[Priest] State of Holy - 4.0.1

[Kelesti]

Huzzah, Chakra. The only thing that's better than it is the fact we have Healing Consecrate, and Paladins don't!

Welcome to the Holy Priest 4.0 discussion, now that the patch has gone live. I'm hoping that we can house our current builds, playstyles, gear choices, etc here for the next two months while we wait for Cataclysm to launch, thus beginning the process anew. Questions, concerns, comments, your own findings, all are welcome here.

What are your findings, now that you've had time to mess around with our dirty little tree of awesome?

Edit: This is a continuation of an older thread.

[Feigr]

I am overall very pleased with how our new Holy tree has turned out.
The only thing I can say that I will miss is the old Surge of Light, but I understand why that talent was maybe a bit too much in the lvl 85 world of healing.

Chakra is working great, even though I haven't that much chance to use it yet since it's not really needed in 5-mans and I haven't done any serious raiding yet. It might even be a bit dangerous to get too used to being able to just spam away in Chakra: PoH like we can do now but won't really be able to do at lvl 85, even though it is a lot of fun.

Reforging for me has been a very nice addition to the game as well and with the extra haste and mastery I now have I will be even better at healing, I hope. It is an interesting addition to both theorycrafting and customization.

Not being able to use Guardian Spirit as much as we used to is a bit of a bummer, I did not feel like they needed to do what they did with the GS glyph, it is after all our ultimate ability in the talent tree and the new cooldown is most likely gonna make me a bit hesitant to use it, which could mean never using it. It's the problem with long cooldown abilities as a healer, you end up waiting for that perfect time to use it, but if there isn't really a clear "perfect time" then it can become wasted since you will never use it instead.

This is the build I have decided on using, at least for the time being: http://wowtal.com/#k=Ou8YrqI.a5o.priest.qdXfSA

[Kelesti]

I do tend to agree with you on the Guardian glyph, Feigr. That's the problem with healer cooldowns in general, they either are "omg use constantly" or sitting on them and never using them. This thinking also relates to tanking, though that is neither here nor there.

I took Twin Disciplines, instead of Darkness, and I didn't feel obligated to grab Spirit of Redemption (it's good to not be broadcasting your every single death), sticking that into 1/2 Blessed Resil for the moment.

I'm a little sad with the lack of balance done when they implemented this. They gave us new tools, but realistically we can't expect to actually put them to the test for another 3 months because of their screwup with stat inflation. Serendipity should not be better than Surge of Light by default, but that's simply because Heal isn't worth casting in the current environment.

I'm a little OCD, but I'm also a little irritated. Oh, and this is my current build for now.

[Lysah]

What's wrong with broadcasting your deaths?

[Kelesti]

What's wrong with broadcasting your deaths?

The fact that a Shaman can stand back up, and not be noticed that he died. A Discipline Priest, a Druid, a Paladin, these can all fall over and the only time people notice is if their assignment also dies.

But the second that I die, the entire raid facepalms and groans "oh look, there's terribad over there", and it's really just a not positive thing. I thought you liked it when I didn't need to be crying, Lysah?

[Lysah]

Spirit of Redemption is a battle rez beacon in my raids. Maybe you need to stop raiding with meanies =(

[Feigr]

Personally I don't have a problem with it being visible that I died, our raid leaders have an addon that broadcasts every death in the raid chat anyway, plus like Lysah says it makes Druids very aware of the fact that a Priest might need a battle res soon.
SoR with the glyph (since there isn't really that many good Major Glyphs to choose from) is a 21 second duration, which I think is going to be very nice in Cataclysm with the mana restraints we will have.

I can totally see Priests in Cataclysm sacrificing themselves towards the end of a boss fight where they have depleted every point of mana they can get in order to get 21 seconds of uninterruptible free full on healing. And even though dying is never really fun it adds one more level of depth to the whole healing experience, the option of making the ultimate sacrifice in order to ensure that the raid is successful. It's kinda neat when you think about it.

[Lysah]

I agree, it seems like a pretty powerful ability for one talent point =p

[MortalWombat]

I can totally see Priests in Cataclysm sacrificing themselves towards the end of a boss fight where they have depleted every point of mana they can get in order to get 21 seconds of uninterruptible free full on healing. And even though dying is never really fun it adds one more level of depth to the whole healing experience, the option of making the ultimate sacrifice in order to ensure that the raid is successful. It's kinda neat when you think about it.

That is very situational though, you would need to find a boss that always has a way for you to kill yourself on demand and it can't be far away from the raid. You also have to make sure he doesn't gain anything when killing a player.

Maybe if I honestly couldn't find a better spot for that point...

[Tezmata]

Quick points:

Mana's not nearly as bad as I was expecting. Maybe it's because we're level 80 and still overgearing things, but I find myself with tons of downtime and still sitting at full mana.

Chakra is godly. Every stance has its niche, though Heal seems to be most useful.

The increased cooldown on Circle of Healing seems pointless to me, since it's not really a spell we're casting as often anymore.

Healing is fun and every button is useful, though I still sometimes cast Heal out of habit when I should go for something stronger.

Since we're posting specs, here's mine as of now: http://wowtal.com/#k=az_XIW.a5o.priest.-Gro54

[suspendedstasis]

What stat priorities do you think?

I was thinking

Int>haste>mastery>crit>spirit

[Kelesti]

In battleground chokepoints, I find myself running with Sanctuary, but for open ground I'm totally enjoying what I can pull off with Chastise and the added damage of Smite. Holy PvP is fun.

[PizzaFresh]

Havent played around with holy much but the Chakara states look so interesting!

[Splenda]

Chakra is so freaking fun. Just. Wow. I love the power world ground heal graphic. It's lovely. Also, I hadn't noticed before the range at which you can click lightwell, that's pretty long.

[Evolixe]

Looking at the state of holy healing at the moment.. Its sooooo fucking damnesty easy, we got even more infinite mana than we had before and the FH's don't make us go oom and heal for 10k non-crits. furtherly chakra is useless in 5mans because you can still spam FH's and even harder than before. maybe Chakra: Renew is nice for raids, but i havn't tested that yet.

Overall seen.. its ridiculousely easy now, prepare yourselves for a HUGE bummer when hitting 85, when the mana does kick in.

---------- Post added 2010-10-14 at 08:23 AM ----------

What stat priorities do you think?

I was thinking

Int>haste>mastery>crit>spirit

More like Int>spirit>haste>etc (thats for 85!!, for 80 its right what you stated there)

[Deleted]

I've been working with a spec atm, not too fond of the surge of light now, and no one's using my lightwell so I have to change some stuff around today. Other than that, last night in ICC myself and the other holy priest were topping metres (although we almost wiped on every heroic encounter) was good fun to get to know the class again.

And I like the spirit of redemption thing, sure it's embarrassing when your huge ass blue angel appears when you've died, but glyphed it was kind of handy last night on some bosses when we were shamelessly dying to stupid things.

[Evolixe]

I've been working with a spec atm, not too fond of the surge of light now, and no one's using my lightwell so I have to change some stuff around today. Other than that, last night in ICC myself and the other holy priest were topping metres (although we almost wiped on every heroic encounter) was good fun to get to know the class again.

And I like the spirit of redemption thing, sure it's embarrassing when your huge ass blue angel appears when you've died, but glyphed it was kind of handy last night on some bosses when we were shamelessly dying to stupid things.

In all honesty.. i just specced as i would with level 85, even if surge or LW are not much of a use, theres nothing else to put it in anyways.

[Tezmata]

I find that people will use Lightwell if you tell them at the beginning of the run that you are planning to set it down. I set up my Grid to show the buff so I can track its use and it's not quite as useful as I had been hoping, but there's not really a need for it in Heroic LK 5-mans.

[Evolixe]

I find that people will use Lightwell if you tell them at the beginning of the run that you are planning to set it down. I set up my Grid to show the buff so I can track its use and it's not quite as useful as I had been hoping, but there's not really a need for it in Heroic LK 5-mans.

Lightwell is a waste atm, youd heal so much more with direct FH's. But thrust me, you will love it @ level 85.

[Deleted]

Lightwell is a waste when people don't use it. People just need to learn. We did some tests, the range is huge and 4k ticks were just silly good. If what I read somewhere is still the case, it should make people dying in Sindy's iceblocks a thing of the past (because relying on DPSers gets us no where )

I saw an amazing tip on one loading screen last night, it said; 'Click the Lightwell!".