Holy tree.Follow

There are some possibilities for shifting talent points around. If you use Renew a lot, putting more points into Imp/Emp Renew makes sense, for example.

That being said, I don't know the math behind Serendipity well enough to comment in detail but I think you'd usually use Flash Heal and Circle of Healing more often than Greater Heal or Prayer of Healing, I don't know how that would change.

Test of Faith is dead useful in a raid setting but if you only heal heroics for now ask yourself how often people actually drop below 50% health. You can always adjust your healing style to make that happen more often, but that's being risky and putting the rest of the group into a state of constant fear for their lives and healing priests are supposed to be nice people.

Empowered Healing gets better with more spell power on your gear and is again greatly dependent on your healing style: If you don't cast Greater Heal a lot, Blessed Resilience should be a better choice.

Possible spec as per EJ

First off: holy without Serendipity is a pretty bad fail. It's like playing a mutilate rogue without mutilate. Playing disc without Rapture. Playing hunter without Aimed Shot. The only time you can actually afford doing so if if you're stacking haste on your gear like a maniac - which means that all your other stats will be severely sub-par and you'll still perform horribly.

That said;

Zorma has a fairly odd spec that's reminiscient of the cookie cutter, only it's not. It's not a spec I'd like, but I can imagine myself speccing that in specific situations. It really is a 'support' spec, focusing on Renew, Lightwell and Flash Heal over PoH and CoH. I'd probably go disc if I wanted to play that role, but I imagine his standard raid team has a disc priest in it - and possibly a full AOE holy priest as well.

Healmaster would be that full AOE holy priest. The spec he has is pretty much the cookie cutter, except that he's reached the point in gearing where he never runs OOM anymore and has taken points out of Healing Prayers (and Healing Focus) to fill up Blessed Resilience for some more throughput. This is a good and solid spec, if your gear is decent enough not to OOM with it (that point lies relatively low, an average gearscore of ~213 should be enough). He should, though, replace his glyph of Renew with the glyph of Prayer of Healing - if you're going for full AOE throughput you might as well do it the right way. I can nevertheless understand why he'd use the glyph of Renew.

Battlepope... I have no clue wtf he's doing. He's specced into holy but seems to desperately avoid the core holy talent and instead put all his emphasis on support/utility like Renew, Holy Nova and Flash Heal. Which is downright pointless - if you want to do this, you should spec disc. The only time I'd ever spec holy without Serendipity, Inner Focus and Healing Focus and with the glyphs of Holy Nova, Renew and Flash Heal is if I'd want to have the optimal setup for Auriaya and/or Thorim (or heroics >.>), where I can Holy Nova spam the entire fight long. To be honest I find it more likely that this player hasn't got a clue about priest healing than that he's optimized for a specific role. The fact that he's barely got any raiding achievements and is the lowest rank in the guild seems to confirm that thought - I think he's an alt of an officer or a trial.

In the end what you should go depends mostly on your group make up, though if your tank healers are competent I'd copy Healmaster's spec and move one point from Blessed Resilience back to Healing Focus. That would be pretty much the holy cookie cutter and the reason it is just that is because it's the best spec in most situations - including the most optimal one.

That's cause Disc is the new black. Holy is, like, so last season.

Edit: I like your plan for both specs. I tried this for a while, having my every day Disc spec that I use for most things, and a Holy PVE spec for those times I want to work and play well with others. It is a great way to get to have your cake and your other cake too. Sadly, I had to give it up and just spec Disc/Disc. Because I am too stupid to remember two sets of buttons. There, I said it.


Edited, Jan 25th 2010 10:39pm by teacake

Holy is sooooo 1980's hey lol.
I touched this is another post so I dont want to drag over old ground but my understanding is Holy is great for 5 man instances and raid heals and Disc. is mainly for raid Tank/OT heals as well as 5 man instances.
So by speccing for both if the raid has a Disc. priest already I can change to Holy and I still get to go.
The only reason I dont want to go Shadow, and it is only one reason, is I'am really tired of killing stuff.
Thats why I chose to heal this time around.
If I want to be a dps caster I'll jump on my Mage, if I want to be ranged dps I'll go login to my Hunter.
If I want melee then I'll go with my Shammy...but its all kill kill kill.
Thats why I dont want to go Shadow.
Maybe one day that will change, we'll see :)
The other thing with lack of Holy info is glyphs, theres not much to choose from in the way of minors.
And EJ isnt that helpful so its a bit hit and miss.
Anyway guys thanks again for the help, awesome as always.

Fading and Shadowfiend are the minor glyphs that are most likely to give you any "real" value in the form of higher mana efficiency, which still isn't all that useful.
Shadow Protection and Shackle Undead are very situational, Fortitude is a complete waste imho (because you can just drink after buffing, it won't make anything easier in combat) unless perhaps you're like Aeth and too lazy to bring candles.

Glyph of Levitate is just plain brilliant. It's a priest's Glyph of Mend Pet, pretty much.

Edited, Jan 26th 2010 1:37pm by Kalivha

Hey guys,
Your right minor preist glyphs do suck, Levitate is good, Shadow Protection and Shackle Undead are pretty much it after that.
Wasnt trying to offend any Shadow Preists before, its just not something for now that I want to try but never say never.
I just have to tweak my tree's a little as I've been leveling all day and now its shutdown and I'll put my armoury link on here for all to be shock and awed with lol.
You will see I do listen though :)
I havent played enough to see which spec suits best yet, when I hit 80 and go fulltime heals, no more killing, and start doing heroics then I'll be able to work it out.
These last 10 levels to go are going to be very frustrating :)
As for down the track raiding we'll see how serious/well this goes, if I feel comfortable with what I'am doing and I end up being an asset and not a liability then sure ICC here I come.
But I'am realist, if my skills arent good enough I'll stay within my boundries.
Only practice and experience will decide where this takes me but I have the passion to make it want to work.
I've struggled a bit with guilds in the past, I tend to dodge guildies more than want to play with some of the people I've come across.
It seems for every one good person theres 5 idiots standing next to him or her.
Maybe its my server I dont know but I'am not a huge kiddie fan so that wipes out 85% of the population on Khaz.
Just need to find the right people and age group where the second you login you havent got 20 people whispering to come and do this or that.....sigh.
Sometimes its just nice to play your own game :)
Anyway guys thanks again for the help, I'll post the link up tomorrow.

Thanks to the dungeon tool and battleground xp, you can easily level 70-80 purely through healing, no killing. You'll get a bit sick of the dungeons, but at least you'll know how to heal the fights really well before you go and try the heroic versions.

Obligatory Teacake broken record statement: if you want to learn to heal, go into battlegrounds. It doesn't even matter if you hate PVP, just do it for an hour to practice. There's no better way to quickly get every situation thrown at you in a short, quick amount of practice time. And although you've spent a lot of time as DPS, so-called healer "tunnel vision" adds a whole new dimension to not standing in fire. Battlegrounds are excellent sources for learning to move, be aware of your surroundings, and watch bars all at the same time. You can do AV without much actual PVP anyway.

I was told at work to pick the slowest person and just work a little quicker than them lol.
But seriously I dont know how good I'am at healing yet simply because I havent done it enough.
Up to now its just been me and maybe 1 or 2 others in groups so its been a combination of dps and heals.
Thats why I want to set my Holy spec up as group heals only for now as I'am sure in the next 10 levels the 5 man groups will start coming into play.
And yep the battlegrounds idea is a real good one, "who was that masked man" and no one will ever know whether it was good or bad.
And yes I do hate pvp, did a lot of it on my Mage, but I can see the benfit of giving this a go.
Thanks guys.

To point out the obvious, there's little point in the glyph of Penance if you don't have Penance. I can imagine you're just not fussed with glyphs and took this in advance, though.

Your disc spec really looks all good - it's hard to get that wrong anyway;
1) Skip Unbreakable Will, Martyrdom, Silent Resolve, Absolution, Imp. Mana Burn and Reflective Shield
2) Grab every other talent in the tree
3) ????
4) Profit

Your holy spec is close enough to the cookie cutter.

All in all, looks solid, I'd say.

You are using the disc build for questing, so you are free to spec any talents that seem to make it easier. It's all good.

If you start using disc for healing dungeons, fill up your 57 points in the disc tree before doing anything else.

Hey guys,

During shutdown tonight I thought I'd do a little more priest research, this time on gems and enchants.

So far for when I hit 80 I have the Royal Moonshroud Robe and Braces, Sandals of Consecration, Stiffened Corpse shoulderpads and Sash of Jordan waiting for me so I want to make sure I gem my investments right.

I was thinking of gems that int/sp/mp5 like Seer's Eye of Zul but then I checked Wahu out and saw mainly Spellpower and mp5/int gems.

I didnt think about gemming for spellpower, mainly int. and a mana regen/boost.
So I'am not sure I'am looking at this right again.

I went to http://www.wow-gem.com/gems.aspx for a look and will check out what EJ has to say as well.

At 80 I'll probaly heal with Disc. and use Holy as a backup if need be so Disc. gems is where I'am looking now.
Luminos Amertrine seems good for a red socket and Dazzling Eye/Seer's Eye for everything else?

As for enchants they look pretty straight forward but the wrists have me a bit puzzled.
Would you go for Superior Spellpower over Exceptional Intellect?
Pretty much similar enchants for one handed wep. as well, int. over spellpower?

Thanks guys, almost there :)


Edited, Feb 2nd 2010 1:18pm by RodStorm

Thanks Teacake,

Can you ever have to much Int?

Well I just read the whole Ultimate Healing thread by Mozared and mate its an awesome piece of information.
I made my own notes from the thread so thanks mate for taking the time to compile all the info in one place.

As a Disc. healer I can see where Spellpower comes into it going by Teacake's comments and why Wahu spec'd the way he did.
I can also see the pro's and cons of Haste, something I think I'll acrue without trying to so I dont jeopardise other stats.

So Spellpower gems for red slots and a combination of the Zul gems looks the right way to go to maximise my healing output and regen.
Also more crit for Disc. looks handy.

Time to boost the Engineering up to help out as well :)

Edited, Feb 2nd 2010 2:20pm by RodStorm

As discipline, I’ll take Haste over spirit, stamina, hit or Mp5, but I’d much rather have crit, int, or best of all spellpower. The only time Haste is of much use is when I’m spamming Flash Heal on a raid tank; in most other circumstances, I have the knack of ordering my Power Word: Shield, my other instant casts, Penance, and my timed casts so that Borrowed Time is up most of the time, meaning I’m usually operating at 30-35% haste. In theory, I could get 15% more haste rating and enjoy a global cooldown of 1 sec on all my instants while borrowed time is up, but as things stand the limiting factor is often my reaction time anyway. I’d rather make the spells I cast have more effect than increase the rate at which I cast them.

Spellpower’s the grail at endgame for discipline IMHO, since Power Word: Shield gets no benefit from crit or haste.

Cam you have too much intellect? Well, noooo...it’s fun to spam Holy Nova on trash in 5-man instances...but between rapture, replenishment, shadowfiend, hymn of hope and as a last resort runic manic injectors with engineering bonus, there definitely comes a time when you just don’t expect to run out of mana in a raid boss fight. I put orange in my yellow sockets, luminous amenterine, and I’m considering switching to crit/SP there, instead of int/SP. In blue sockets I use pure spellpower gems--the socket bonuses plus a little spirit or stamina aren’t worth it. I use the +spellpower/+2% int metagem and the +spellpower cloak tinker from engineering. Other than that, my PVE choices are about the same as Teacake’s.

PVP is a completely different beast, of course. There I stack all the resilience I can, gemming and enchanting for it first, spellpower second, stamina third.

My PVE glyphs are Penance, Power Word: Shield and Prayer of Healing. The extra HoT on Prayer of Heaing makes an already excellent spell amazing, though it loses a little of its allure if you’re casting it on the same party more than once every six seconds.