Priest Template – Holy Mage and Healer

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=dxT0...bhZfxt0Mro

 

Discipline Talents -  28 point(s)

# Unbreakable Will - rank 5/5

# Silent Resolve - rank 4/5

# Improved Power Word: Fortitude - rank 2/2

# Inner Focus - rank 1/1

# Meditation - rank 3/3

# Mental Agility - rank 5/5

# Mental Strength - rank 2/5

# Divine Spirit - rank 1/1

# Improved Divine Spirit - rank 2/2

# Force of Will - rank 3/5

 

Holy Talents -  23 point(s)

# Healing Focus - rank 2/2

# Improved Renew - rank 3/3

# Holy Specialization - rank 5/5

# Divine Fury - rank 5/5

# Holy Nova - rank 1/1

# Improved Healing - rank 2/3

# Searing Light - rank 2/2

# Healing Prayers - rank 2/2

# Spirit of Redemption - rank 1/1

 

60 to 70

2 Force of Will (5/5)

2 Spiritual Guidance (2/5)

2 Surge of Light (2/2)

3 Spiritual Guidance (5/5)

1 more point somewhere (Lvl-70, time to respect anyway)

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=dxT0zhxdbxZfxt0Mrqbz

Hello, My name is Trefalgar and i'm a talent template addict. :-)

I thought I would post this talent template for my priest. I've been using it in TBC. It's been working REALLY good for me. It's always hard as a priest to find that balance between being a great healer in dungeons and still being able to go out and solo mobs for questing. I'm at level 62 now and i've really been pleased with my ability to do the quests and kill things on my own.

The *most* important thing with this hybrid approach is having 2 sets of gear in your pack.

Set 1: Healing in Dungeons
Lots of +Healing. Intellect, Stamina and Spirit are great to have also. Mostly +healing and stamina.

Set 2: Soloing Damage
Get every single piece of gear you can grab with as much +Spell Damage, +Damage and Healing and +Spell Crit Rating. Pieces with Spirit will add more spell damage through the Spiritual Guidance talent. As always, +Stamina and +Int are nice additions. +Spell Damage and +Spell Crit Rating are the most important above all others!


With my damage gear on that i've acquired through questing and dungeon runs, I am a Smite machine! I'm doing 2 second smites against even-con mobs for around 600-725 damge and do criticals a LOT for almost 1100 points. It's still isn't as fast and efficient as being fully Shadow, but it getting pretty close. It's not nearly so gimped as it was many months ago before a lot of the talent changes. The plentiful supply of good +spell damage gear in TBC makes this really a viable way to solo and still be a solid primary healer in 5-person dungeons.

Treffers -- have a good shadow spec? As in "what do i do with the points after I've used up a TON in shadow?"

Edit:  here's something I came up with, but I'm sure there's better:  16/0/45

Discipline (0 points)
None

Holy (5 points)
2/2 Healing Focus
3/3 Improved Renew

Shadow (56 points)
5/5 Spirit Tap (Change to Blackout if you are Level 70 and not leveling up)
3/3 Shadow Affinity
2/2 Improved Shadow Word: Pain
5/5 Shadow Focus
2/2 Improved Psychic Scream
5/5 Improved Mind Blast
1/1 Mind Flay
2/2 Improved Fade
2/2 Shadow Reach
5/5 Shadow Weaving
1/1 Silence
1/1 Vampiric Embrace
2/2 Improved Vampiric Embrace
3/3 Focused Mind
5/5 Darkness
1/1 Shadowform
5/5 Shadow Power
5/5 Misery
1/1 Vampiric Touch


That's what I would do if I went to the dark side. That would be one sick DPS machine! I threw in group-friendly talents for running dungeons. This isn't how I would build a PvP Shadow Priest for the battlegrounds.

Nice group-friendly talents:

-Vampiric Embrace and Imp. Embrace: You can generate some decent group healing with these while you are nuking.
-Vampiric Touch: Nice mana regen for the casters in your group. Not worth it for solo grinding alone.
-Full points in Shadow Affinity: I find this negates the increased hate caused by Mind Blast.
-You can take or leave Silence. It's a must for PvP. It's mildly useful in PVE.

I allocated a couple points into Holy.  Holy Focus is a must-have talent IMO for Priest survival regardless of your playstyle.  There were some points left over, and I didn't see anything else I really wanted in Shadow.  3 Points in Improved Renew is nice so you can add in your HoT (now that they stack) and help the healing in raids if needed.

Sabre,

On your 16/0/45 template, here are my recommendations:

5/5 Improved Mind Blast is a must! This is your main DPS spell. Lower cooldown = faster recast = more DPS. Take 3 from Silence or the 1 point in Mental Agility and a couple from Meditation to get to 5/5 in that talent (or some combination of that).

Improved PW:Shield is generally regarded as some kind of cruel trick by the devs. It isn't a talent :-). 5% more damage absorbed is about 50 points (1000 x 5%). That isn't even half of a regular whack from any mob at your level. Take that point and 1 from Silent Resolve to purchse 2/2 Improved PW: Fortitude. That will at least give you 150+ more hit points (and everyone else in your group).

3 silent resolve + 2 PW: fort vs 5 silent resolve:

150 health for each party member vs 8% less threat from spells.

is the 150 really worth it?

It's a tough call.  You have to go one way or another if you want to go deeper into the tree past that point.  The old argument for Imp PW:Fort was that it's only 150 or so hit points per person, but for a 40 person raid it's 6000 extra hit points for the raid (40 people x 150 hit points).  It's 750 extra hit points for a 5-person group.

Shadow Affinity is taking care of your DPS aggro.  Silent Resolve would be there for healing aggro.  Healing aggro usually isn't too bad most of the time.

Some heavy healing endgame raid priests argue that it is a waste to put any points at all into Silent Resolve because "the tank and the rest of the raid should be doing their job."  Meaning they should be keeping mobs off the healers and holding aggro.

What *should* happen in the ideal world and how things actually happen in the heat of battle are often different.  I don't share their overly optimistic view.  Things happen and mistakes are made.  Aggro reducing talents are valuable IMO.

Silent Resolve reads as reducing all threat, both healing AND DPS.

In other words: more nuking before the agro-pull

"150 X 40 = 6K" is a sorta silly arguement.
A: we're going to 25 mans.
B: it's spread out. Quite a few MC mobs hit for well over 500 (and some over 1K); how many times was I in a raid and alive with < 150 health? Not very many times. A couple (heck -- i raided MC for about a year -- maybe even as many as 10), but not very many.

I agree. At that point in the Discipline tree Priests are splitting hairs when they argue one talent is better than another. The arguments are sometimes passionate and often are a stretch of theorycraft.

If you are just trying to dig a little further down Discipline to get to talents like Meditation and Inner Focus, it doesn't make a huge difference which path you take. Even if some argue against the aggro-reducing talents, i'm still a believer in them. Like you said, they give you more room to push the limits. I also believe the first paladin buff for all DPS people in a raid should be Salvation and not Might, Kings or Wisdom. That's 30% more DPS or healing you can pump out before you mangle the combat mechanics of tanking-healing-dps.

Mind Blast is a mana hog. .5 seconds for every point you put in Improved Mind Blast just seems a waste to me.

Mind Blast, Rank 11:
1.5 second cast
8 second cooldown
450 mana
708-748 base damage (Avg = 728)

After your first Mind Blast, it takes 9.5 seconds to cast the next one (8 sec cool down + 1.5 sec cast time). 5/5 Improved Mind Blast lowers the cooldown 2.5 seconds, so you can recast the spell in 7 seconds instead of 9.5 seconds.

728 avg base damage / 9.5 seconds = 76.64 DPS
728 avg base damage / 7 seconds = 104 DPS

5/5 Improved Mind Blast = 36% increase in DPS.

Mind Flay is actually higher DPS if you compare the two side by side and only consider that you are casting 1 spell or the other exclusively.  In practice though, your are doing something like this:

Mind Blast
Mind Flay
Mind Flay (2 or 3 of these)
(Repeat cycle)

So that you are Mind Flaying and then nuking every time the cooldown is up on Mind Blast.

My casting cycle is VT, SW: P, VE, MF,fear rank 1 then wand till deaded. Maybe another MF while mob is running around like a crazed person lol.