Belarin]

Noristat, I completely agree on getting Healing Focus. If you look closely, however, you'll notice that it is already included. 8)

Isaac, it's funny that you mentioned the loss of meditation. The easy availability of Meditation and Inner Focus (and the decreased cooldown) make those very desirable.

I'm thinking of this build very much as a group-duel/arena-fight type build with some BG applications. As such, I probably won't be using the damage dealing opportunities very much (except a little bit of MF in WSG). The main benefits of Shadow here are Imp Physic Scream, Shadow Focus, and most of all, Silence.

As a priest, I see my role as doing my best to keep my group up and dispelled. However, the scaling of damage/healing/and survivability (health-pools) has lead to the point where heals on longer cut it. From lvl60 greens to full epics, flash heal scales only from about 1000Hp to 1200Hp, 500Hp to 600Hp on a MSed target (which will be less now that we've lost Spiritual Healing), yet the burst damage of opposing warriors, rogues, hunters, mages, and warlocks has more than doubled. Consequently, it is more a function of CC to keep your group alive now than actual heals. The way I look at silence is that, when I silence a double trinket mage and thereby prevent several thousand damage, it's like an instant heal for several thousand damage.

The idea was to be able to combine Silence with all the PvP gems of the Holy tree, including SoR. This is clearly inferior in PvE, or in PvP where mana efficiency and longevity is of high importance (AV, or to a lesser extent AB).

More thoughts?

-Belarin