Priest just hitting 85. Holy 1st spec, Shadow 2nd. What do I prioritize?

[Phyta]

I didnt see any stickys on what for holy is currently the caps for anything or the mandatory minimums, nor did I see any for shadow so I wanted to post my profile and have you guys critique it and tell me what stats I shoot be shooting for in each set, Hit Caps, Crit Minimums, Haste to shoot for?

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...uberror/simple

For holy as my first spec I will only be healing 5 and 10 mans at most, should I switch to disc? Holy has been fun so far. Anyhow as holy I try to go Mastery>Crit>Haste>Hit and as the secondary set for shadow I go Hit>(to cap)Haste>Crit>Mastery

Stam
Int
Spirit

as my three white stats.

[Kelesti]

Spirit isn't a "white" stat. It's a green stat that's just colored wrong. Your Stamina's irrelevant, Intellect is the most important stat.

Shadow: Haste to shoot for, as much as you can get.
Holy: Haste to shoot for? As much as you can get.

Holy wants as much spirit as you can snag to not run out of mana. This number varies depending on how good you are and the people you run with, but there is such a thing as excessive. Shadow wants to sit "close"-ish to hitcap, without sacrificing Intellect to do so (and definitely without going over... whatever number that is). Haste looks nicer on a sim, so you can probably afford to not give up haste. But Spirit to the cap is definitely above mastery/crit for Shadow.

Crit's terrible for Holy, mediocre for Shadow. Mastery's alright for Holy, but also mediocre for Shadow. As a secondary stat shared between both specs, Mastery > crit for shared gear, but haste takes the cake all around.

[hikamiro]

It looks like you're looking for numbers, so i'll give some starting ones. Note these numbers are fairly arbitrary, but are good starting points.

Shadow -- Look to hit cap. Sims say Haste is greater then hit, but realistically unless you have consistantly low reaction times, on recasting after misses in a raid environment you're going to want to get that cap. 1742 spirit. (note hitcap is only 7% for Heroic Dungeons, so this spirit number is going to be considerably lower) Also; as for shadow aim to keep crit and mastery fairly equal as they scale well off each other. The stats are significantly weaker if you stack one heavily over the other.

Holy -- These numbers are the ballpark ones. Some people can run with very minimal spirit, others like high spirit numbers. In my opinion do what works best for you, i like to aim high while gemming and enchanting as much Intellect as possible. For raiding look for around 2200 for starting (This includes spirit procs IE Core of Ripeness averages out to 321 spirit, so i count it as 321 spirit in my calculations.) As for later bosses around 2500-2700 TOTAL spirit is going to be beneficial. These spirit numbers also depend vastly on the amount of intellect you have, as spirit scales with intellect. Someone running over 6k intellect will easily be able to drop spirit for further throughput and still be viable, at lower gear levels you'll need a lot more.

As for heroic Dungeons as holy -- i really can't say. I haven't done Low Gear Level dungeons since before the +15% increase to everything. A guestimate would be around 1700 spirit at low intellect levels as a bare-minimum

Hope this helps

[Zuziza]

For shadow, haste is better than any other secondary stat (including hit) for maximizing DPS. A lot of raiding spriests stay under the cap if it's ever a trade between spirit/hit for haste. However, if you're only just starting shadow, it may be a good idea to be hitcapped so you can learn your spellcast priorities and how to rotate in your CD's on fights. Once you're comfortable that you can react quickly to recast a missed DoT refresh, you should be able to go below hitcap and increase your DPS.

So, for learning: Hitcap (via hit/spirit) > Haste > Crit ~ Mastery (crit is slightly better)
For raiding: Haste > Spirit > Crit ~ Mastery (crit still slightly better)

Aim for items with haste and spirit/hit. Those are going to give you the biggest boost to your DPS as you get upgrades. Since you're also going holy, spi/haste items will probably work for both. I'd also recommend checking out the BiS lists so you can get an idea of what items you want specifically.

[Töasty]

Just get gear with spirit and haste on it! Otherwise get gear with spirit and mastery, and reforge to haste. Spirit is hit for shadow and haste helps both specs. Mastery and Crit are almost equal for shadow, but crit is your worst stat for holy.

[klurejr]

Just get gear with spirit and haste on it! Otherwise get gear with spirit and mastery, and reforge to haste. Spirit is hit for shadow and haste helps both specs. Mastery and Crit are almost equal for shadow, but crit is your worst stat for holy.

I am starting to Play my priest again, and I am sort of split between healing and DPS'ing. Most of my better gear at the moment is Shadow gear, but I did most of my gearing before I realized that spirit now grants hit when in Shadow form. I currently have 2 full sets of gear (mostly iLVL 333, 346) and I am guessing I made a mistake in doing that now. I honestly had no idea until recently. So I was playing around with some of the healing gear I have that has Spirit on it and I have been tossing it on when in shadow-spec to see the +hit rating. It looks like in many cases it is just as good to have a piece of gear with Spirit as it is to have one with +hit. I don't plan to just be one or the other, but I want to make my gear choices a bit easier and not have to carry so much of it in my bags.

Should I be prioritizing Spirit gear to cover both specs? I am a bit disappointed in myself for spending time and JP buying 2 sets of everything. For example I now have both the JP Cloth Shoulders, the Hit version and the spirit version, and it seems like a waste now. Too bad there is no return of JP for giving back old JP items to the vendors......

[Zuziza]

I am starting to Play my priest again, and I am sort of split between healing and DPS'ing. Most of my better gear at the moment is Shadow gear, but I did most of my gearing before I realized that spirit now grants hit when in Shadow form. I currently have 2 full sets of gear (mostly iLVL 333, 346) and I am guessing I made a mistake in doing that now. I honestly had no idea until recently. So I was playing around with some of the healing gear I have that has Spirit on it and I have been tossing it on when in shadow-spec to see the +hit rating. It looks like in many cases it is just as good to have a piece of gear with Spirit as it is to have one with +hit. I don't plan to just be one or the other, but I want to make my gear choices a bit easier and not have to carry so much of it in my bags.

Should I be prioritizing Spirit gear to cover both specs? I am a bit disappointed in myself for spending time and JP buying 2 sets of everything. For example I now have both the JP Cloth Shoulders, the Hit version and the spirit version, and it seems like a waste now. Too bad there is no return of JP for giving back old JP items to the vendors......

If you're not raiding, you only need 6% hit for dps, which is very little spirit. You'll need to get at least half a set to switch between for healing and DPS to ensure you have enough mana regen. I'm still relearning Disc myself, but I'm unsure if spirit is the primary regen stat (compared to intellect) for it or holy, so that is something you should check out. It may be worth getting Int trinkets instead of spirit trinkets for healing, or crit/haste/mastery on your gear may be above spirit for regen.

Best place to check for all that info are the floating "State of the Class: Holy/Disc" threads on this forum. There's a stickied thread that lists important ones that aren't stickied, so you should be able to find a link there. Make sure to check the one that you're specced for; holy and disc don't have many overlapping priorities.

[TofuBeast]

I'm in the same position. Just dinged 85 on my priest.

So which healing spec is better at low gear levels? For healing non-heroics