Ok, so Eleni is finally getting to where she is getting into the bigger instances and hopefully making that last push on up to 60.  So I figure it is time for me to start figuring out what her end game spec is going to be and I need some help.  I think I am going to go with a Disc/Holy spec, but to be honest I dont have the first clue as to which talents to get from each tree.  I have tried doing research on the priest forums on the main WoW boards, but havent had much luck...everyone says go Holy/Disc or Disc/Holy but noone really says what that is...lol.   So if any of you guys have any suggestions I would really appreciate them.      Also, since I am very new to these over 5 man groups, any tips or advice on healing during the bigger runs is also appreciated.   

May I suggest pinning aella and/or trefalgar in a corner and beating info out of them?

I'm a warrior. I play MT (main tank) most of the time. Therefore, all I can tell you is from my perspective....

1) anything that increases your mana regen, decreases your mana use, and increases your chance to crit is good. more mana means you can keep me alive longer Crit-heals aren't wasted on me either -- love them 2k+ heals!
2) for 90% of mobs, i can be below 1/2 health before you start casting a heal on me. Obviously mileage varies depending on what we're fighting and how hard they hit, but without a single buff on me, I have over 4600 health. Forrtitude pushes me over 5000, and other stuff can move it still higher. This means that when i'm at 50% health, a 2K+ crit heal isn't wasted, and that i've got another 2500 health before I fall over.
3) wait as long as you can to heal me. The base game stops your mana regen for 5 seconds after you finish casting something. There are items/talents that can partially offset this, but this means that the more you cast, the less you regen -- use that wand In other words,unless its dicey, use them big slow heals.
4) DO NOT STRESS if someone dies -- it happens. In certain places, it will happen a lot. Heck, it's entirely likely that you'll die as much as me and maybe more.

Here is my personal talent template right now. I've played with many many different templates, but I have not felt the need to change from this for many months:

Discipline Talents (22 points)
• Unbreakable Will - 5/5 points
• Improved Power Word: Shield - 3/3 points
• Martyrdom - 2/2 points
• Mental Agility - 5/5 points
• Focused Casting - 1/1 point
• Mental Strength - 5/5 points
• Inner Focus - 1/1 point

Holy Talents (29 points)
• Improved Renew - 5/5 points
• Holy Specialization - 5/5 points
• Spiritual Healing - 5/5 points
• Subtlety - 5/5 points
• Inspiration - 4/5 points
• Improved Flash Heal - 2/2 points
• Improved Prayer of Healing - 2/2 points
• Spirit of Redemption - 1/1 point

Shadow Talents (0 points)
• None

Aroura also used this template. I am not sure how Aella is specced. This talent template of mine was also published on the Warcry fansite (Tref /beams with pride, hehe)

http://wow.warcry.com/index.php/con...riest.html

They key focus of this build is for critical heals that trigger Inspiration (4/5 gives the target a +20% armor boost). This talent template is excellent for being the main healer for the main tank in a raid. I also worked this template to get the Improved Prayer of Healing talent which reduces the mana cost on the spell by 20% (which is a lot). I use that spell any time there are 3 or more people in my group who have taken a couple hundred points of damage -- it is extremely mana efficient. A great trick is to cast Inner Focus (next cast = 0 mana usage, +35% crit rate) then cast Prayer of Healing a short ways into a tough fight. Don't wait until you are out of mana. With all the crit bonuses, most of the group ends up with the Inspiration armor bonus for a good part of the battle. I have also heard of priests spamming the level 1 flash heal on the MT in MC boss fights just to keep the Inspiration buff up on them.

The big thing missing from my template is Improved Power Word: Fortitude. Most priests have this talent. I needed those 2 points to put elsewhere to get other key talents. Improved PW:F is a nice talent, but it really only adds another 167 or so hit point above the normal spell buff. That isn't enough to make the difference between life and death most of the time, so I used the points elsewhere. I don't think you can support squishies with shields effectively without the Improved Power Word: Shield spell. That reduces the cooldown on the target by a very noticeable amount.

***ALTERNATE TEMPLATES***

High Discipline to Divine Spirit (31 point talent):

Divine Spirit is a nice buff for fellow casters in end-game raid dungeons like Molten Core. It is nice to have one of these priests in the raid. You have to give up some Holy points to climb Discipline all the way to the top though. This is a very good build too, you could take Meditation also to get more mana regeneration.

Holy/Disc template with Meditation:

Meditation has some fans and some critics. It is certainly good for really long boss fights. You have to ask yourself how often you are in fights that are that long. You use up a good chunck of talent points getting to Meditation in the Discipline tree for 15% mana regeneration in combat. That only amounts to about an extra 9 points of mana per tick. Is that a lot? Yes and no. It is hard to decide.

Shadow -- I don't know as much about this, but heavy into shadow and rest into discipline for a real face melting good time.

**Generally Accepted Good Talents (key talents to shoot for in a template)**

DISCIPLINE TREE:

There aren't ANY bad talents in this tree at all--kudos to Blizzard on the design of this tree. Here are the talents that are least helpful for a healing Priest though: Silent Resolve, Wand Specialization, Force of Will, Improved Inner Fire (debatable).

HOLY TREE:

The “Priest Community” generally accepts these talents as the key Holy talents required for a good healer. Everything else is per your own preferences.

Core Holy Talents (10 points or 17 points):
[the 10 point option]
5 Points in Improved Renew (+15% healed for Renew spell)
5 Points in Spiritual Healing (+10% healed for ALL healing spells)
[continue for 17 point option]
5 more points somewhere – most pick Subtlety for 20% healing aggro reduction
2 points in Improved Flash Heal (70% chance to avoid interruption on Flash Heals)

I personally like Improved Prayer of Healing because I use that a lot. I also like Sprit of Redemption. It goes off when you die and casts a 1000 point group heal plus a 1000 point group heal-over-time spell (total 2000 points healing to the whole group). It only costs 1 talent point. The usefulness of this talent is debated in the community, but it is cheap if you are going for Improved Prayer of Healing anyway. It is not a key talent to shoot for though. You also have to die to use it :-( It isn’t bad if you are totally OOM on a boss battle and make the final push by committing suicide for another massive heal. The rest of the group will stay up for a while longer.

Holy Specialization (+5% to crit heal) is important for an Inspiration talent build.

This tree is most likely to get changed in the 1.10 patch (Priest class gets attention).

Currently, very few priests if any justify going 31 points into Holy. The sad fact is that Greater Heal takes far too long to cast to use it in high level instances. So I would recommend against getting Improved Healing, Master Healer or Holy Nova.

***KEY GEAR to get:***

Good gear is very important. It is as important (if not sometimes more) than the talents you pick.

The primary stats for a healing support priest are Intellect, Spirit and then Stamina in that order. Other important gear bonuses include “+ X mana / 5 seconds”, +healing, and +critical spell chance.

I recommend focusing on the acquisition of +Intellect gear first until you have a mana pool between 6500-7000 *without* any buffs at all. At that point you have enough to be a good healer. With buffs in raids such as Arcane Brilliance and Blessing of Kings, you will often have 8000 – 8500 total mana.

Formulas to remember when picking gear:

*1 point of Intellect adds 15 points to your total mana pool.

*4 points of Spirit will add 1 point of mana regeneration per tick (every 2 seconds) after the “5-second rule” is over.

*1 point of Stamina will give you 10 more points of health.

*The efficiency increase from +healing gear is very complicated and depends on your talents and how you heal – what spells you use a lot. Renew benefits 100% from the bonus, Flash Heal only gets 43% of the increased healing bonus. It is dependent on the length of spell casting time. As a general rule of thumb, you need to increase your +healing stats by a ratio of 4:1 or 5:1 over intellect lost in order for new pieces to improve your performance. So if you lose 10 points of Intellect bonus by replacing an existing piece of gear for one with +healing bonuses, you would need to gain +40 to +50 points in +healing bonuses to make it an improvement for you. That is a generally accepted rule of thumb in the priest community.

You have to really consider the math carefully when it comes to picking mana regeneration compared to higher intellect on talents and gear. Except for really high level boss fights (Molten Core and higher, not like in UBRS or anything like that), the fights really just are not long enough to justify losing a lot of intellect for mana regeneration. I personally carry around a couple pieces of mana regeneration armor in my pack. I wear the higher intellect pieces for easy runs in Stratholme, BRS and Scholo, etc. I put on the mana regeneration armor sometimes before longer fights when I know they are coming.

1. Devout armor set. These pieces are good for starting to build a nice wardrobe. Don’t burn out trying to collect the whole set. You will eventually replace them with better pieces even before Molten Core if you raid BRS, Scholo, Strath and especially DM long enough.

2. Argent Crusader or Trindlehaven Staff. Argent Crusader is a guaranteed reward from completing a long quest line in the Plaguelands that requires a 5-person run of both sides of Stratholme (Scarlet and Undead). Trindlehaven Staff has a pretty good drop rate from the end boss in LBRS. Both staves are comparable quality. Save your money and get a +22 Int enchant on one of these. The staff with the enchant will give you 500-600 more mana.

3. Dancing Silver Staff. This is your mana regeneration staff, and it is a quest reward from the Burning Steppes quest line starting with Broodling Essesnces. It has +29 spirit, so save up and get the +20 spirit enchant on it. Install a weapon swap UI Mod like the warriors and rogues use to swap out your Argent Crusader/Trindlehaven on the fly for this staff when you are in healing rotations or have time to regen mana (not casting). Your regen rate will go through the roof!

4. Mindsurge Robe. This has 10 mana / 5 sec regeneration and still has a decent Intellect bonus. It has a decent drop rate from DM North tribute runs.

5. Padres Trousers. These have good stats and mana regen. They are the best healing priest pants in the game short of MC gear. They drop off a boss in DM West.

6. Eye of the Beast trinket. Gives you +2% spell crit rate. Reward for quest to kill General Drakkisath in UBRS. This is a good trinket for triggering Inspiration armor boosts.

7. Dual Mindtap Talisman trinkets. This trinket drops off a mob in DM west. You can equip 2 of these potentially. They give 11 mana / 5 sec regeneration!

8. WANDS: Mana Channeling Wand (DM North, Cho’Rush drop), Bonecreeper Stylus (Scholo drop), Stormrager Wand (Plaguelands Quest reward), or Dragon Finger of Healing (green BOE drop from various places, can buy on AH).

9. RINGS: Band of the Hierophant, Blood of the Martyr, Emerald Flame Ring, Ring of Demonic Guile.

10. Shadowy Laced Handwarps – this are a common drop off the Baroness in UD Strath. They have good +Int and also have mana regeneration stats.

There is a lot more gear you could consider that is fairly realistic to get. The above list is a great place to start. Dire Maul has a LOT of great pre-MC gear. There are also great rewards from various Plaguelands quests. I like quest rewards because you can always get into groups as a priest, and there is no mystery about when the item will drop for you.

*** TIPS ON PRIEST HEALING ***

UI MODS:

If you want to be any good at healing, you must install these UI mods:

1.  CT_RaidAssist.  This lets you see the health information for everyone in a raid (not just your own group).  It has lots of tools to coordinate with other healers.  You can see if buffs and Renews have already been cast on everyone in the raid.  It can also show you if someone else has already started casting a rez on a player.  That lets you pick a different player to rez, which gets the raid back on their feet much faster.  The benefits of coordination only work when the other healers are also using CT_RA.  The documentation is sketchy.  It takes a little effort to get CT_RA setup and using all the features.  Once you understand it, it is easy though.

2.  Watchdog (my preference) or CastParty.  These are “click-cast” UI Mods.  They provide an alternate set of player frames on your screen and they also integrate with CT_RA so that you can click-cast on other raid members.  I turn off the Watchdog interface for multi-party raids.  In 5-person groups, Watchdog lets me monitor pet health easily.  Click-Casting is a setup where you program mouse click/keyboard combinations to cast spells while targeting a player frame.  You do not have to target the player – just their targeting frame.  That alone makes a big difference in chaotic fights with people moving around.  Here is my watchdog click-casting setup to show as an example:

Left-Click: Flash Heal
Shift Key + Left Click: Renew
Ctrl Key + Left Click: Greater Heal
Alt Key + Left Click: Prayer of Healing

Right Click: Power Word: Shield
Shift Key + Right Click: Abolish Disease
Alt Key + Right Click: Dispel Magic

3.  Decursive UI Mod.  This mod monitors everyone in your group and raid for harmful debuffs cast on them by enemies.  CT_RA also has this built in now, but Decursive is more powerful.  These mods understand what debuffs you can cure, and they know who in your raid needs curing.  All you have to do is press 1 button and the mods automatically target an affected player and cast the correct cure on them.  Decursive is more powerful because you can program priorities – like the Main Tank is always cured first if they need it, then the MA then any priests, etc., however you want to prioritize things.

HEALING TECHNIQUES:

Renew Renew Renew.  It is your best friend.  Learn to love this spell :-)  It is instant cast, very low aggro and benefits tremendously from talents.  You gain 25% more healing and -10% mana use with my talent template above.  Keep this spell on the main tank.  On most normal trash mob fights in most instances you can almost keep the main tank at even health with this spell alone.  Pop it on to anyone in the group or raid that has taken a couple hundred points of damage.  At level 60, with the right talents, it heals 1012 points over 15 seconds.

Prayer of Healing: HOWTO.  This spell uses a lot of mana and is slow to cast, but it heals everyone in your group 1000+ health in one shot.  It is not mana or time efficient to use on only 1 or 2 people.  If you have 3 or more people in the group that have taken several hundred points of damage, use it.  This happens in mass zerg fights and also on when you are fighting mobs that do AE damage.  Another advantage is that it avoids some line-of-sight problems in chaotic fights.  Learning to use this spell effectively will increase your ability to heal good.  The decision to hit people with Renews or to cast Prayer of Healing is a subtle art form ;-). 

Flash Heal.  Use this spell to top people off in combat.  It is a fast spell and it benefits from a lot of talents.  At level 60 with talents it will heal over 1000 points of damage.

Power Word: Shield.  Seasoned priests use this spell sparingly.  It has a very specific purpose.  It is very good for that purpose – instant cast emergency saves.  It has poor mana/health efficiency, it generates a lot of front-loaded aggro, and it has a target cooldown that you have to pay attention to.  It should mostly be used on cloth armor casters (Mages, Warlocks and other Priests) who have gotten the attention of the enemy.  It is great for them!  The mana/health efficiency becomes secondary because shielded casters can continue to cast without most interruption.  I tend to cast it on mages and warlocks the moment I see their health bar drop.  You have to pay attention to those pesky Locks though, because they might just be burning off health for some more mana :-).  It is almost always better to just heal a tank or other melee fighter than to cast a shield on them.  This is where skill and judgment come into play.  If you think you have time, heal them.  If things are going crazy, shield them and then cast Renew or Flash Heal immediately after (after 1 sec global spell cooldown). 

Greater Heal.  This is a very slow spell (4 seconds).  It heals way too much (around 3000 points).  The problem in WoW in high level instances is that people drop health fast.  Even highly armored tanks only have around 5000 health.  You simply can’t allow a tank to drop down that far safely most of the time.  And when you crit heal with this spell, most of the extra healing is not utilized.  I use this spell on people right after they are resurrected to take them right back to full health in one shot.  That is about all.  There are some complex healing strategies that use this spell in healing teams for Molten Core bosses.

Last healing-specific tip:  You interrupt your healing if you move (except renew).  I use this as a tool.  When I am in a big raid and there are several healers throwing spells around, sometimes I see someone get topped off right while I am casting on them.  If that happens to you, just nudge the forward key and take a step.  It will stop the cast and save your mana.  CT_RA has some built-in calculator to try and stop these heals for you.  I trust my skill more. 

One last general tip:  Get a good wand.  You can add a little DPS while you regenerate mana in a fight.  If you see everything is fine, then stop healing and start wanding.  Just be aware that it takes a second to stop the auto-wand action and resume spell casting.

Great post - I'm looking for this exact information for Kir, too. The goal is to get her to 60 as well.

I just thought of another tip this morning.

In your CT_RaidAssist and Watchdog/CastParty mods, set the health bar displays to show health deficit information. That is the reverse of most defaults. By default, the game and 3rd party mods show how much health a player currently has. You want to see how much health a person has *lost*, with a numerical display. The health bar goes down, but the number shows something like -1250. Displaying health bars this way helps you make those split-second decisions about what spell to cast or when to cast it. You don't normally want to cast a Flash Heal on someone who has only lost 300-400 health. It is better to wait and see if the fight ends or they take more damage. It is harder to judge that based on remaining health and without a numeric display. The health bar for a mage and a warrior are often the same length. One represents 2500 health and one represents 6000 health. A warrior who is at 50% can take a Greater Heal. A mage at 50% only needs a Flash Heal. You have to see the numbers to make good judgement calls.

Here is how I personally would spend my talent points if I went as a high-Discipline priest to get the Divine Spirit (31 point) talent. This template is not as common, but it is very nice to have at least 1 priest in a large raid with this template. You will be a great healer and a mana-regeneration powerhouse!

I would go this path in a heartbeat if/when I had the priest epic set that gives an additional 15% mana regeneration set bonus (Transcendence Armor i think). You would have massive Spirit and a combined 30% in-casting mana regeneration rate (Set Bonus + Meditation Talent). Combine that with "+X mana / 5 sec" gear and you would be amazing!

Divine Spirit Mana Regeneration Priest
Level: 60
Discipline Talents (33 points)
• Unbreakable Will - 5/5 points
• Improved Power Word: Shield - 3/3 points
• Martyrdom - 2/2 points
• Improved Power Word: Fortitude - 2/2 points
• Focused Casting - 1/1 point
• Mental Agility - 5/5 points
• Mental Strength - 5/5 points
• Improved Inner Fire - 3/3 points
• Inner Focus - 1/1 point
• Meditation - 5/5 points
• Divine Spirit - 1/1 point

Holy Talents (18 points)
• Improved Renew - 5/5 points
• Spiritual Healing - 5/5 points
• Subtlety - 5/5 points
• Holy Fire - 1/1 point
• Improved Flash Heal - 2/2 points

Shadow Talents (0 points)
• None

Real advice for real priests!!!!
Dump the healing and dicipline all together...that's what potions are for!
C'mon folks, we are instrements of God.... And God hates the Horde! So go shadow all the way and Melt Faces, if anyone complains then Melt their face as well and rez them and melt it again!
See you in Battle,
Soul

LOL

Souljur.... <3

Souljur :-) ! ! !