Archangel without Atonement?

[Rawrzer]

Looking for community input on a build that uses the healing buff of Archangel without the temptation to just become a Smite Priest using Atonement. I figure it is pretty easy to keep the buff for Archangel up with Holy fire ticking on the boss, allowing you go go about your regular business of doing raid heals and triage healing.

I have dropped Inspiration because I currently raid with two Shaman (25 man size) and was looking at logs and their damage reduction buff was up way more often than mine was and I was concerned that these points were wasted. Here is a link to what I was thinking:

http://www.wowhead.com/talent#bfGorosbfoMocuZh:mVcdq

Thanks for your thoughts!

[zakaluka]

I don't understand this. Holy fire is a gigantic heal, with as much throughput as flash and more efficiency than penance. And its overheal is going to be very low too. If you're casting HF every 10 seconds, you really need atonement or you're losing tons of throughput.

If your inspiration uptime was poor, you're also not GHealing much. In fact since you trimmed ToT off your build, I'm more convinced - lose SoS or 1 point EH / DP, pick up atonement. Go look at your logs and see how much FH+Bind+GH are together, I think you'll be surprised how little each point of emp.healing is getting you.

[Rawrzer]

GH, BH, Heal and FH were a combined 3% of my healing over the course of a night. What I was trying to accomplish was getting a stronger PoH push (which was 28 percent of my healing) to help in high damage areas. I can see that dropping a point in EH wouldn't be a huge loss of healing power and could almost be brought lower (almost nil) with little notice.

Good catch.

[Demonidze]

thats how i play my disc raid healing priest. just stack atonement for 5 stacks then archangel and go for normal spells. its very nice output and fun to play.

[Deleted]

I've actually being toying with this build for the last few weeks well not the exact build as the op http://www.wowhead.com/talent#bfrorosbsRMochMZb

When I did have atonement healing I found my self focusing too much on it for healing and ended up forgetting half of my other spells and the fact that I was a healer and not a dps ( low self control when it comes to seeing big healing numbers from dps spells ) so I removed it in favor of only utilizing AA for the healing buff, I still have the majority of SoS spec talents -1 in SoS & mental agility as I don't generally chain shields on the tank anyways. So far it's been working out pretty good though at times it's hard to cast a smite or HF to build stacks when there is healing required.

[sephora]

Using an AA build without Atonement, imo, is very situational. The only fight I can see this actually being beneficial is HM Yor'sahj. As disc, you can help dps and get the benefit of healing buff and a pretty neutral mana return. But, you wouldn't want atonement healing because with purple debuff, it will cause stacks. For any other HM progression, I would not sacrifice those 3 pts for AA w/o Atonement as they are much more useful elsewhere.

Other fights you *would* want the atonement healing such as for HM Ultraxion and HM Spine.

[Deleted]

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...talent/primary

I saw this Blood Legion priest build a couple of days ago and I was really surprised. In fact, if someone told me he was using this build i'd had say this was useless. But since a top pro wow player uses it, it might be more useful than I thought.

[Demonidze]

its a raid healer disc aa build, why you so surprised?

[Deleted]

its a raid healer disc aa build, why you so surprised?

Because that build is the most stupid thing ever? It is not standard in any way and I can't think of why one would choose such a build unless it is for a very specific encounter. In my opinion, as a general raid healer build it sucks.

Playing in a top guild doesn't mean you are a top player. They are most likely above average but you'd be surprised how "bad" some people in top guilds are.

[Soisoisoi]

Playing in a top guild doesn't mean you are a top player. They are most likely above average but you'd be surprised how "bad" some people in top guilds are.

See my sig.

OT: I can see the benefit of AA, but without Atonement you are wasting a lot of healing. You're better off getting it anyway imo.

[Demonidze]

Because that build is the most stupid thing ever? It is not standard in any way and I can't think of why one would choose such a build unless it is for a very specific encounter. In my opinion, as a general raid healer build it sucks.

Playing in a top guild doesn't mean you are a top player. They are most likely above average but you'd be surprised how "bad" some people in top guilds are.

why would it suck?!? coz it doesnt have inspiration? if you run 25 man there is high chance there is a shaman in your group that allready apply it to tank, and very high chance there is a tank healing disc or another holy priest who apply it. what else your standart build has? 2/2 for lower fiend cd? well maybe if you dont have mana problem then this is not nessesary? also as raid healer i allmost NEVER use gheal, so why take talent that boost my gheal ? for lulz? srsly, get a clue before trolling a very legitimate build.

taking atonement isnt really a must? just use holy fire each time its off cd to get 5 stacks then archangel. its very good output, why do you think its bad?!? jeezes, if its not standart then its bad? you guys really need to stop reading EJ, refer to it like its some kind of wow bible and use some common sense instead.

[Deleted]

You are actually wasting no healing if you never plan to use atonement for healing, the times I used smites and holy fires was when generally no one needed healing or as a quick cast in between PoH casts so even if I did have atonement the healing from it would be mostly overheal.

I have actually respec-ed my off spec to build into atonement but dropped mental agility all together in favor of full SoS talents, at this stage I don't really require the reduced mana cost on shield only because even if I was to spam it for the odd massive incoming damage mana still isn't an issue.

btw in regards to the 4pc T13 set I cast a 70k shield on our tank just before impale on DW and the freaking thing never broke, its good that the tank never required any healing but its bad that I didn't get even the normal rapture proc, also I think blizzard should make the sound different for the double shield proc as other then watching the absorb tracker it's impossible to tell when it's proc-ed.

[Deleted]

why would it suck?!? coz it doesnt have inspiration? if you run 25 man there is high chance there is a shaman in your group that allready apply it to tank, and very high chance there is a tank healing disc or another holy priest who apply it. what else your standart build has? 2/2 for lower fiend cd? well maybe if you dont have mana problem then this is not nessesary? also as raid healer i allmost NEVER use gheal, so why take talent that boost my gheal ? for lulz? srsly, get a clue before trolling a very legitimate build.

taking atonement isnt really a must? just use holy fire each time its off cd to get 5 stacks then archangel. its very good output, why do you think its bad?!? jeezes, if its not standart then its bad? you guys really need to stop reading EJ, refer to it like its some kind of wow bible and use some common sense instead.

If you think I am an EJ reader, you are very much mistaken. Anyone who can play this game and has good game sense doesn't need an EJ guide or any of that kind to heal. Common sense is what makes me think that build is stupid. Let's have take a look at it then from the "raid healer AA build".

• What talents are you getting by omitting Atonement? Strength of Soul? Weren't you raid healing?
• You say you hardly ever use Greater Heal, yet there is three points in Empowered Healing. Go figure.

[zakaluka]

Ariadne 1, world 0!

Top guilds get by because of attrition. If you spend 30 hours a week progressing, and you have a huge pool of people to recruit from at will - people who are really bad find the door pretty quickly.

Being a healer in a top guild doesn't mean you have some magic trick up your sleeve to heal 50% more. It means everyone in the guild is avoiding damage correctly, and you have decent game sense too. It also means that you're literally going to spend 30 hours this week on spine.

Enjoy

[Deleted]

To be honest now the spec without atonement isnt all that bad if used correctly your only missing out on on a few heals from holy fire because you generally don't pop AA on cooldown and over all I would say a non atonement build player is healing more via PoH or any other heal tbh over casting more smites or holy fires.

That said if an atonement spec-ed player was to cast with the same goal i.e using as little smites or holy fires as possible then their over all healing will be slightly better then someone casting the same rotation without atonement.

[Affiniti]

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...talent/primary

I saw this Blood Legion priest build a couple of days ago and I was really surprised. In fact, if someone told me he was using this build i'd had say this was useless. But since a top pro wow player uses it, it might be more useful than I thought.

So I suppose I can tackle this question. Damage had been tight for our first kills on Heroic Spine and Heroic Madness, so I spent a lot of time when healing requirements had been minimal on simply dpsing things (Tendon/Wing Tentacle on Platforms 1-3/etc). I ran with the AA build mostly for kicks, it doesn't affect a whole lot but the extra mana + additional throughput is nice since I am dpsing anyways. To use a good example I would dps a tentacle then pop AA at 70% when the adds come out and we take increased damage.

Is it a deal breaker? Nah not really. Is it a free bonus because I am damaging anyways? Yep. I only lost 1 point in Inner Sanctum and 2 points in Train of Thought, and was dpsing anyways, so why not?

Reasons for not speccing atonement with it is fairly straightforward for Madness. A Shield on the tank is mandatory for Impale, but I didn't want to NOT shield them prior to impale. I generally keep a permanent shield on the tank and Flash heal off Weakened soul so I have high uptimes on a tank shield and can get one on the tank right before Impale finishes it's cast.

I do NOT run the AA build on general fights, I just haven't gotten around to respeccing after our raid week ended with a Heroic Madness kill on Wednesday night.

Playing in a top guild doesn't mean you are a top player. They are most likely above average but you'd be surprised how "bad" some people in top guilds are.

we'll let that one be shall we? :P

[Demonidze]

If you think I am an EJ reader, you are very much mistaken. Anyone who can play this game and has good game sense doesn't need an EJ guide or any of that kind to heal. Common sense is what makes me think that build is stupid. Let's have take a look at it then from the "raid healer AA build".

• What talents are you getting by omitting Atonement? Strength of Soul? Weren't you raid healing?
• You say you hardly ever use Greater Heal, yet there is three points in Empowered Healing. Go figure.

Empowered healing is because there is really nothing else to take and also it boosts flash heal and binding heal which are quite frequently used for raid healing.

now srsly stop trolling.

[Kelesti]

I remember running an Archangel build without Atonement. It was Holy, though, and because of that I can/do see logic behind the "it's not really healing anyways". Afterall, you don't (or shouldn't) use Atonement during high damage periods, you use it in low damage to help in the high damage periods.

I was just never comfortable with the idea of spending GCDs (as Discipline, or mana as Holy) doing zero healing. Well, that's not completely true, I just couldn't take advantage of the build in t12 content, nor have I bothered to try it for a t13 build now that Heavenly Voice is required. And as Zaka points out, Holy Fire alone is a pretty hefty heal, and the only fight to miss it on is purple phase Yorsahj (which you can still smite before hand, as an Archangel boosted Greater Heal has a pretty solid return for only a single debuff).

I do agree with Ariadne, and zakaluka, in that you can't blindly follow top guilds because what they do to succeed is an execution thing more than a personal skill level at their class thing (Remember, Paragon's priests all were playing their undergeared druids, and badly, in Cataclysm's beta, but were pulling off kills). Not that they're bad players, just that the things they're guaranteed to be good at are fight mechanics, more than anything else.

Signs of a bad priest in a top guild? Aliena. Enough said.