pvp...holy? or disc...

[Poundmax]

Hey all,

So I have recently dusted off my priest which I hadn't touched since BC and really enjoyed the experience enough to make it my new main and though I just hit 90 2 days ago, I have a full 450 crafted set and rounded it out now with 458/463 and I started doing 2's with a co-worker that plays arms and our expectations were set rather low as he just recently came back to WoW and is only slightly ahead of me in terms of gear.

I went into all of our matches as holy and we fared quite well, almost finishing at .500 and we're looking to pick things up again tomorrow to finish fully capping out. It's been rather exciting. I'm aware that holy+arms (or any priest+arms for that matter) is probably far from the "best" comp for 2's but our communication is good and so far, we've suprised ourselves with our just developing teamwork.

Anyways, I've looked around a few places for some good holy/disc arena info but feel like I only went on incomplete or outdated info so I have a few questions that I would love to have answered:

1. Does holy compliment arms well enough or would I see noticibly better results with disc or...shadow? I would prefer to heal but If shadow somehow suits arms better on the whole, I would be willing to give it a shot especially this late in the season.

2. What sort of "offensive moves" can I really make well use of to help get the kill? I saw what appeared to be a good combo of chastise and psychic scream and even a void tendrils on top of that depending on the situation, but it seemed a little risky(?) switching or dropping chakra or running too far away from my teammate. I really want to work on my timing and chaining of abilities to help cc or slow down as much as possible.

3. With the new preview feature of being able to have a good idea at what type of team we'll be facing before the match starts, what talents/glyphs should I be at the ready for to swap out during the prep time?

4. How should I make use of fear ward (and spells like this) to get the full advantage? I feel like having fear ward up right off the bad could be a bad move because of the dispel/spellsteal potential of it but obviously waiting to long isn't good either. Should I tend to always throw this on myself because of beserker rage?

5. What secondary stats should I reforge for? Currently I've left all my gear as it is and I'm sure that's definetly not ideal at all. Also, pvp power...or pvp resilience...which means more to me as a healer (if either)?

6. Being a tailor/enchanter, I saw somewhere that the +spirit proc thread on cloaks is the way to go over +int, with this, would I look rediculous putting +stam onto my rings if I feel like I'm getting burned down too fast (I do have a lot of 450s being the argument for this...).

Any additional tips/tricks/etc. would be extremely appreciated. Thanks everyone

[zito]

Blizzard is contempt at making disc viable for pvp.

They like keeping holy in the dark for those people who like the out of ordinary ,wont ever work compeditively, pvp spec.

[Danner]

This twitter exchange says it all really:

@ghostcrawler Holy PVP- should it be viable? Any comment on the current low number of healer priests (both holy and disc) on all ladders?
@tamamoe We struggle with this question a lot. You can argue that PvP would be better for many players with fewer specs than 34.

Source: https://twitter.com/Ghostcrawler/sta...46047730286592

Currently, if you want to do serious PVP, you really should go shadow. This may improve in 5.2.
Chances of it improving notably for Holy seems very implausible from an intent point of view given the above twitter exchange....
But then again, holy was allowed access to about half of disc's 5.2 buffs.

[zito]

But then again, holy was allowed access to about half of disc's 5.2 buffs.

1 buff was intended, the second buff was a compensation so I don't think that really counts.

At least they decided to not ignore holy all together like they did in wrath and cataclysm (they nerfed holy pvp in cataclysm actually which was hilarious because it wasn't pulling ahead of disc in rating or healing, it was just a minor annoyance to the opposing player).