New approach to Holy PvP healing

[olicon]

Flash Heal Rank 11
18% of base mana 40 yd range
1.5 sec cast
Heals a friendly target for 1887 to 2193
(Glyphed to reduce mana cost by 10%)
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Holy Nova Rank 9
20% of base mana
Instant cast
Causes an explosion of holy light around the caster, causing 398 to 462 Holy damage to all enemy targets within 10 yards and healing all party members within 10 yards for 713 to 827. These effects cause no threat.
(about 1000 to 1200 base heal with glyph)
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Circle of Healing Rank 7
21% of base mana 40 yd range
Instant cast 6 sec cooldown
Heals up to 5 friendly party or raid members within 15 yards of the target for 958 to 1058.
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Prayer of Mending Rank 3
15% of base mana 40 yd range
Instant cast 10 sec cooldown
Places a spell on the target that heals them for 1043 the next time they take damage. When the heal occurs, Prayer of Mending jumps to a raid member within 20 yards. Jumps up to 5 times and lasts 30 sec after each jump. This spell can only be placed on one target at a time.
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Firstly, I don't have a priest, so I don't know very well about these abilities. But I'm interested in playing one, so here's some theory crafting.

All of these spells are fast cast spells (1.5sec to instant). Each of them has roughly 1000 base heal for 10% of base mana. I assume they scale very similarly.

My question then, is why don't Holy priests run right along side their PvP buddies so they are always in range of AoE healing. The opposing team would be likely to try to attack a priest that is so close by--but doing so would leave your partner free to take them down (or if you have a tank partner, to protect you). If the damage is split, all the better--less of your AoE heals goes to waste.

I find this tactic to be interesting because if you stack crit chance, you're most likely to crit at least once on you, your partner, or your target using spells like Holy Nova. This gives you an extremely high chance for Surge of Light proc for free smite, or a free Flash Heal. This should give you quite a lot more survivability.


By the way, can Mind Flay crit? And if it can, does it proc Surge of Light as well?

[syanid]

It takes 5 hits from melee class to down fully pvp decked holy priest. Discipline has talents that reduce damage taken / healing received which is why they're hard(er) to kill.

I don't know if MF can proc SoL, it probably can because spell tooltip says "your spell criticals", so it's not saying "only holy spells". However, holy priest will more likely be oom than any other healer in pvp which makes them bad pvp healers, on top of their awful survivabilty. Spells you mentioned, especially holy nova - are expensive. If you spam them, you won't last more than a minute without going oom.

[Bigslick]

In simple terms, discipline is better at single target healing than holy, and holy is better at aoe healing than disc. To be successful in arena, an enemy team will focus fire on a designated target, which means better single target healing (disc) is required.

As in the other response, holy lacks many of the survival talents that allow discipline priests to endure longer in arena. The biggest of these, imo, is the substantially improved PW:S. When you have a MS effect on you or your healing target, the amount absorbed by shields (and if you gear/spec for it, divine aegis) is twice as effective as the diminished amount restored by actual healing done. Holy offers a speed boost and poison removal through it's shield, but the poison will be reapplied in about 1 second by the rogue so this is pretty weak. Also, PS > GS.

Offensively, disc blows holy out of the water. Mana burning is core to priest pvp, and disc does it faster. Disc also is faster and more mana-efficient at dispels - including removing pally DS, where the difference of 1 second can make / break a match. And disc offers more crit through talents. Holy offers.... SoL smites. Nice, but not the same.

Holy does have two particularly appealing spells - lightwell and spirit of redemption. But lightwell can be killed or kited away from, and spirit of redemption, while powerful, can also be kited away from for the duration or simply waited out.

[llDemonll]

All of these spells are fast cast spells (1.5sec to instant). Each of them has roughly 1000 base heal for 10% of base mana. I assume they scale very similarly.

um what? lol.

Flash Heal = 1110.1 healing / 10% mana
Holy Nova = 500 healing / 10% mana
Circle of Healing = 500 healing / 10% mana
Prayer of Mending = ~3300 healing / 10% mana (if you leave it up to jump 5 times)

they all scale differently...by a ways.

instant spells i dont remember the coefficient, but timed spells its (cast time / 3.5) * 100 = % of total spellpower the spell receives.

[olicon]

um what? lol.

Flash Heal = 1110.1 healing / 10% mana
Holy Nova = 500 healing / 10% mana
Circle of Healing = 500 healing / 10% mana
Prayer of Mending = ~3300 healing / 10% mana (if you leave it up to jump 5 times)

they all scale differently...by a ways.

instant spells i dont remember the coefficient, but timed spells its (cast time / 3.5) * 100 = % of total spellpower the spell receives.

I have always thought that 1.5 second spells generally have the same coef as instant casts.
And I meant they are the roughly the same hpm when you are healing 2 people. Which is why I was suggesting running side by side with your partner--so your AoE heals always hit 2 targets.
I was hoping the free SoL procs from critting AoE heals (since they will always be hitting 2 targets) will make up for the relatively inefficient scaling/etc.

As far as base heal goes, I think these spells (plus GH and PW:S) all looks to have very similar HPM. I do not know how well they scale, but I assume that if you pick up most talents, they will all work out to very similar HPM at the end as well. But like I said, I am not sure about this at all.
As far as single target heal goes, I was hoping that the free Flash Heal would keep up Serendipity buff so you can always throw out that enormous GH quickly, which should eat through even MS debuff.

As for the single target focus--I was hoping that having the healer next to the DPS would somewhat distract people from their real objective. It should also make focusing on someone much harder, since the other team could be CC'ed quicker (less distance for my teammate to cover).

And this build wouldn't aim too much at mana burning. Instead of mana burning, we would contribute to the damaging the enemies instead with Mind Flay + Mind Blast + Holy Fire + SoL Smite. And these should play back into proccing more SoL (which is why I was thinking it would be a very crit heavy build).

Overall, point taken. I suppose survivability is much higher for Discipline priest, which becomes the main issue. Thanks for the advice, guys. I might create a priest with this build to play around in BG, but I'll park him far from the arena.

[Ynna]

It takes 5 hits from melee class to down fully pvp decked holy priest. Discipline has talents that reduce damage taken / healing received which is why they're hard(er) to kill.

I don't know if MF can proc SoL, it probably can because spell tooltip says "your spell criticals", so it's not saying "only holy spells". However, holy priest will more likely be oom than any other healer in pvp which makes them bad pvp healers, on top of their awful survivabilty. Spells you mentioned, especially holy nova - are expensive. If you spam them, you won't last more than a minute without going oom.

You could use a build that incorporates Improved Power Word: Shield to improve your survivability.
Then if you use the glyph of PW:S the heal can crit to proc Surge of Light.
I do think Holy can be viable in pvp (not sure, I don't pvp) but not in 2v2. Holy specializes in group healing.

[Deleted]

was tinking of trying holy out in 5v5 and runing in a 3 dps 2 healer team.

the plan was.

priest holy
rogue
shamen resto
mage frost
paly ret

[byahh]

Hey was curious does anyone know if blessed resilience has a internal cooldown???
Thanks

[nikkita]

was tinking of trying holy out in 5v5 and runing in a 3 dps 2 healer team.

the plan was.

priest holy
rogue
shamen resto
mage frost
paly ret

holy is really fun in pvp, i have 893 res so it works, especially in 2 vs 2. but still discipline is much better surviver mainly to my opinion due to the sheilds and divine ageis, and a combination of "suvavability" talents.

in this sort of setup a discipline priest will be much better - PI ing the mage for burst, of the shaman for some burst healing, sheilding the group and penancing/proming (filling when the shamans need and also capable of keeping all up on his own) and mana burning/Mcing/Massdispelling/etc being abig more offensive, while the shammy can focus more on healing (he can mana burn, CC and massdispell).

and for the question: yes several times we got 1 down fast just due to me MCing their healer while 2nd healer was CCed by a anoying rogue, and the best thing is when they trinket out of it: blind invation.

[TwistedPower]

Undead racial works on MC no?

[AetherMcLoud]

Undead racial works on MC no?

I think so seeing as you can WOTF out of Yogg-Sarons (minons) mindcontroll too.