disc priest, should I be able to kill something?Follow

Your allegiance with others in a battleground is tenuous, at best. While it's important to work together and cooperate, in the end your the only one you can really depend on. You should approach every fight like there's no help coming.

Maybe it's the way you phrased it, but it shouldn't be a choice. Either Offense or Defense. Offense is it's own kind of defense, insomuch that someone trying to protect themselves from you isn't focused wholeheartedly in destroying you. And Defense is it's own kind of Offense, with spells like Reflective shield, Shadowfiend, and Devouring Plague that do damage as well as do their part in benefiting you.

As far as your modus operandi,
1500, 15 casts? Ahhhh. Your thinking like a Mage. Killing someone as a healing class is a whole different beast. It's not a DPS race, it's a Battle of Attrition.

While the ilk of Mind Blast and other Burst can be good, strategically speaking it's not usually a good idea in a 1v1 situation. For one, pretty much every caster knows to move out of your Line of Sight and pretty much every melee knows to walk through your character and take advantage of the fact these things can't be cast on targets behind you. For two, your exposed during the casting time for whatever burst they want to throw your way, and have to fall back on defensive actions soon after (and if they employed the above, without having done any real damage to your opponent). This would all be excusable if the burst was somewhat significant, as it is on your Mage, but the sad truth is it's simply not. Our casting-time burst damage spells works best when you get the drop on someone as an opener.

You should focus instead on widdling someone down slowly. Shadow Word: Pain, Devouring Plague, Shadow Word: Death, Shadowfiend/Shadowcrawl, Reflective Shield, Power Infusion + Mana Burn, Dispel, Mass Dispel will slowly, yet surely, chew someone up. Some of these will persist even if your opponent runs out of LoS, Many of these can be cast instantaneously, and nearly all of them can be cast on a target behind you. This puts the benefits of mobility out of your opponents hands and into yours.

While you should be able to kill someone, that doesn't necessarily mean you can. Not all opponents are built the same. Some people are just into PvP for the first time, some are into casual BG's, and some are Arena maniacs. Your not fighting a Warlock, your fighting a player. Don't feel down if someone in full Furious gear manages to take you out if you only have some Hateful.

After you get more experience, and as a result more gear, you'll learn tricks of the trade that'll make your fights easier. Such as; Holy Nova will uncover stealthed opponents and DoTs will prevent them from stealthing again, Druids can't pounce (stun) you if they're visible, Mass dispel can remove immunity effects like Pally Divine Shield and Mage IceBlock, DeathKnight are disease-reliant so regularly throwing on Abolish Disease with the occasional Cure Disease chaser will increase your life expectancy.

Edited, May 24th 2009 5:18pm by Zemzelette

Edited, May 24th 2009 5:30pm by Zemzelette

Nicely said Zemzelette, your whole post was really helpful, but there's one thing that made my eyes pop out of my head, I had no clue mass dispel can dispel palies bubble and the mages iceblock, I'll try that out :)

On my rogue ive had my *** handed to me occasionally from a disc priest just b/c i wasn't expecting them to fight and didnt know how to react..lesson learned. It is viable for you to kill people like others have said with high resilience and some skill.

On my 76 disc priest ive managed to own in a duel/world pvp; dks, wars, locks, druids, and mages, with medium difficulty, specifically undergeard dks, which makes me laugh my *** off. Proper pom'ing(ie when a spell is in the air), renew, and penance macro in between dots and holy fire(low cost) and fears. Slaying a dk with my priest provides the largest smile ive come across in wow.

Generally i just try to keep people alive and heal the **** out of myself until whoever i stick to healing(i normally just pick the badass) realizes im in trouble. They normally come help if they've realized that im the guy keeping them alive while they own 6 at a time.

As a healer, you should definitely try to be in group-on-group rather than one-on-one situations. However, a discipline priest has more offensive power than any other healer in the game. With the right gear, you should be able to win solo fights against any other class, although you’ll have much better win percentages against some (boomkin, shadow priests) than others (rogues, death knights).

Resilience is key; it helps us more than any other class. Also, since you’re doing battlegrounds, you should remember that Mind Control can be the deadliest spell in the game. Use it to throw people off cliffs and into chasms, to get rid of tower guards, or to walk healers out of line of sight of their flag carriers. It’s particularly deadly in Alterac Valley endgame, since Mind Control on a tank drops that tank’s aggro, sending Galv, Drek and/or the warmasters into the squishies.

I might derail this a bit but shadow spec pvp is not much better. I mean i can take a person down quick if they are not focused on me but once they realize where im at i have a hard time getting off any spell other then instant cast. I think when blizzard made the priest class pvp was not their intentions. We have the worst armour off any of the healers and most of my heals have to be instant cast or else they are interrupted or i die before they go off. Maybe with more res i can last longer but i think of any of the healing class we have to work the hardest to become good at pvp healing and damage.Maybe im bad at being a priest. maybe im not and just have horrible luck. idk.