3.1 Talent Build, What's Yours?Follow

So here is mine

How will you spec?

It was actually a little difficult to decide what I wanted, between Serendipity, Test of Faith, or filling out Empowered Renew. I'm still not sure which one is better.

I decided against Empowered Renew. For me, it would be mostly wasted. My renew is just meant as a buffer, most of the time I put it on the tanks, while the 15% increase in healing would be fine, the instant heal would be wasted since they are usually full health when I hit them with renew. So that right there cuts the value of the talent in half, plus the fact that I don't really rely on my renew as a healing spell, so much as a buffer spell(I leave the HoTs to the druid I run with). But I did put 1 point in it just for those times when I don't feel like healing a DPS I drop a renew on them, the instant heal plus the HoT should be sufficient to keep them content and alive.

Test of Faith vs. Serendipity was the real challenge. The 12% boost is a much more enticing boost than the old 6%, combined with the ability to target other parties in the raid with PoH, I see serious potential with this spell. On the other hand I see serendipity constantly being active on my buff bar(since I do cast flash and binding quite often), and a 60% reduced casting time on either GH or PoH at 3 stacks, making PoH a 1.2 second cast, I just couldn't pass it up.

Quick question for any number cruncher, that I'm curious about. As far as the Hot is concerned, which is better, increase the amount healed by renew by 5%, or your renew gaining an additional 5% of your bonus healing affect. My math is saying the 5% increase in healing is better. Renew has a 188% spell power coefficient. Meaning if you have 2k SP, your renew should tick for 1032, or heal for a total of 5160 ([{1.88*2000}+1400]/5). Now with 5% increase in healing, that would be 5418 or 1083 per tick. Whereas 5% gain of healing affect ([{1.93*2000}+1400]/5) would be 5260 or 1052 per tick. Am I doing my math wrong in how renew would be affected by either talent?

PS. I am assuming the Empowered Renew instant heal can crit, since the new Holy Concentration talent includes renew as a triggering spell.

PVE - I gave up Test of Faith in favor of strengthening Prayer of Healing.

PVP - This'll be the first one I try, anyway. This is a hard one. With the changes to DA I kind of wanted to pick it up again, but that also means filling out Holy Specialization instead of Renew and Healing Focus, which I'm not crazy about. I'll probably play around before settling on something for real. I filled in the possibly imaginary talent Reflective Shield, assuming that if it's gone the new Barrier thingie will take its place.

Edited, Feb 26th 2009 10:16am by teacake

No, you know something I don't. Namely, that they moved Meditation's spot on that line. I'm so used to just clicking those 14 points in those particular spots that I didn't even look at the icons. But yeah, Meditation.

I go back and forth with Desperate Prayer in a PVE build. If I don't use it I'll put that point in Healing Prayers instead.

Edit: fixed it. :)


Edited, Feb 26th 2009 12:37pm by teacake

I haven't quite made up my mind yet, but I'm liking your build Synn, so it'll be very much like it.

I'll just have to see how my mana is holding up, so I can maybe drop a point or two from Healing Prayers to either max out Improved Renew or stuff em in Test of Faith.

My raiding Shadow build.



I'm curious as to why you passed up Imp. SW:P and DP in favor of Imp. Shield. I'm guessing because of the points in Imp. Shadowform that it's either a solo or PvP spec.

Edited, Feb 26th 2009 6:34pm by IDrownFish

Whoops! I meant to get that, actually lol.
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?priest=500320303000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000325023251223112320102301351&glyph=191702020301&version=9626

13/0/58 Assuming we don't run into threat issues then I think this is the only really viable shadow pve build

For disc my build would (at the current time) be 56/15/0

For a holy build I'd go with teacake's build, only I'd shift the point from inner focus into healing prayers.

Edited, Feb 27th 2009 5:42am by thegreatmothra

While it is useful, the healing from Imp VE doesn't offset the potential damage loss from interrupted casting. It used to be that when improved VE gave a lot of healing to party members that it was a really worthwhile talent. Since the nerf its just no longer as useful. In addition we will be taking more raid damage in ulduar, its one of the factors that always increases as raid content becomes harder.

One thing I AM interested in is the possibility of dumping the 5 points in spirit tap. With the changes in meditation the damage bonus from improved spirit tap is not enough to justify the 5 talent points. Essentially, if meditation and improved sprit tap don't stack you're spending the equivalent of 5 talent points for what is essentially 10 spellpower - not exactly mind blowing.

If that is in fact the case I'd spec more like this: 13/0/58

Some builds I've seen based on this principle have even gone so far as to spec into mental agility instead.

Edited, Feb 27th 2009 8:26am by thegreatmothra

Well, if the raid damage doesn't increase then the fights simply don't get harder to heal. Unless they're going to drag fights out in length to challenge healer mana regeneration instead you can certainly expect the damage to become more intense. The post you mentioned referenced the eredar twins in particular, where you literally had to spam from start to finish to kill it. Currently nothing like this exists in recent raid content (other than certain hard sections of sarth 3d). Having these bursty sections in fights is likely what they are aiming at, giving healers a challenge but not reducing the fight to a spamming competition.

Kanngarnix,

You make a very good point when you said this:



I am experiencing this issue. I am also a newly minted lvl 80 with only 3-4 pieces of Naxx 10 gear as of last night. I'm guessing the priests with better gear may not face this that much? I know on my resto druid at first mana was tough, but now I have more than I could ever dream of using in any boss encounter.

The incoming regen changes are really scaring me right now being in my position. I'm trying to figure out "how to heal" as a priest vs. resto druid. Last night we had 3 total healers in Naxx, so it wasn't that tough. I just used renew, POM, and CoH. I never really "felt" like a priest because I wasn't dropping hardly any bomb heals like Greater Heal.

I need to get used to the notion of cancel-casting. To me being from a druid perspective if I do that 2-3 times and not actually cast it just feels like I'm wasting time and not contributing. I'm just used to spamming lifeblooms every point-whatever seconds.

I did find it interesting that I was outhealing a resto druid with mostly Naxx 25 gear by 2 million...maybe she just wasn't bothering to spam Wild Growth every 6 seconds.



Edited, Feb 27th 2009 12:52pm by Jedius

Edited, Feb 27th 2009 12:56pm by Jedius

No. What you need to get used to is using the right heal at the right time.



I wish I could just slap every raid healer who is out-doing anybody. Raiding is a team effort, for healers more than any other classes. The current focus on the meters in one of the main reasons why Blizzard more or less decided to pull the plug on spam-healing. It doesn't matter how you did on the meters if you didn't heal the right people at the right time.

How does the raid benefit from you out-healing a druid as you said? If you shoot a CoH on the same people the druid had targeted with his Wild Growth, you only cost the raid valuable mana. Same thing if you cast a GH on a person the druid was about to Swiftmend.

Wanna know how bad it is? Go to wowwebstats and open ANY report you want on the front page. You'll be hard pressed to find any with LESS than 50% overhealing.

It's currently a "spamfest" in the healing department - because people can. Because performance is measured through positions on meters.

You know what I am thinking when I am looking at those reports? I'm thinking that all those people wasted half their mana for nothing, and that the upcoming regen changes are more than justified.

Kann,

I'm not boasting about it, I was just commenting that it was interesting. I've been a healer for a long time on my resto druid and I agree with your thoughts on meters/overhealing in raids.

Hmmm, 3% extra crit with focused will, or 10% reduced mana cost of penance and greater heal with improved healing... choices, choices. I'm leaning toward the extra crit.

Edited, Mar 27th 2009 4:20pm by dadanox