Disc Priest Arena - Help!

[Crazyhawk]

Hey everyone,

I have recently started playing my priest seriously in arena with a frost mage. We are at approximately 1700 rating, and I'm beginning to be unable to stay alive long enough against rogue teams, or decent double dps teams. I'm looking for suggestions on how to play against these teams. Most of the time I can manage fine against caster teams, however melee will destroy me.

This is my armory:
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...dorei&n=Misere

Any tips on rotation of spells, when to cc, mana burn or burst would be greatly appreciated. Advise on gearing, enchanting or gemming would be great also.

Thanks

[Immapwnu]

I would recommend reading Dirtydawgs Frost mage disc priest Strat on arena junkies in 2s. The strat is from a patch or two ago but it tells you the strengths and weaknesses of this comp as well as many strats against various comps. Also the commentary is very helpful too.

[morpie]

First of all there are a few things wrong with your spec, I think all disc priests would agree that under no circumstances would you make a disc spec without Inner Focus. One of the best tools you have in arena is Inner Focu>Divine Hymn while being out of line of sight of the opposing team and still being able to heal your teammate for big numbers.

Depending on your playstyle, you might consider the spec I currently have (I choose Reflective Shield, even though not a lot of people have it, I think its a great boost to your damage)
http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-ta...arpie&gn=Kapow

As far as your gemming/enchanting choices, I might have chosen some stamina instead of spell power, depending on how much you get focused.

I haven't played mage/priest in high ratings much I believe your strength as a combo is that you are able to reset almost all fights as many times as you want to get a good burst and CC chain in to make a kill. The smite spec will do you good I think since you will be assisting with your mage's nuking a lot.

[gaymer77]

Correct me if I'm mistaken but didn't they make the hand rockets not usable in arena? If I'm right you should immediately change your glove "enchant" to an armor kit or spellpower which would benefit you a whole lot more. Also you should take out Absolution and Searing Light so you can pick up Inner Focus and max out Divine Aegis.

[morpie]

Correct me if I'm mistaken but didn't they make the hand rockets not usable in arena? If I'm right you should immediately change your glove "enchant" to an armor kit or spellpower which would benefit you a whole lot more. Also you should take out Absolution and Searing Light so you can pick up Inner Focus and max out Divine Aegis.

Searing Light is a must for smite specs, not sure it's really that viable with his gear level though. But yeah Divine Aegis should be maxed out, especially when having crit talents/gear.
I'm almost certain that rocket gloves are usable in arena, at least I got hit by what I assume was that couple of days ago.

[morpie]

[N ]
1: Get rid of glyph of smite and get inner fire glyph.
2: Drop searing light, it's pointless.
3: INNER FOCUS is a MUST.

Imo. Don't bother fully specing out the 50/100% talents like renewed hope and grace. Just spec 50%, i find them procing all the time anywayz and you can put more points into Guardian and INNER FOCUS :P.

Try this spec.

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#bxIbuIGVRcosfktbezc

Searing Light is in no way pointless. It's the whole point of the smite spec, that combined with the smite glyph yields 30% more smite damage which is immense. What this guy is suggesting is more like the cookie cutter spec, but it's really up to how you play your 2v2 games; if you assist a lot on damage then the smite spec is the way to go, if you spend more of your time doing other stuff like... Well I don't know what else you would be doing, that's why I'm favoring the smite spec. The way I see it, you don't really gain much from speccing/glyphing that way besides having a bit more migitation but you also loose the free heal when you shield someone.

Getting back on the topic of you dropping to melees, especially with rogues, it's a good idea to get an addon like Afflicted that shows enemy cooldowns such as kick, practice a lot on fake casting and if they buy it you are free to spam-heal yourself up. This works the best on mages in my experience and is a crucial thing to do so you don't spend 8 seconds not being able to heal.

[gaymer77]

on a semi-related note, your holy spec glyphs need to be changed out too. You have both Circle of Healing and Pain Suppression glyphs in there which makes no sense since both require 40 in their respective trees to get.

[Flane]

Imo Inner Focus is overrated anyways, i know that you have a free spell that has also 25% additional chance to crit, but really... over 2min cooldown? Will one free crit change the tides of a battle that much? :P
Same goes for Silent Resolve, which i aim to drop, all in all, making enemy use approx. one/two dispels more to get you off buffs isn't that groundshaking to be worth a 3-point talent... And you're not fighting against dispell-teams all the time anyways, so imo this talent gets wasted as often as it is useful.
Also, i dont know why people underestimate Reflective Shield so much. You're helping your arena partner to dps the attacker down without doing pretty much anything, and its funny to see a rogue kill himself anyways


Meh, its up to which skills you find useful

[TwistedPower]

Imo Inner Focus is overrated anyways, i know that you have a free spell that has also 25% additional chance to crit, but really... over 2min cooldown? Will one free crit change the tides of a battle that much? :P
Same goes for Silent Resolve, which i aim to drop, all in all, making enemy use approx. one/two dispels more to get you off buffs isn't that groundshaking to be worth a 3-point talent... And you're not fighting against dispell-teams all the time anyways, so imo this talent gets wasted as often as it is useful.
Also, i dont know why people underestimate Reflective Shield so much. You're helping your arena partner to dps the attacker down without doing pretty much anything, and its funny to see a rogue kill himself anyways


Meh, its up to which skills you find useful

Reflective shields only works on yourself. If you dont get atked it is worthless. Innerfocus can be used to keep you mana regen at 100% as well as saving a high mana cost so yes it does change the tide of a match. Dropping silent resolve is just stupid but for some reason you do not know why. But that is OK it is realy funny when stupid priests get owned by shamens and other priests.

And if you loose it does not realy matter what spells YOU find usefull cuase you are dead. You have no idea what you are talking about.

[harky]

Inner Focus + Divine Hymn is game breaking. Reflective Shields is pretty overrated actually, not underrated. I don't have it because it can break CC, which can cost you a game when it happens, or worse.

Personally I think 54/17 should be the new cookie cutter because it encourages the style of play that Priests are good at and helps bring forward what you really are... a second/third DPS. :P I think 3/3 Absolution is required for the same reason. Saves massive amounts of mana at the start of fights, especially against other Priest teams. Likewise I don't think Mana Burn is worth a crap anymore. You're going to cost a team more mana with Smite than Mana burn these days. I only use it (and MB/MC) to bait interrupts.

[Chestur]

Harky, would you mind posting the 54/17 spec that you discussed?

[Daelos]

Definetly go smite spec for Mage/Priest, I can't even think of playing without it when I'm doing 2s with this comp : )