[Priest] Guide: Starting to play Disc in Arena

[TwistedPower]

[Updated last on 5/10/10]
[Make sure to read all the questions and responses posted by people, they will help you out even more]

This guide will instruct you how to start doing arena on your disc priest. This guide will cover stats needed through gemming, trinkets, and enchants, gear choices and reasons, as well as slight discussion on talent variations so that you can get into the higher brackets and access all the best gear. It is not a guide on how to be the best.

This is the way I did it, and it may be helpfull for you. There are other ways to go about it but this is, like I said, how I did it.

The point of this guide is not to be 3k rated team but to show a person that the right gear makes all the differnece, and that some talent choices are best for their style of play and also in relation to their partner’s skills.

This guide will also assume that the person has NO access to PvE gear. It will also assume that you have NO professions, though there will be a section that addresses certain professions. There is a summery at the bottom in case you just want a list of what to do instead of also having the long reasons behind them.

Clarification in advance about gemming and enchant choices for this guide:

The current popular gemming for the best gear is red gem slot = spell power, yellow gem slot = res and Blue gem slot Stam+spell power gems. However to start out these are not the gem choices that this guide recommends. This guide aims to reach a similar survivability to those priests in the best gear. While having a sufficient enough spell power to effectively heal.

So what I priorities in my guide, is survival in lower level brackets. More often than not in the lower brackets your will be targeted and if you cannot live then your other stats don’t matter. The difference is gemming my way vs. gemming the current popular rout is only an extra 69 spell power vs. a few K HP. The HP buffer is more desirable for surviving at the beginning where the base resilience and stamina from your gear is a lot less than the best gear's stats.

Building your way up to the best gear often makes you do things like gem or glyph differently until you get there. That is why this is a Starting guide and not an End game arena guide.

If you do have questions, even about end game arena, you are more then welcome to ask on this topic.


Basic Armor Gear Choices:

Definition’s – Salvation = spirit gear, Ascendancy = hit gear, Dominance = crit gear.

Set slots (head, chest, shoulders, gloves, legs): A full set of the PvP mooncloth gear.

Start with the lowest and get a full set of that either through honor or arena points. Then only upgrade the set for the final (the best) set unless you get free items from vault. The reasons behind this are explained later.

Non-set and non-weapon/trinket:

(Highest season name) Gladiator’s Cuffs of salvation.
(Highest season name) Gladiator’s Cord of salvation.
(Highest season name) Gladiator’s Slippers of salvation.
(Highest season name) Gladiator’s Pendant of ascendancy.
(Highest season name) Gladiator’s Cloak of ascendancy.
(Highest season name) Gladiator’s Band of ascendancy.
(Highest season name) Gladiator’s Band of Dominance.

It is important to note that you want both the best version of Ascendance and the best version of Dominance for your rings (Dominance is the Crit ring, and Ascendancy is the Hit ring)
Trinkets will be discussed later.
Weapons will be discussed later.

Stats Section for Geming:

While all caster stats are important to a Disc priest, there are a few that are more important especially when starting off that you should gem/trinket/enchant for. The important stats are Stamina and Resilience, and also to a slightly lesser extent Haste. What stats to enchant will be covered in the Enchants section.

For the Meta gem you should get is the stam + stun reduction gem because the things that most kill priests in arena (or puts them in a place to be killed) is a long stun when their pain suppression is on cool down. So shorter stuns are always better, plus the stam the gem has on it.

Resilience:
As of 3.2 now reduces damage done by players to the target by a % in addition to lowering the chance that target can be crit and the crit damage. While playing in arena you will find that it is difficult to live while getting hit by a physical damage dealing class without resilience. While it is important to have resilience vs caster the main reason it is important is because you will often find yourself in a situation where you may not have allot of your cool downs to live through a burst attempt. Also with the less damage you take, the less mana you will spend healing yourself.

It is essential because of the reason above to at LEAST have 800 resilience when you get your gear together. The amount you need will vary upon a few things: Play style, partners, and arena team size. This guide will suggest that you gem for resilience in your yellow slots, reaching somewhere around 1k resilience for a 10% damage reduction. It is recommended not to get more then 1.1k resilience. More than that is overkill.

Stamina: By far an important stat, just as important as resilience. Stamina (along with resilience) is going to create a buffer for you to take hits. This buffer is an important things to have because often you will find yourself cc (such as stunned or silenced) for long durations (up to 6 second or more) and you will need to be able to live during such circumstances. So while resilience lowers the damage you take, stamina is going to allow you to take more damage before you die. It is possible with lower gear (such as hateful) with a mix of the better non-set pieces to hit well over 25K hp.

At lower levels of gear you may only be sitting at 20k-22k with/without buffs. An extra 5k hp is a huge buffer that allows you, 1. More room to move or cast something else before you have to heal and 2. A buffer to the 35% or 20% unsafe zone. The 35% or 20% unsafe zone is when your HP reaches 35% or less hp. Once in this range, many classes have talents that increase damage or access to moves like execute that can only be used at 20% hp or less. Obviously the more you stay out of these zone the safer you are and less likely to get bursted. Thus this guide suggests that you gem for stamina is every blue slot of your gear.

Spell power:
Spell power IS important to heal because the more you have of it the more you heal for. However because of the nature of how you are healing in arena (this is not a raid) and the fact that you may be getting hit often. It is not recommended to gem it as your main stat. The gear you get will provide plenty of spell power. There is no need to try and get allot of it through gems when your starting out. You will gimp yourself at lower levels if you do becuase you will lack survivabilty with the lesser gear. This guide recommends that for the red sockets, a purple gem with spell power and stamina be used so that you achieve the socket bonus and get stam.

Other stats such as haste/spirit/Mp5: While these are all good stats, the stats achieved through gear just like spell power is are enough for what you need to do. There is no need to gem for any of these things as the stats listed above that take the same slots are better.

Hit:
For hit you want 4+% ish for mana burns and mass dispels not to miss, so it is suggested getting the hit ring and the hit back piece and the hit neck. This gets you more then 4%, almost 5% (it depends on the rank of the item, you know if you neck and back are furious or hateful and such). So you do not need to gem for hit. There are racials and talents that reduce your chance to hit with spells so for those classes/races more than 4% is needed to cap, but capping is not necessary. The hit you get from the items stated above will be enough even at the higher ranked matches. Even at end game arena priests do not gem hit.

Spell pen: Edited You won’t need any spell pen to start out and you wont need to gem it. You may want to get the spellpen to cloak but remeber that you can dispel all buffs that matter (like shadow protection and mark of the wild), and if shadow aura is up on a pally then he is losing out on other good aspects of auras, like uninterruptable casts which a partner that you have can exploit. Mages also have a talent that gives resists but you also really don’t have to worry about mages resists either, it will not be a problem and there is no point gemming for one or two class that you may not even face in the arena. Do not gem for spell pen or you will lose out on the more important stats. Edit: However if you want the spellpen as your getting higher up it is a simple enough thing to just get the spellpen offhand and the spellpen wand, as well as the spell pen back enchant. This will cover the spell pen you need (if you feel you need allot) with a minimal exchange in stats. You can get past an 1850 raiting without any spellpen so you can decide when the time comes to buy your weapons what you want.

The gist of why Stam and Resilience:
Resilience and stamina Is your priority. The things you need to live vs. are rogues, DK, feral druids, and warriors, more so then casters. Caster will be much easier to avoid then melee. Allot of the time at lower levels your partner(s) is either going to need to peel them off you, or kill the other person(s) before you die. Giving yourself a bigger buffer with resilience damage reduction and the higher stam gives your partner more time to make his KB, or peel/CC, as well as allowing you to live during times of burst.

As the gear comes in you will get the spell power you need so worrying about spell power is not worth it at all. For every yellow slot get res gem, every blue slot gets a stam gem. For the red slots get a purple gem for spellpower+stam. It may also be cheaper to get the hybrid green gems with stam+res on them. If you have 1 yellow slot and 1 blue slot you can put either 1 blue stam and 1 yellow res, OR 2 hybrid stam res gems in those slots and you will get the same stats.

The spirit will also come with your gear, so you dont need any more spirit then whats aready on it.

The intelect you need will also come with your gear, so you dont need any more Int then whats aready on it.

Weapons:
This is a sore issue on how to start. It is difficult to get the PvP weapons so your first weapon must come from elsewhere. It is also a large portion of where your spell power comes from so obviously you want the best one you can. Assuming you don’t have access to a 10-25 man raid and you have no interest in them, the crafted 1handed epic spell power mace will be adequate. Getting the cheap 50 spell power enchant is also good enough.

If you do PvE or at least 5 mans. ToC heroic has 2 weapons. And way cheaper then the 800-1k gold for the crafted mace.
http://thottbot.com/i47569
http://thottbot.com/i47509
Both of which are a good substitute untill you get the Glad stuff.

For an offhand http://thottbot.com/i37364 is an item you can buy in the AH will carry you to a raiting where you can buy the cheep 300 arena point offhand.

Once you get a rating high enough to buy a weapon I would personally not get the staff. Though it does offers more stam and resilience. But since these are your end game weapons there is more spellpower on the one hander and offhand. You can then adapt an offhand to what your aiming for spell pen, crit, spirit, or haste. Its more customizable for less points.

Trinkets:
Well there are lots of different trinkets to get depending on your play style. Personally I prefer trinkets that give resilience (as it is really hard to get high resilience without them) and also haste. My Favorite trinket is the Platinum Disks of Swiftness from WG. It has 95 resilience and has an on-use option that gives 375 haste rating. That is a little more than 11% haste at level 80. If you feel that you do not need the haste other good options are the spell power trinket from WG with the pvp trinket use. Also the battle masters trinket with spell power and on-use option to give HP. The temporary HP gain is NOT affected by MS effects and it often helps when your really low hp and you need just a little more hp before your cool downs finish. The heal also scales with your HP so the more HP you have the more temp-HP you get from the trinket. If you get the current best HP gain trinket and you have some of the best gear the temp-hp is about 5k which is HUGE through MS.

If you a human priest, you may want a platinum disk and the anvil from WG, the anvil has a chance on spell cast to increase your spell power at least to start out till you get the raiting for a HP gain trinket. At that point you may not need the res on your trinket and may want spellpower or somthing else. Or if you’re human there are PvE trinkets that also have spell power and on cast uses, however I will not be covering PvE items in this guild as it is a basic guide. There are plenty of options for trinkets, and depending on how you like to play (maybe you don’t mana burn in 3’s because of your team makeup and you prefer crit/spell power) so as long as you get some good caster trinkets you can’t really go wrong. I would just suggest getting trinkets that support your role in arena. (Example is if your mana burning more haste = faster mana burns and faster heals).

Enchants: (these assume you have no professions and are for your starting out gear)

Bracer = stam
Gloves = spell power
Pants = spell power + stam
Boots = stam + speed (boars speed)
Chest = resilience
Shoulders = spell power + res
Head= spell power + res
Back = haste
Weapon = spell power

If you are an enchanter the stam to rings is > then spell power with better gear.
If you are blacksmith the extra sockets should be stam.
If you are a jewel crafter the blue sockets should have the special jewel crafters stam gem.
If you are a tailor the back piece should use the dark glow embroidery (mana return)
Engineer I personally would get the Haste gloves. They are just so awsome for atk and def and they stack with all your other haste skills/items.
The other profession should just be upgraded version of other enchants.

These enchants will carry you up to and past 2200 raiting. Once you get allot of good max season gear you may want to relook at your enchants. Things like spellpower to bracers may be better once you get the stam from your gear.

Stepping into the Arena when you first get 80:
When you first start out at 80 with gear that is not great, say a full crafted level 78 pvp blue set (which is a good thing to have when starting) there are some things you may want to consider.

There are 2 mandatory glyphs for Disc (or at least I fell they are for when you are starting out). There are the penance glyph and the Pain suppression Glyph. The last spot remains open for glyph of: dispel magic, Power Word: Shield, Inner fire.

You might want to think about using the glyph of inner fire until you get more gear. If you have improved inner fire talents, the glyph adds 7% damage reduction through armor. So until you get good stam and resil that is an extra 7% for the things that kill you fast (melee).

The 111 spell power pvp trinket from WG, which is 25 marks. This is good for when you’re just start out so you can get your spell power up before you have good gear. It doesn’t take very long at all to get 25 marks, maybe a few days, but less than a week. Then your other trinket could be a platinum disk or the anvil so you get your resilience from the loss of that pvp trinket resilience.

Any of the WG epics (belt, Rring, boots, bracers, legs, chest): While they may not have the ideal stats on them (spirit) they do have more spell power and about the same resilience then the blue set you crafted. They are an ok substitute until you get the honor gear. I would wear the deadly gear over most of the WG epics any day.

How to spend you arena points as you get them:
As for gear, I would spend your arena points on the lower gear as you can, (in this current season it is deadly) get a full set and get all the best (current season relentless pieces) of non-set(so rings, bracers, ect) as soon as your rating allows you to get them. You can then go straight for the 1800 weapons, which is important. Once your able to get the weapon then your getting at least about 700-800 points a week, and you can skip the middle tier pvp armor (which is currently Furious) and go straight at Relentless. It’s a waste of arena points to get that middle armor. If you gem and enchant and glyph right there is no reason you cannot hit an 2000 raiting and get every pieces if the best armor. Some of the lower pieces (gloves) arnt even a 1500 raiting so you should be able to get them. You should also have all the non-set pieces and then you will def be able to ignore the furious armor. From their it is all up hill.

Talents:
Certain talents become preference based on what your realy doing in arena. If you are playing with an ice mage, you might find that you almost never need to flash heal. So obviously the talents like improve flash heal are not of any use to you. You may find that you are mana burning allot, so getting imp mana burn may be very helpful. You may find that your partner can easily kill targets by himself, so reflective shields is pointless. There are allot of variation to specs based on who your playing with. If you’re on a 3’s team you will find that you shield and flash heal often because of so much burst, so you should get glyphs and talents to support that. If your talent spec doesn’t reflect the ability of your team and help to improve on what you do (as well as taking away talents from things you don’t do often) you will find that many times you will just almost win but in the end lose a match. It is important to find you own style of talents for your team.

This is a simple starting talent tree. Not all the talents have been put in. This talent tree is geared more towards a spec that is oriented towards haste and survival.

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?prie...00000000000000

The extra talents can be put into things to make you more mana efficient, OR to help you burst, OR to mana burn. It’s a good base.

Some people also prefer the crit into holy and not the renew talent. Like this (this is only the holy tree part redone):
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?prie...00000000000000

Some people also do not get Enlightenment. There are lots of ways to tweak this.

For higher crit based specs allot of priests have also started been specing into Inspiration becuase it was changed to a flat % damage reduction rather then an armor inc.

Practice in some skirmishes or with your team for fun and find out what moves you feel need to be stronger and get those talents, or what moves you don’t care if are weaker and drop those talents for other ones you want. If you need more mana you might want to get for some of the mana lowering cost talents. If your playing 2's I highly recomend imp mana burn just becuase its amazing hard to get it off with its full cast time. Most healers see it comming and are able to Pillar you and you end up not getting the cast off.

Summary:
So Basically This guide tells you to:
Get the full mooncloth set
Get the spirit bracers, belt, boots.
Get 1 hit and 1 crit ring.
Get the platinum disks from WG with haste for 1 trinket.
Stack stam in blue sockets, res in yellow sockets, and spell power + stam gems in red sockets.
Get the lowest gear (from arena OR PvP [i recomend PvP if you have the time so you save your arena points for later but you dont have to, it will just take more weeks of arena to max out your gear]), and then go straight for the best stuff, compleatly skipping over the middle tier set available only through arena points.
Put talents into the things you do and take out of things you don’t (you don’t need imp mana burn if you don’t/can’t mana burn in 3’s/5's).

This is a BASIC STARTING guide. With this guide it is possible to hit the highest (assuming you have the skill) rating to acquire all the arena gear pieces (2200 weapons). It’s a place to start, but not to finish. So have fun and good luck.


Edit:

Mods - I will update this section with more if I see somthing i realy like. I personally am not a mod heavy person. I do not use things like decursive in arena. But some mods that I recomend to help with the small things that may win a match.

Gladius is really nice because it shows things like pvp trinket for the other team on cool down, and it will show over their icons when they cast important spells to dispel, like innervate. It has other utilities too that you can play around with, announcements and things.

Omni CC is a cooldown counter mod that basically puts the time in numbers left on cool downs and on buffs/debuff on all characters. I use it. Do I realy need it, well no not really, but there are times when it is really key. Something like cyclones. I can often time a heal to heal just as my teammate gets out of a cyclone so that even if they recast cyclone I still got at least 1 heal off. (since sometimes cyclone to stop me healing a target) And other things like my own cool downs. It is nice to know exactly how many seconds are left on my PoM and stuff.

Nature’s enemy cast bar put up little bars on your screen that show cool downs of yours and/or your opponents moves. Some priest use this mod but only have spells that silence, (like kick or mindfrease or pummel) so that they can know if it is still safe to cast a heal. maybe you have 3 seconds before he can kick again, so you can get a penance off, or maybe it just cooled down so you may want to juke your next heal. It can also tell you things like DR on fears for a target. Things like that. Once set up right it can be useful. There are def parts of it that you will want to turn off though.

Deadly boss mods. I use this for 2 reasons. It keeps a timer in seconds for when the arena starts and it tells you how long till the shadow sight spawns so you can see that all stealther team.

Alternate Gemming Routs - Once you get enough higher level gear, find yourself not beeing targeted, or not needing the stamina there are alternate routs for gemming. The most common one is basically spellpower in every slot.
In every red slot a red pure spellpower gem.
In every yellow slot a orange resilience+spellpower gem.
In every blue slot a purple stam+spellpower gem.

With having the better gear the extra stamina is not needed you now have the stam stamina you did without the gems as with the starting gear with the gems. When your first getting gear I highly recomend the stamina res advice above, but once you finally feel safe (or as safe as you can be in arena) then you may want to consider this. You may also want to gem for stam in your lower set, and as you get the top season pieces gem those new ones for this setup so you eventually move from the stam setup to spellpower setup.

[-Ethos-]

It's worth noting you can buy Deadly gear with Conquest badges, so farming some heroics can be a better way to go about getting the gear than spending arena points.

[TwistedPower]

It's worth noting you can buy Deadly gear with Conquest badges, so farming some heroics can be a better way to go about getting the gear than spending arena points.

This guide assumes you dont PvE. But yes you could do that or you can do a mix of both.

[khlg]

I would consider the inner fire glyph to be a mandatory glyph,
without it rogues would have you down fats once they break
your shield and I dont think you would last long against
any melee class without it.

[sofos87]

bookmarked thank you man i play a lock and recently hit 80 with my priest this is what i needed ty

[Abolishment]

Found a typo:

Stats Section for Geming:

While all caster stats are important to a Disc priest, there are a few that are more important especially when starting off that you should gem/trinket/enchant for. There important stats are Stamina and Resilience, and also to a slightly lesser extent Haste. What stats to enchant will be covered in the Enchants section.

For the Meta gem you should get stam + stun reduction because the things that most kill priests in arena (or puts them in a place to be killed) is a long stun when their pain suppression isn’t on cool down. So shorter stuns are always better, plus the stam the gem has on it.

That should be 'is', I believe.

Other than that, good guide. I know it's a basic guide, as far as guides go, but for people who are starting PvP in general, it might be nice to add that the difference in gear between one season and the next is so small, that it can and will be easily overcome with skill.

The excuse 'Well, we're in Hateful/deadly mix and those guys are half Furious' isn't a viable excuse, as it almost always translates to 'outplayed, learn from your mistakes'. That was the most valuable piece of advice I received when I started PvPing.

[TwistedPower]

Fixed it to is :-D

I would say that there is little differnece between a few pieces of gear and you can absolutly outplay sombody which i belive the section with the armory link proves. But for certain classes this isnt the case. I think there is a minimum point to hit before you can say its more of a skill problem then gear problem. Rogues for example are gear and weapon dependant. Those weapons can mean the difference of a kill 3 min into the match or a kill 5 min into the match. Often enough matches dont last 5 min at some of the higher teirs.

If people get all the set gear and the non-set pieces i sugested (or as much of the non-set pieces as you can since you need a verry high raiting for some 2050 for cloak and stuff) there is no reason they cant obviously hit the maximum raiting needed for the final gear pieces.

If you have a full set of hatefull and the bracers belt and boots of season 3 (all which need 1500 raiting or less) you can easily hit 1850+. Without any PvE epics at all. The most i would say is the 800 ish gold for the crafted epic mace, and a wand from somwhere. every other slot can be epic filled through PvP.

[hampusbookbooja]

Ok i just want to start off with saying great great post, ive just begun playing pvp with my disc priest and this for me was hitting jackpot.

If u could be so generouse and answer some couple questions i would really appriciate it! ;D

1.Im going to start out with 2s with a buddy of mine(hes specced mutilate) and i was wondering if u could be so nice and give me some pointers on that aspect since im totally ???

2.Is the inspiration talent really wothwhile since it does 10 reduction now in 3.2? it doesnt proc that much tbh ive tryed it out and it seems a awful lot for 3 points.

3.So if i dont have flasheal glyphed its a waste of points there to?

4.Martydome and divine fury, im abit confused with those choices merely beacuse 2. i dont think ile be dpsing that much in this bracket and secondly is it really worth 5 freaking points?

Thanks alot!

[hampusbookbooja]

Oh 1 more thing my mother language is NOT enlgish so sry for all the typos ure about to read.

[TwistedPower]

Well, for 2's with a rogue it would depend on your strats for certain team, I would have to ask you are you a mana burn team?

With a rogue team, it may not be necessary to get the talents into mana burn. Because if you rogue is on the healer you have free rein to mana burn him. You can also easily mind control the DPS and run him off bridges and around corners and things. This effectively puts their healer on defensive and has their dps not doing any dps. While this does use mana burn somtimes, Its not their main form of killing. You are not centered on the mana burn, and this team often uses smite and holy fire and such to help kill the target insted of ooming the target. This is is more a healing orientated team becuase if the dps is sitting on your rogue the rogue will take big damage, that you have to then heal.

OR

You can be a mana burn team, this type of team generally sits the rogue on the DPS stunning him and ccing him, while you dispel/drain/fear the healer around. Because of the MS effect healing will be tough for the opponent because your CCing and draining mana. It’s also easy for you to get away from dps because your rogue has them locked down.

Based on if you are or are not a mana burn team you should spec differently.

If you are NOT a mana burn team then i would say get the talents you feel will help you get heals and reduce damage for your partner. Also get the crit talents instead of haste for flash heal. If you are healing a ton then divine aegis, holy specialization, imp flash heal and inspiration are probably the way to go.

If you are a mana burn spec then you will obviously be healing less. Your partner should be all over the melee stopping him from doing damage and killing him. While you are all over the healer draining mana, fearing, mind controlling the healer so he can get heal off. You may want talents like reflective shields renewed hope, improved renew and enlightenment, instead of the talents listed above because your relying on the fact that your partner isn’t getting hit so much, and your renew, power word shield, are taking up most of the damage and penance heals every few seconds. You shouldn’t have bother with spamming flash heals if the dps is stunned all the time. You might only get 2 or 3 flash heals off in any game only when your dps might get low or something.

As for martyrdom and divine fury.

Martyrdom, I would say supports a non-mana burn spec though it is not required. It is for when you have a melee on you (such as a rogue) and your forced to keep yourself up. This would mean that your partner cannot peal/CC for you.

If you are mana burn speced then you wouldn’t need it because you would not be getting hit as often (though you will get hit allot) so when your partner kidney shots you can get a penance off without having to worry about interrupt. If anything you can get blessed recovery (even if it’s just 1-2points) if you feel you need some help when melee is on you. When you get enough gear it won’t matter anymore.

Devine Fury; I would say that this is a preference thing. Putting out steady damage with a smite, and then bursting with holy fire, mind blast and S:word death is really effective. However if what your worried about is the healer healing if he has no mana he can’t heal, if he is mind controlled and walked behind a pillar he can’t heal, if he is feared he can’t heal. As you can see there are other ways to combat the need for the dps burst provided by devine fury. I do not play with a rogue so I’m not sure how easy it is to do the above CC, but your rogue can blind too and sap before it wears off, things like that. I dont like devine fury so I do not get it, but there are plenty of priests who use it successfully.

As mana burn spec, if your rogue is dpsing the melee and he isn’t dying, that is OK. Because the main idea is to oom the healer. Once the healer is oom your rogue can walk up to the healer and kill him really easy. You can blind, fear, mind control the dps, and your rogue will have kicks/stuns to stop any small extra heals that the healer has left. If the dps is blinded your rogue can also vanish and sap if he has to.

So it realy depends on what target your killing, and how that effects how you have to heal, or if you should be doing somthing else like mana burning or DPSing.


I hope that helps.

[hampusbookbooja]

Sry was watching jerry springer and i feel asleep...yeah... back to the point, id think manaburning would be my ideal choice since i usualy dispell shitloads and often have the healer in focus.
But are all classes with mana ofc any good going just manaburn i mean isnt a shaman with earth shield a bitch to manadrain? or even worse 2dks o warrs ? sry im not qqing im just trying to learn as much as i can since ive just been raiding and doing some minor arenas with my mage, do really appriciate all tips ure handing out!

this would probably be the specc id go for and please u are more then welcomed to "wtf "me if theres something that really is out of order.
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#bxIzu...fbRtfVz:oATzmV
My glyphs are penance pain supress and inner, should i remove inner for maby shield? its abit scary not having that extra bonus when a big warrior comes slaming. 1 more question, is enlightment haste bonus really going to affect me since..well i dont even have any good gear or haste?

thanks again bro

[TwistedPower]

I would just change your spec ever so slightly
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#bxIbu...fbRtfVz:oATzmV

The imp fort and 4% more stam is HUGE. There are plenty of teams that wont/cant dispell your fort. It realy helps vs double dps teams like DK + warrior. Since these teams are the ones that hurt the most and that you may lose to the most, its important to have imp fort, since they cannot dispell.

The shield glyph is more of a 3's glyph. Since in 3's you have 2 partners to help pull off you insted of just one.

Let me put the haste into perspective.
Its a flat 6%. (1.39 flash heals/1.85 mana burns)
If you get the trinket i sugested thats another 11% when you use it.(1.25 flash heals/1.67 mana burns
and then with power infusion its 20% more.

Your flash heals are now 1.07 second cast and your universal cooldown is also at 1.07 seconds. You mana burns are down to a 1.39 second cast and so is your holy fire. Becuase of the univeral cooldown your shield and dispells are also on a 1 second cooldown insted of 1.5. So all of your instant cast spells gets basically .5 casting time reduction becuase you can now cast them ever 1 second insted of 1.5 second.

If you playing a double dps team where you need to spam flash heals at 1 second each, or if your in a mana burn race with another priest. The haste is awsome.

Mana burning shamens: That depends on how good/bad the shamen is and it depends who the earth shield is on. For shamens me and my partner(a mage) CCs the shamens and just owned the dps. Sheeps and MC's going out when ever they need to on the shamen. If the earth shield is on the DPS somtimes we put presure on the shamen first just to make him switch earth shields to himself then we CC him and kill the dps. If he doesnt earth sheild himself we just kill the shamen insted. I would recomend stomping totems with your wand, and MCing/fearing him as far away as possible.

If the shamen breaks ANY of those CC with a trinket. YOU WIN. Just have the rogue blind him. and then as the blind is wearing off, vanish sap him. Then you can fear him, then MC him again. A total of at least 30 seconds where he cant heal at all and if you lucky his earth shield isnt on the dps :-D.

You can also help dispell earth shield charges (yes i know there are 8 but there may be less becuase your rogue has been procing them and its not like your doing much anyway with the shamen blinded and then sapped) or smite/holyfire the dps target down to kill him faster (dont forget to dot). Also your pet is a realy good source of burst dps, it hits for at least 700 damage and can crit for over 1k.

Edit: you can also prevent heals by mindcontrolling the dps just as the CC wears off the shamen. Then your rogue can get out of combat to restelth, and you can walk the DPS away from the healer or around a pillar.

[TwistedPower]

O and i would get the minor glyph that lowers the mana cost of Power word Fort. Insted of the levitate glyph. I would also get the minor glyph for Shadow Protection increase duration, insted of shackle undead. You will verry rarely shackle any undead target that isnt close to you. Its not needed, and if you have a realy long fight, you dont want to have to rebuff shadow protection.

[hampusbookbooja]

Oh great man /cheers thanks alot best thread ever !

[TwistedPower]

Sure thing, it was my pleasure to help out.

[Doctavice]

very helpful thread! i wanted to ask, my arena partners have suggested shooting for 6% hit due to racials (be/ud) giving shadow an extra 2% miss, is this just wasting itemization or actually worthwhile?

[Deleted]

Seeming the racials are so few, you'd have the extra hit wasted in a high percentage of the games, meaning overall you would probably benefit more from other stats, yes? ^_^

[furium]

Geming is really just a personal preference, for me i went the spell power route, while still getting socket bonuses, this guide is great for starters, but the meta gem doesn't give us 40% off stuns, its multiplicative so really your only gaining 3% or so off stuns, so the clear route to go would be +21 intel +mana back meta.

The hit cap in pvp is 6%, i went with hit cloak/neck/ring ang sit at 4.65% which is fine, i don't miss at all really, and about spell pen, that is probably the worst idea ever, you need ATLEAST 75 for druid teams and 130 for pally/priest teams, some games you will not have enough time to always cleanse the buff off and a resisted fear can be a game breaker, you can't always rely on having the buff off, because it is possible to recast it.

As for that, guide looks alright, it's really all just preference in arena, for 2's stacking res and stam is more about who your partner is, in my case its a rogue, so spellpower helps alot when its burst time, and for the most part they sit on my rogue, so stam/res wouldn't really help me at all, do what priests do best, we are not about outlasting the other team, priests mana regen is probably the worst right now, so be offensive.

I haven't arena'd much right now, but im some what regretting picking the mooncloth set, trying to make your mana pool last longer pre 3.2 was a big waste of time, i should have gone with the crit set, hopefully it wont be so bad now.

This is my priest: http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...g+Skull&n=Avad

edit:

As for gear, I would spend your arena points on the lower gear as you can,

that is just a terrible idea, DO NOT spend arena points on hateful gear when you can buy hateful gear with honor, if anything buy deadly with arena points until you can get the ratings for furious. Farming 30k - 60k honor in a week far out weighs buying hateful from arena points where you only get (depending on rating) 500+ a week, just farm honor for hateful.

[TwistedPower]

Well, as it was brought up in the second post, it is probibly better to not even spend the time grinding the honor anymore, and just getting badges from 5 mans and buying deadly. If you hate 5mans then the honor grind is still good.

I personally hate the honor grind. I also work allot so I dont have as much time as I like for bg's and wanted to save that honor for the rediculously overpirced furious non-set. I happen to play on a battle group where the hord only wins often at certains times of the day and not for verry long maby 3 hour gap or so. The rest of the time its either extreamly painful winning games that take to long, or losses that make you want to rip your hair out.


I personally bought 2 of the hatefull pieces i have with honor from av weekend, durring which I was able to aquire about 200k honor over the 4 days,(at 1800 a game it was hard not to grind it out) and bought some furious non-set stuff. I got the gloves and sholders from arena points since they were cheap and it only took like 1 week worth of games (with my crappy gear) to get them. Together they cost 475 arena points. (that 200 for gloves and 275 for sholders). Then I had the chest from WG and that made up the resilience. Then actually i got the hatefull chest from vualt and that was that.

My priest is my alt so I often spend time on my main, who has a slightly better raiting (2550 as of sunday! :-) so I didnt realy want to spend to much time in bg's. If you work like me and dont mind taking an extra few weeks then save that honor for the furious non-set. If you have the time then by all means as furium said get a full hatefull set through honor (or deadly through badges). Or a mix.

Do what you can, and micro manage your resources so that you can get the most gear the fastest. Once you have that base gear and raiting down, you can gem and enchant any which way easily and you will have a good source of points over the 2100 raiting.

Edit: my original 2's was with an Ice mage, and a DK (we took turns). So they went after me every time becuase who the hell would kill a DK over a priest :-P, But I can live through rogue rogue and ferral rogue so its all good :-D

[[-Spiritus-]]

bumped for a good thread. Suggesting a sticky.