Builds I'm looking at.Follow

I currently doing Smite-spec.

The haste from darkness is better than mana reductions on spells I barely cast. PW:B glyph is kind of lame as it gets blown up really fast, so I've been using PoH as the other choices are worse.

As for gearing since Rapture isn't the force it once was, you need Spirit. Archangel is good but when stuff gets nutty you can't always Smite so again Spirit is needed. Have pushed haste to around 730, which is shy of the 2/3 Darkness soft cap but close enough for my needs. Crit is around 40% raid buffed all of it coming via Int and buffs. Have been playing with mastery and even for Smite spec I feel it is very efficient as I still use PW:S often. DA procs are beast now and account for a large chunk of my healing.

As a side note, did your links work as none go to level 85 and one only had 31 points.

If I was doing Smite at 85 I'd go with this spec.


Darkness is too awesome to skip so SoL and DP are out the window. I'd drop Inspiration if it wasn't so needed to grab VS but that will not be a valid option. I really miss DP, that spell was awesome.

I'll spec something like Smitelolheal/horsemouth, but where to put those last few points? Sadly, I can't see what you've chosen as wowhead talent calc only shows your lvl80 builds for me.

I hate that inspiration doesn't work with half of what I'll be casting, but someone somewhere will do some maths that says its a must have and I'll feel like I have to have it. Plus crit seems low priority otherwise. Grr..

Desperate prayer I won't bother with.

SoL. ChahDresh makes a good point - only marginally faster than another Smite, which itself is almost free. But I like instant casts and as atonement will only heal melee it might be nice between smites for topping off the ranged if needed or whatever. Keeping an open mind on this.

Points will go in EH probably, but I'd quite like improved renew too. Need to check what the maths says before considering it.

I like darkness, have it now, wonder if I'd feel the difference?

Veiled shadows, I'd never looked twice at before. I don't think I'd go for it myself, but wonder if it may be worth considering for a non-smite priest. Need to get into Cata and feel for myself how much mana will be an issue.

Serendipity becomes awesome with a /castsequence macro.

/castsequence (reset = 18) flash heal, flash heal, greater heal

The final greater heal is as fast as a flash heal, costs about 25% less mana, and gets twice as much benefit from your spell power: half a wrathful gladiator’s health bar, easily. This is what I spam when someone is getting focused. Crits are insane, and Echo of Light ticks like a second Renew. If I have a Guardian Spirit on that person, I can outheal three people’s DPS with ease.

I find that with that macro to keep track of my Serendipity procs, I can throw my instants around and not worry about when to hit GH instead of FH. I might eventually get fancy and add a modifier to cast binding heal instead of flash heal.

I'll use the MMO-champion calculator. To start with;


This is awesome because I was already coping pretty much fine in heroics and am now downright 20% more effective.

As for specs; I'm currently rolling with these two. The disc one is pretty much what Horsemouth mentioned, except that I don't care for haste as you all know. The holy build is basically the normal level 85 one, but since I can't grab Archangel yet anyway I figured that instead of three more points in disc I'd just grab Test of Faith. My glyphs are constantly switched around now that I can, flipping that one slot between Mass Dispel, Holy Nova and Smite.

For Cataclysm, it currently looks like these will be our options:

Disc:
-Disc jack-of-all, picking up nearly half the disc tree to allow for Smite-healing or Heal-healing depending on what the situation is like. Probably my pick fo disc.
-Disc jack-of-all variation 2, the same thing but with Desperate Prayer instead of Power Infusion.
-Disc jack-of-all variation 3, disc for the OOM (or newbie) priest. No Surge of Light sucks, but you'll have an easier time keeping your mana up, as well as with managing aggro.
-Smiteless Disc, with 3 points that can go in Inner Sanctum, Deperate Prayer, Surge of Light, Empowered Healing, Darkness or Veiled Shadows, as seen fit. Whether this will be completely viable for raids remains to be seen, but I'll be damned if there won't be at least a small group of followers for it.
-Healless disc, with one point for Desperate Prayer, Mental Agility, Darkness or Veiled Shadows. I predict this is going to fail, though. Smite and Heal currently overlap to an extend, but while Heal could replace Smite in most cases to make Smiteless Disc an option, I don't think Smite can replace Heal. I could be wrong though, people will need to experiment with this.

Holy:
-Holy jack-of-all with Archangel. Fairly standard.
-Holy jack-of-all variation 2; less AoE heal, more tank heal. Bit more 5-man focused because of that.
-Holy jack-of-all variation 3, featuring sir Speedalot. This is probably what I'm going to go for in my holy build.
-Saturated Holy. No Archangel but Veiled Shadows to make up for that. Grabs really everything you want in the holy tree and adds some rough throughput. A solid build in its own right, with all the gimmicks there.
-Boring Holy. Assuming no Smite ends up being a viable option, this is what you'll see the min/maxers walk around with. All throughput and no play, avoiding all gimmicks and playthings in the holy tree just to get that extra % healing. Can possibly drop a point in Serendipity to pick up a point in Blessed Resilience.


On another note, I need to re-evaluate haste. Even though healing has been made less 'spammy' in Cata, you'll probably still spend 99% of your time casting.

The way healing works right now is that you're in a situation where everybody in the raid/group drops to around 70%, and you attempt to heal through any damage you can by just using Heal and Penance. If you stop healing for 5 seconds (or if someone stands in the fire, if the boss casts a big punch at the tank, etc), it's not that somebody will immediatly die, but instead the entire group will now be balanced around 50%. Another 5 seconds brings you down to 30%, at which one small error at their side (being slow on the fire) will kill them. That's where the rest of your heals come in - you'll need to use less efficient heals like Flash Heal to bring that balance back to at least 80%, and this will cost you in terms of mana.

While you still won't "need" haste as much as you won't "need" crit, ironically enough, haste seems to have done the opposite of what seemed logical to me and has become more valuable after all - if you have a lot of haste, you can get away with using Heal/Penance to heal up more severe damage, allowing you to cast less Flash Heals and thus save mana.

Edited, Nov 18th 2010 7:07pm by Mozared

And faster Smites.

Is Inner focus really worth it and if so how do you use it.

I currently have it in my prayer of healing macro. Would you put it in a flash and healing macro?

Yes, god, yes, oh yes, triple yes. It isn't the most convenient way of saving up mana and throwing down big heals, but it's disc's prime manner of doing this in Cata. The 45 second cooldown is something you really notice. I'd almost go as far as to say you want to use it every time it's off cooldown.