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[WoW]Priests: Just because we heal you, doesn't mean we like you.
redfenix
Aka'd as rfixRegistered User regular
Aka'd as rfixRegistered User regular
Priests!!!
The obligatory [citation needed]-style intro:
Equipment:
Talented Building (Updated 11/13/08)
The obligatory [citation needed]-style intro:
The priest is perhaps the best healing class in the game with a surprisingly strong damage potential as well (should the player choose to enhance this aspect of the class). Their ability to heal, avoid aggro, dispel buffs on enemies, dispel debuffs on their allies, and Resurrect fallen comrades makes them an important member of any group, whether it's PvP or PvE.
A quick summary of the main things a Priest brings to a group:
* Healing: Cast a large and versatile collection of healing spells (heal-over-time, low-threat heals, fast heals, strong heals, preemptive healing, etc.)
* Protecting a target with Power Word: Shield
* Increasing a player's stamina with the Fortitude buff (on individual players and full groups)
* Increasing resistance to shadow damage with a buff (individual and group versions)
* Increasing a player's spirit, increasing health and mana regeneration (talent-based buff)
* Controlling their own threat through talents
* Dispelling both negative spells on allies and positive spells on enemies
* Resurrecting other players (out of combat)
While Holy Priests are not as effective in damage output, they are argued to be one of the best healing classes in the game, however, this is still debated.
Their primary stats are Spirit for mana regeneration, Intellect for a large mana pool and crits, and Stamina for more hitpoints. Stats obtained from gear, such as Mana points/5 seconds and +damage/healing are also important.
[edit] Shadow Priests
Traditionally, the Shadow tree has provided a very good way to level the priest class, especially after level 40. Via talents and a targeted Spirit and Intellect build, Shadow Priests can have high, sustained DPS and incredibly high survivability with little downtime.
With the changes to the Shadow Tree in 2.0 Shadow Priests are now considered a much more viable class for end-game raiding, acting as mana batteries, for example, with Vampiric Touch and using their other spells to better the efficiency of the raid. Although Shadow Priests lack AoE and natural class abilities to retain mana, this can be alleviated with the use of consumables and the active use of Vampiric Touch.
Shadow Priests can:
* Spec for 25% threat reduction of their shadow spells
* Have a highly mana efficient spell in Mind Flay, increase warlock DPS through the use of shadow vulnerability, and provide good raid flexibility as a class capable of healing and DPS as the situation requires.
* Allow for up to a 45% increase in damage output, which is calculated after any and all bonuses from gear like all spell-casting classes. The only exception to this rule is healing spells.
A quick summary of the main things a Priest brings to a group:
* Healing: Cast a large and versatile collection of healing spells (heal-over-time, low-threat heals, fast heals, strong heals, preemptive healing, etc.)
* Protecting a target with Power Word: Shield
* Increasing a player's stamina with the Fortitude buff (on individual players and full groups)
* Increasing resistance to shadow damage with a buff (individual and group versions)
* Increasing a player's spirit, increasing health and mana regeneration (talent-based buff)
* Controlling their own threat through talents
* Dispelling both negative spells on allies and positive spells on enemies
* Resurrecting other players (out of combat)
While Holy Priests are not as effective in damage output, they are argued to be one of the best healing classes in the game, however, this is still debated.
Their primary stats are Spirit for mana regeneration, Intellect for a large mana pool and crits, and Stamina for more hitpoints. Stats obtained from gear, such as Mana points/5 seconds and +damage/healing are also important.
[edit] Shadow Priests
Traditionally, the Shadow tree has provided a very good way to level the priest class, especially after level 40. Via talents and a targeted Spirit and Intellect build, Shadow Priests can have high, sustained DPS and incredibly high survivability with little downtime.
With the changes to the Shadow Tree in 2.0 Shadow Priests are now considered a much more viable class for end-game raiding, acting as mana batteries, for example, with Vampiric Touch and using their other spells to better the efficiency of the raid. Although Shadow Priests lack AoE and natural class abilities to retain mana, this can be alleviated with the use of consumables and the active use of Vampiric Touch.
Shadow Priests can:
* Spec for 25% threat reduction of their shadow spells
* Have a highly mana efficient spell in Mind Flay, increase warlock DPS through the use of shadow vulnerability, and provide good raid flexibility as a class capable of healing and DPS as the situation requires.
* Allow for up to a 45% increase in damage output, which is calculated after any and all bonuses from gear like all spell-casting classes. The only exception to this rule is healing spells.
Equipment:
Priests can only wear cloth armor. Priests begin with one-handed maces and wands and can learn daggers and staves from Weapon Masters.
[URL=" http://www.wowwiki.com/Wrath_healing_equipment_(cloth)"]Healing cloth gear[/URL]
[URL=" http://www.wowwiki.com/BC_Priest_DPS_Equipment"]DPS cloth gear[/URL] (outdated)
[URL=" http://www.wowwiki.com/Wrath_healing_equipment_(cloth)"]Healing cloth gear[/URL]
[URL=" http://www.wowwiki.com/BC_Priest_DPS_Equipment"]DPS cloth gear[/URL] (outdated)
Talented Building (Updated 11/13/08)
Discipline
58/13/00 Disc raiding
43/28/00 Disc smiter
Holy
20/51/00 Holy high-spirit
Shadow
14/00/57 PvE DPS
58/13/00 Disc raiding
43/28/00 Disc smiter
Holy
20/51/00 Holy high-spirit
Shadow
14/00/57 PvE DPS
redfenix on
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Posts
Nice first post.
Also, I
I'm twice as happy that they have plenty of healers, and am perfectly fine with me as a shadowpriest long-term.
It's certainly new to me, and just as soon as I'm not working, doing homework for grad school, or doing family stuff, I'll be rockin' some BC raiding. Woo!
SE++ Map Steam
I stepped into a VR raid last night with the new guild I'm in and pwned the face off their regular shadow priest. Though I did pull aggro at the very end and got crushed for 11k....hehe.
Heh. Get a soulstone. The shadow priest's "feign" death! We soulstone shadow priests and the DPS warrior more often than any other people.
1. Imp VE - yes or no? Constant small heals for the party is good, but is it necessary? Does it overcome the problem of added threat and in general, how much/how should VE be used in boss fights?
2. Shadow Power - I've been thinking of sacrificing some points in disc to max out this crit talent. Is the increase in DPS a good tradeoff for the increased threat from crits?
3. Faire cards - which deck is the best for spriests?
You know my opinion on #1
#1: no imp ve, your main role in a raid is mana battery, and if the raid NEEDS the extra bit of VE then you should scale back the boss you're working on. The points are better spent in MB cooldown and Crit.
#2: After you're maxed on hit and you can handle your mana, then start uppping your nukes, though I prefer 5/5 Imp MB before Crit. Edit: The only time I've had issues with threat is in 5mans due to the tank just not having enough rage. As long as you don't pull with a MB crit, you should be ok. Edit #2: Cept on VR, which seems to be hit or miss depending on how many times he changes tanks. One time I could only stand a VT/SWP and we killed him during enrage, the other time I went full cycle minus SWD (was in the pit, didn't wanna nuke myself) and was far from the threat ceiling.
#3: http://www.wowhead.com/?item=31890 Blessings Deck/Crusade. Happens to be the best trinket in the game next to Gul'dan
And it sucks because I still beat the people in the elemental shaman/moonkin druid/etc. group.
do your mages never run out of mana? are they magical mages?
I tend to disagree. Since you're likely to end up in a healer group (and thus a pretty important group), that extra hp being constantly delivered is useful and potentially raid saving if someone takes a hit. It's 2 points that can add up to lots of healing. In addition, if you're group is organized enough, you can point out to the healers in your group that you'll have it up all the time so they don't need to worry about topping people off in that group. Particularly if you stack crit in gear and talents and add SWDeath to your DPS rotation. That way you can take a 2-3k SWDeath crit and be back to full health in a few seconds.
Also, in my experience, you're likely to find yourself in a heroic or arena from time to time to replace those extra pieces that just won't drop in the raid instances. Imp VE can be invaluably important in those situations.
We had 3 shadow priests in the raid. I'm the best geared and therefore will be providing the most healing and mana to the warlock tank to help mitigate the spike damage he receives.
And besides, mana isn't such a giant issue on that fight if you use your mana pots earlier and often. And your shadowfiend/evocate as well.
Obviously, if it bounces around all 5 charges, it can pump out twice the healing done of a Greater Heal for half the mana cost. The tricks of getting it to stay on the right people aren't as complicated as I'd previously been discouraged by. The fact that you can toss it 40 yards initially but the subsequent bounces are only 20 yards make this spell stupid powerful.
We did a heroic Shattered Halls with a prot warrior and a feral druid, no CC. It was an absolute breeze. The two of them got the attention of everything around and held the mass of chaos away from the casters (warlock, ele sham, and myself). I could repeatedly toss a PoM at them, it would bounce back and forth doing *far* more healing than either of them were taking damage. A renew/gheal was plenty to top them off while the cooldown finished off. We repeated that on every pull, several times telling the shaman to back up so I didn't have to try as hard, haha. Since the meter qualifies PoM healing as being done by the person who has the PoM on them, they ended up with about the same healing done as I did.
Went into a 3v3 (know that I'm not a big PvPer) and dominated with a fire mage, ele shaman, holy priest combo. Went 9 and 1 in our first week (this was last week, haven't gone again yet). I tossed shields, renews, and lots of PoMs. They ran into the fray and just let the other team beat the PoM back and forth between them. I stood in the back, laughing, and fearing/running from/healing through whatever random melee decided to go after me.
So...am I making revelations everyone else realized in February or is/was it overpowered and under appreciated by more than just me?
I still don't think it warrants extra talent points. Since the healing directly scales with your dps, I'd rather just do more dps with those two talent points.
Think of it this way, you have 2 talent points to spare, do you spent the two talent points to increase the healing off of your dps, or to increase your dps AND your healing AND your mana return? To me, that's an obvious answer
Pretty much. It's good. It's not amazing in raids, but it's certainly very nice.
1. If you don't raid seriously and like to pvp often as shadow I see no harm in putting two points in. However if you are in situation where you "need" a pure pve spec, then I'd say no imp ve.
2. Yes it is. Typically, shadow priests don't keep ve 100 percent of the time up because of threat problems. I only used ve when healers' mana was low and my group needed healing. Raids also value the mana you give back with vt over the hp from ve.
3. The best deck is the crusade deck(or w/e one gives you +10 dmg per cast for a total of 80 dmg). You don't "have to" get it as getting all the cards is difficult sometimes but it's one of the best trinkets in the game for a shadow priest. Good alternatives are icon of the silver crescent,mark of defience and mag's eye.
I'd like an upgraded version someday that leaps to targets taking damage, and healing them when it lands. Instead of leaping to someone in the periphrial areas of the fight and never using the charge.
Even though it's an instant it can't do anything to save a person who's lost 99% of their health, and this makes me sad. If they aren't going to make PW:S useful they really should give us a new oh shit button.
I see your point and agree with you to a degree. Once you fill out the majority of the tree, in my experience, you're likely to find that there aren't necessarily a lot more places to put points that will get you anywhere useful. The build I'm thinking of:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=bxMZZVGgtMtohtEo
At this point, you have pretty much the option to fill Martyrdom or go with Imp VE. For PvP, yah, go for Martyrdom. There's certainly a place for ImpVE over Martyrdom in a strictly PvE playstyle.
Also probably going to respec to this build: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=bxMRzhZZVGgkMpohtEo
Also: can someone remind me of the scale for when you can drop points from shadow focus due to +hit .
76 hit is the cap with 5/5 Shadow Focus
101 hit before you can go to 4/5 Shadow Focus
126 hit before you can go to 3/5 Shadow Focus
152 hit before you can go to 2/5 Shadow Focus
177 hit before you can go to 1/5 Shadow Focus
202 hit before you can go to 0/5 Shadow Focus
Oh and macro your spells to be /cast [target=mouseover] Greater Heal. Because it makes *everything* easier and faster.
I have never leveled a priest before.
I am given to understand that once you get Shadowform it's basically easy mode, but do you guys have any general tips prior to that?
I always go for the Gravestone Sceptre when I'm the right level. Yes, it's in BFD, but it's right near the beginning. Try and rope a higher level into helping you go and kill the turtle boss, get the quest, and leave to collect your sweet, sweet reward. It doesn't take that long.
Yeah, get Improved Wand in Disc, ASAP. Also, the great thing about leveling before you get Shadowform, is a Shadowpriest that can still decently heal is awesome. I waited until lvl 50 to get shadowform and it was good times.
* after spirit tap
and you can heal any instance before outland easily with a shadow spec.
Because it doesn't work.
Except the T5 shoulders look 10x better than the PM shoulders
You don't like the slightly less purple Prophecy look? :P
Can't wait to T5 out of my PM so I can stop being so god damn squishy. But nooo, tanks get first dibs. And then druid tanks. *grumble*
Any guild that handed out loot based on class priority, I'd leave with a quickness.
You need that shit to keep them alive just as much as they need it to stay alive, why should they get the first handouts?
We also had a similar 'tauren clause' for any rare mounts that might drop.