HealingFollow

Massive thanks to Moz and Dada. I have just swapped across from Holy to Disc and I am absolutely loving it. I simply don't run OOM anymore except on a couple of boss fights and even then only if the DPS in the party is lacking (ie it is a pug).

It's also great because I am only 76 atm so still leveling and finding disc far better for soloing than holy was.

The build I am working towards is this though obviously my current build has Spirit Tap.

Any thoughts on where to place the last point. I noticed both your builds had 3/3 SR but honestly I am not finding that I have ANY threat issues at all if I have a half competent tank. Is this likely to change at endgame? Should I drop something and take SR, or just put that one point in it?

My other thought was to take the 2 points out of Renewed Hope, move them to Healing Focus in holy and grab Desp Prayer, but that seems wasteful as healing knockback is not a big issue for me either and I rarely used DP when I was holy as I find Binding Heal does the job just fine.

Thoughts?

What's your obsession with Improved Renew? All it does is making you waste 2 points on Healing Focus on your way to Inspiration.

Renew can't crit. It doesn't refresh or stack Grace or Divine Aegis. Rapture won't do anything for it either.

Greater Heal does, though, and cutting half a second off it's casting time by using Divine Fury seems to make much more sense.



Edited, Dec 28th 2008 8:45pm by Kanngarnix

That was my feeling, thanks for the confirmation.



I like it, Enlightenment does seem very nice but I hear your logic on taking Inspiration instead and agree. And at that point Desp Prayer does seem the only logical 1 point spend.



On the other side I use Renew on virtually every pull in every instance right after I top the tank off to give myself the max time outside the 5sr but I have used Greater Heal exactly once in the 3 levels since I specced disc, I use Penance instead.

So what's the better point spend? 3 points on Renew or 5 on Greater Heal?

I agree that it's a shame to have to put the 2 in Healing Focus but even still it's 2 wasted points rather than 5 IMO.

I yet have to meet a situation where Flash heal can't replace Greater heal. Like most cases of priest healing, it's a matter of how one likes or dislikes playing, I reckon.

One perfect situation would be getting interrupted while channeling Penance. You get the first tick out, but then find yourself with Penance on CD with lots of healing left to do. Even more so if you're trying to get the most out of Rapture and 5SR and don't start casting until your target actually needs the estimated amount of healing.




Guess so. It's 17% haste vs 15% more healing from Renew. I prefer to leave the HoT thing to those who excel at it and have another big nuke at my disposal instead. If you want so, my priest and the way I play her is the exact opposite of my druid. That's why I started a priest in the first place.



Was 4-manning Ahn'Kahet last night, with a Moonkin and 2 Death Knights. On the platform with the elementals, the druid aggro'ed, and both DK's were dropping fast (and couldn't be bothered to use their AMS - another story in itself). Shielded the druid, cast Penance on the "tank", and GH on the other DK - now with effectively 45.5% haste due to Borrowed time not being consumed by Penance and having 3.5% from gear. That's just about 1.6 seconds for a GH, leaving another possible 20% haste from Power Infusion completely out of it. Sadly enough I didn't overheal and had to fade afterwards.

To me, Disc healing is about speed, and it's a shame that I just don't have the points to spend on Enlightenment.

At level 78, I'm sitting on about 17K mana unbuffed. I don't depend on staying outside the 5SR. But even though I could keep casting like crazy, especially all those nice Flash Heals, I don't think I should. Just like a holy priest should avoid overhealing regardless of having a talent that returns some of the mana used. If I can avoid a Flash Heal, I will.

GH doesn't need to be fast if all you need to worry about is giving big heals to a tank and little chunks to everybody else. It needs to be when things go wrong, though. This could be a bad pull, an enraging boss, or somebody being a focus target in PvP.

I'm getting the speed I'm comfortable with by skipping Improved Renew. To me it's a spell that's really just kinda ticking along, but far from being a solid foundation. I can't swiftmend it, so it's really just.. blah. Not worth 3 points for the priest I want to play.

Just coming together nicely like this. Right now I'm at http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=bVIbuhxtr0oVfRt0xtc with the 2 remaining points now going into Renewed Hope.

I'm bad about watching my own health while taking care of everybody else, so picking up Desperate Prayer was a must. (plus it's nice to have during the usual daily ganking)

The only thing that sorta sucks right now is solo play. The loss of Spirit Tap and Reflective Shield has brought me back to wanding and having to drink like every 4 mobs: A situation that's driving me nuts. It wouldn't be so bad if I was done with quests and only doing dailies or something, but that's unfortunately not the case.

This.

I dropped Silent Resolve a while back and have had no issues with threat.

I also love having reflective shield. It's a fun spell that helps particularly when questing, and with adds that spawn from bosses.

Our builds are very similar. I'd prefer to have improved renew (used constantly), than max out devine fury (rarely use Greater Heal). I've evolved into this http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=bVcbuGxtM0sifRtcxdc

Edited, Jan 1st 2009 12:46pm by dadanox

Ah, so you're keeping Silent Resolve for minor PvP purposes. Fair enough, that makes matters a bit harder PvE-wise though.



I've never had Spirit Tap in any of my builds on any of my priests, you can actually do fairly well without it. Same for inspiration; I'm 76 and don't have it at the moment, it's the next 3 points I'm picking up. Pre-80, it's nothing more than an ok talent. In fact, pre-raiding there's only 2 or 3 talents which will really make a difference (things like Meditation, Penance and Holy Specialization).

What I usually do for a rotation is the following:
Holy Fire > Shadow Word: Pain > Power Word Shield > Borrowed time Penance on target > Borrowed time Mind Blast on target > Wand.
Try that, it allows me to take down at least ~12 mobs before I run oom (without using Hymn of Hope and/or Shadowfiend) and I don't have Spirit Tap (and relatively low mana, 13K at 76). Reflective shield helps but isn't necissary; I'm guessing this will will make the mob break your shield just as you kill it.

I do have Spirit Tap and a similar rotation. Holy Fire > SW:P > DP (every second pull) > PW:S > Penance > Smite (if high health) > Wand. With this rotation my mana just doesn't seem to go down. If I really chain pull at ~12 mobs I will still be between 60 and 80% mana. I'm no more geared than you either. I will dump Spirit Tap at 80 but until then it is absolutely invaluable.

Since I never ever run low on mana I figure why not, it speeds up the process. If I was having mana issues for whatever reason I would drop it from my rotation but I don't so...

Anyway my priests leveling days are now over, hit 80 last night just as I finished up the last few Grizzly Hills quests, I leveled mainly in instances and have only done BT, HF and GH so should now start making ridiculous amounts of money doing the rest. :-)

With the talk of spell rotations to save mana, I would like to point out that Mind Sear can be used greatly to your advantage while questing. Not necessarily cheap on mana, but you can get plenty of bang for your buck. I use it regularly on the daily kill quests in Shalozar. I pop shield, tag as many mobs as possible with SW:P, last one also gets DP, pop another shield to cover your channel then go to work with MS. Two or maybe three applications and all that is left is the mob with DP eating away at its health. I usually am low on mana afterwards, but it usually replenishes close to full by the time I am done looting and looking for the next group.

I have died a couple times trying to max out the number of mobs, but you never know until you try! I usually settle for 5-10 mobs depending on level.

Oh yeah, this works best if you don't tag mobs with ranged attacks!

A big plus is finally having all talent points available. Though where those will go next remains to be seen...

Thanks to tailoring and having some honor points saved up, I was able to equip some nice pieces. Unfortunately they're in strong contrast to some others, especially those in the weapon department.

Really don't know yet where to go next. I want to heal, but I might just have to be realistic about the situation and (try to) do some damage for a while.

Pretty depressing after resisting the temptation for the last 20 levels.

http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Laughing+Skull&n=Vierrna

Guess that's quite typical for a fresh 80. Somewhere in between good and bad...