Holy PvP

[Readybreak]

was doing some soul searching last night and i was fiddling with some holy pvp specs.
in theory it should be better then disc, considering abilities/talents.
has any1 done some serious testing? or am i gunna have to find out the hard way?

[Ynna]

I tried some PvP as Holy, but nothing to serious since I lack the dedication to PvP a lot. That and I only want to play with people I know (in PvP at least) and one of my arena partners quit WoW.
Anyway, I think I just reached 1800 rating in 3v3 with Hunter/Holy Priest/RetPala.
My spec looked something like this: http://wowtal.com/#k=auy48fsn.ala.priest.oG9Eq.
What I liked:
- Body & Soul: gives you pretty good mobility and increased pillar hugging goodness. Can get you out of range from time to time and you can cleanse those nasty poisons.
- Holy Word: Chastice: Great utility. A small disorient that can be used as interrupt or to get away from a pesky melee. (favorite combo: Chastice a rogue, PW: S away and Cure Disease to get their poisons off)
- Lightwell: Your teammates can still heal even if both you and they are CC'd.
- Undispellable Mastery
- Guardian Spirit: I mostly let it proc, so I could focus on other things.
- Spirit of Redemption
Downsides:
- Squishy
- Terrible Mana

All in all it is doable and maybe even viable, but it probably isn't the best spec to heal in Arena (pretty good in BG's). It's better than people give it credit for.

[Deleted]

It does seem better in theory. However in arena it isnt that simple.

First off there Guardian Spirit. Disc equivalent is probably Pain suppression. This is a good skill in arena at lower bracket. However in the higher brackets of arena 2200 maybe 1800 if you cast guardian spirit on someone the team might lay off the dps on that target so they dont get the health back then all they need to do is keep you silenced/CCed and wait for the target to lose guardian spirit and kill him. Whereas if you use Pain Suppression on a target that is about to take alot of damage it can be very effective. its almost 50% of the damage taken reduced =P

Second is the Blessed Resilience vs Focused Will. True with Blessed Resil you have the healing increase but you wont exactly be left to heal freely. Where as focused will is 20% which is half of pain Suppression, so even if you cant cast heal its still useful.

Thirdly Lightwell vs PW:B. This is pretty much the same because you can be pulled away from each maybe lightwell has a slight upper hand here with the increase duration and heal over time. However you can be steered away from it. Also good thing to know is if you get Leap of Faithed with the bubble over you or death gripped then the bubble gos with you. Still Lightwell wins in this.

Fourthly, Chackra vs.... Power infusion IF you specced into only chackra and not revelations. Pretty much the 2 you would use for this is Sanctuary and Chastise. Either 10% more Crit or 15% more healing vs 20% Casting speed and 20% reduction of mana consumption. I think PI wins =P

Fifthly, Revelations vs Strength of Soul (the Inner focus part). Why? because if you go for serenity you get an instant heal which can be interrupted and the inner focus makes it so that you cant be interrupted or silenced. This at first makes you think that inner focus wins because in that time you can get 3 flash of lights off which is 60ish k. However if a team is good enough they will put you in a stun or cc for that time so you can get the heals, i think. Whereas with the chackra heal you can do it for the full duration of the chackra state which is easily put on you again and again. However the healing is pretty low. Kinda like a holy shock. I guess its preference. Maybe if you can make sure you dont get stunned during the Inner focus then it is slightly better. Defiantly better for burst healing.

Desperate prayer you both get so. its kinda the same. however with Blessed resil its better so +1 for blessed resil =P

Chastise is good for a silence.

Penance is a good heal for low mana and grace stacking and it heals for higher that flash heal.

Both masteries kinda suck.

Disc passive > Holy passive because 15% healing or 15% more intelect(healing, mana regen, mana pool.)

In conclusion, for people that dont like to read walls of text. Disc is more to do with Damage reduction and haste (borrowed time for example). Whereas Holy is more to do with Healing output and Mana Regen (Holy Concentration). Please do remember that this is purely based for high end Arenas. Not for BGs or RBG.

Edit: Forgot about Body and Soul and Spirit of Redemption. 2 insanely good skills for arena +2 points for holy.

[Readybreak]

after some careful arena(low bracket with new team as i hadnt been playing the last week or 2) and partner had about 1500res. came up against only malee teams (double ret..ewwww) and wee its safe to say thats its almost on par with druids mobility. the only major problem as far as i can tell is the mana issues, you need to have every piece filled with spirit as it relys heavily on it.
but on the plus which is why disc is acually kinda poor right now is the mobility i was running rings around dks/warriors/lolpallys, and casters.even if you get cought out in the open its as simple as bubbling and running.
i give 1 tip, well acually a couple. this requires heavy management of Your inner will/fire to manage mana against malee, so casting with fire and quickly switching to will to get and bubble of and a pom and such.
all in all i believe it is incredibly competitive, mana is the issue and i do believe i can solve it, i am a fairly squishy if they are able to hold me down (dosnt happen often), but if your cleaver about movment/fake casts etc. i think it can be pulled off at top rating, and i am about to try with a very defensive sub rogue or feral druid.
as for holy mastery and dpriest master.
holy mastery is 1 of the top masteries in the game as it is pure hps. while the only reason people dont see disc's mastery is because all dpriests are haste stacking now days, and their mastery relies on divine agis procs.

all just my opinion here, im sure it will all change after today, just cause its cool to play something new, but i really see promise in the forgotten spec that i have loved over the years.
peace =]

---------- Post added 2011-03-22 at 01:48 AM ----------

oh just a note
body and soul + 4 piece pvp set bonus = OP

---------- Post added 2011-03-22 at 01:54 AM ----------

also another questing why do not healing priests get the battlemaster trinkets for desperate prayer?

[Deleted]

If you would be to spec holy for pvp you should go for something like this and you have 3 points you can drop in to either darkness or inner sanctum. There are some problems with holy though.

First of all it's not effective in 2v2 and not very good for 3v3. Secondly your mana will be a lot worse, making it even less attractive for 2v2. But if you do run out of mana, holy will provide better healing in single target chakra with almost no mana cost.

As someone said, Blessed Resilience is not as good as Focused Will when you are being focused. GS is an amazing cooldown, but you may be tricked sometimes, since you want it to proc when you use it, and if other team will keep attacking your target, but will slow down or switches target, you will loose some time before you'll start healing and you will loose some of the effect.

After the 4.0.6 changes holy PvP is a lot better, with the new 4p bonus and PoM glyph, but disc is simply amazing right now, with huge shields, interrupt immunity CD and grace throughput.

@Readybreak because you would normally want one PvE trinket for mana regen.

[PlatedPriest]

pvping as holy is one of my favorite things to do in game right now. however i feel holy has a few issues in arenas. but shines the most in battlegrounds.

if you having tried holy in battlegrounds it should defiantly be on a list of things to do.

[Readybreak]

Did many games with a poor geared mage, but he was a very good player.
fixed mana issues by reforging spirit. only class that has any hope of killing me is a warrior.

but disc is simply amazing right now,

disc isnt "amazing" right now it is just as flawed, with the more regen come less mobility. you have dk/warrior/rogue and without peels your a sitting duck, especially with a warrior as fear is virtually useless.
as holy you have a) an ability that acually works against warriors (chastise) and the ability for fear to acually (if you can bubble sprint quick enough) to get a decent amount of distance away.
the only major problem i was suffering last night, was getting back into chakra quicky if i was sub 50% and a warrior was on me (yes only warrior) and that was only if my chastise was already on cd.
mana was not an issue once i reforged everything to spirit and lets face it, the only decent stat for holy is mastery then haste, and i think haste trumps mastery in pvp just for interupts sake. but i had mana even with 3% haste 12 mastery and 11% crit. i was fine, i was even able to use 2nd resil trinket as i had no problem with mana.
with well timed sprints and control from the mage, i could easily just get a drink off anyway.
still with every Priest 2s team, rdruid warrior was the only team we have problems with.
have not tried it with 3s yet
(cannot post armory link as i havnt posted enough ><) characters name is "readybreak" on "barthilas-US"

[Ynna]

the only major problem i was suffering last night, was getting back into chakra quicky if i was sub 50% and a warrior was on me (yes only warrior) and that was only if my chastise was already on cd.
mana was not an issue once i reforged everything to spirit and lets face it, the only decent stat for holy is mastery then haste, and i think haste trumps mastery in pvp just for interupts sake. but i had mana even with 3% haste 12 mastery and 11% crit.

Getting back into Chakra can be a pain, but often it's better to just get into Sanctuary for the increased throughput on Renew if you don't have the time to cast something to get you in Serenity.

Statwise, I started gearing for Haste, but since it's impossible to reach meaningful numbers of Haste, I went with Mastery, mostly because it's an undispellable HoT.

[Palebane]

Holy is very strong, and tons of fun, in BGs and Tol Barad.

[PlatedPriest]

^this. it just alot of ppl are so stuck on disc to even consider giving holy a try.
and once next season gear gets out probably will have enough spirit to help out the weak regen problems

[Lethus]

Like Palebane said, Holy is great in most BG's. But Disc is really the only spec to go for Arenas. Imo the reason Disc is better at pvp than Holy, is that it's preemptive rather than reactive healing.

[PlatedPriest]

my only problem lethus is with you logic you pretty much are saying all the other healing classes beside disc are flawed which is clearly not the case.

one of the only flaws holy has in arenas is it regen which is almost completely based on spirit.
here is a holy priest pvper who is currently my hero.
http://www.youtube.com/user/Dimach44

not only does he do alot of bgs as holy. he sits in sanctuary chraka and inner will most of the time.

[Dianthe]

No, Lethus does have a point... that's why druids also shine in arena... It's not just the preemptive healing though... it's also protection from silence and interrupts with the Inner Focus change, the superior "pvp" talent that is places in the disc tree and that works exactly when you need it ( aka when you cannot heal yourself) and a great "trash" buff in grace, that can keep your opponents purging/dispelling at you like there's no tomorrow... BGs are different mainly because you play with several people that can either peel/offheal for you and as such you can "do your thing". In arena holy gets trained and can do basically nothing about it..