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21/30 Priest Build Guide
(6 votes)
Written by Shasto   
Saturday, 19 August 2006
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That's right, at a cost of 30g I have made what will hopefully be my last talent respec!  It's a 21/30/0 build (that's disc/holy/shad) and can be found here.

Here's a listing of those talents, and why:

Discipline
Tier1: Unbreakable Will (maxed) - (Increases your chance to resist stun, fear and silence effects by 15%) This is a very useful talent, being able to resist these three things can save a party, as they are the main causes of non-healing.  And it's certainly better than wand specialisation.

Tier2: Silent Resolve (maxed) - (Reduces the threat generated by your spells by 20%) It should be obvious why this is good, but just in case... Threat = aggro, less threat means less angry things trying to kill you instead of the tank, means you're not dead and can heal.

Improved Power Word: Fortitude (maxed) - (Increases the effect of your Fortitude spells by 30%) If you've ever been in a group with a priest, you'll know that one major thing everyone looks for is a fortitude buff. It increases stamina, meaning that the entire party has more health, making them harder to kill. Which is always a good thing. Increasing that bonus is, obviously, a good thing. Even if the rest of the party don't realise it.

Improved Power Word: Shield (maxed) - (Increases the damage absorbed by your Shield by 15%) One of the best ways to heal without getting aggro is to do it pre-emptively, by dropping a Shield onto the tank before he charges in.  This talent makes that pre-emptive healing stronger.  The first thing to do when any squishy (cloth-wearer) is getting attacked is to drop a Shield on them so they can keep casting and don't die while you cast a proper heal.  With this talent, that bubble lasts longer. Hooray for logic!

Tier3: Inner Focus (spell) - (Instant, 3min cooldown, reduces the mana cost of your next spell by 100% and increases the crit chance by 25% it it has one) I used to uhm and ah about this talent, but if you remember you have it it can be very useful.  Nothing's better than being able to heal 1k to everyone in the party free of charge, especially as at least one person in the party is likely to also recieve a crit from that, meaning 1.5k healed (and Inspiration, I'll get to that later) or running out of mana, only to land that last Greater Heal on the tank that keeps him alive (usually 2k, but possibly 3k with Inspiration).  The crit chance should not be relied upon unless you are wearing a lot of +crit gear (note, that's spell crit. Regular crit is for weapons), but it's nice to have.

Meditation (maxed) - (Allows 15% of your mana regeneration to continue while casting) For those that don't know, the normal rule is that during the casting of a spell, and for the 2 seconds or so afterwards, casters cannot regenerate mana.  This spell allows a small percentage of your mana to ignore that rule.  This is a good thing, it means that after you run out of mana, you will have enough mana for another heal sooner.  Those couple of seconds can make all the difference.

Tier4: Mental Agility (1/5) - (Reduces the mana cost of your instant cast spells by 2%) In part, this talent is to make up the 20 points I need for the next one.  But it is very useful in its own right, because some of your main spells are instant-cast, namely Renew, Shield and of course your buffs.  Oh, and Shadow Word Pain, which I occassionally use if I'm feeling confident/bored.  However, there are more useful things in the holy tree, so no more than one point here.

Tier5: Divine Spirit (spell) - (Instant cast, 30yd range, global cooldown, increases the target's spirit by XX for 30mins) This spell has 3 or so ranks, plus a prayer version.  Hence my not bothering to quote the mana cost, and the XX instead of a value.  This spell is very nice for a few reasons.  Point one, spirit is related to health and mana regen, so more spirit means less downtime between fights.  Point two, spirit is related to mana regen, which means mana comes back faster in fights.  Point three, for this talent build (not all priests, though) spirit means +damage/healing.  +Healing is good, you want to get as much of it as possible.

Holy
Tier1: Healing Focus (maxed) - (Gives you a 70% chance to avoid interruption caused by damage when casting any healing spell) Like it or not, occassionally you will draw aggro and things will start hitting you with sharp or blunt objects.  This, for most casters, means that spells take at least a second longer to cast.  However, heals taking longer to cast is bad, so we take this talent so that getting hit doesn't delay our heals too long.

Holy Specialisation (maxed) - (Increases the crit chance of your holy spells by 5%) A debatable one this, and another one I uhmed and ahed over.  The reason I decided to plug points into it is because, while crits are by no means to be depended upon, they are very nice when they happen.  A crit means 1.5 times as much healing, and Inspiration (which I'll get to in a short while).  And while I do use Renew a lot, I think I'd rather have a higher chance of big heals mid-fight than slightly more buffer health that trickles in slowly.

Tier2: Divine Fury (maxed) - (Reduces the casting time of your Smite, Holy Fire, Heal and Greater Heal by 0.5s) Ignore the part about Smite and Holy Fire, it's irrelevant.  Heal and Greater Heal, however, are the main tools for healing the tank, and with this talent, they land half a second earlier.  And only a second after Flash Heal would, as well.  For twice the healing power, that's not bad.  This talent is a must-have.  Yay for logic again :)

Tier3: Inspiration (maxed) - (Increases your target's armour by 25% for 15s after receiving a crit from your Flash Heal, Heal, Greater Heal or Prayer of Healing spell) I've referred to this a couple of times already.  I like this talent, it's a very nice buff to your already very nice crit heals.  Now, in addition to multiplying damage healed by 1.5, your crits will reduce the damage taken for the next quarter of a minute.  Very nice.  More to the point, it's a percentage increase, which means that while it's less useful for cloth-wearers, it makes plated tanks live up to their name!  My paladin has over 5k armour at level 45.  If my priest (despite being on a different server, and the same account) landed a critical heal on her, she'd have over 6.25k armour. Possibly as much as 7k, depending on exactly how much she has (I haven't looked for a while).  Imagine that on a level 60 warrior!  It's a very nice thing to have, and the reason I decided to plump for +crit at the top of this tree.

Tier4: Holy Reach (maxed) - (Increases the range of your Holy Fire and Smite spells and the radius of your Holy Nova and Prayer of Healing spells by 20%)  I only really care about one part of this, the part that covers Prayer of Healing. I don't even have Holy Nova (more one why later) and I don't use Smite or Holy Fire.  But Prayer of Healing I use a lot, and it is very nice to be able to use that from further away from party members.  A hunter with the right talents could be as far as 41yds away from an enemy he is attacking, which puts him about that far away from the warrior.  I'm usually quite near to the warrior to help him deal with anything that might try to hit me, and so if the hunter starts getting hit, this talent means that when I try to heal him and the tank at the same time, I'm a lot more confident it's going to work, even if he starts walking backward!

Improved Healing (maxed) - (Reduces the mana cost of your Lesser Heal, Heal and Greater Heal spells by 15%) Lower mana cost = more casts per full bar of mana. Yay for logic!

Tier5: Spiritual Guidance (maxed) - (Increases spell damage and healing by 25% of your spirit) I'm not sure exactly how this works, whether it's a straight valute or works like the +damage/healing found on items.  Either way, it's well worth having, because priest gear will often have high spirit values on it.  The main priest buff after stamina is spirit.  If you're being encouraged to have high spirit, you want to make the most out of that high spirit. And besides, every bit of extra healing is good. (Oh, and a cool icon)

Tier6: Spiritual Healing (maxed) - (Increases the amount healed by your healing spells by 10%) Yay for logic! That is all. If you can't understand why this talent is maxed.... You lose.

Shadow
Don't be silly. There are no healing talents here except for Fade and Vampiric Embrace, both of which are too hard down the tree, and one of which requires you to do damage. If you're doing damage, you're wasting mana that could be used to heal.  Healing priests should not take any talents here at 60.

Some Talents I Didn't Take
Wand Specialisation: hahahahahahahaha...(gasp)...hahahahahaha!

Martyrdom: If I'm hit by a crit, I'm dead. And my corpse wouldn't really appreciate being uninterruptable.

More points in Mental Agility: I'd rather not sink my points there, there are better places for them.  Good, but not good enough.

Mental Strength: +healing or +mana.  +mana is good, but overall +healing is better for the course of a battle.  I get more points healed in an average fight from +10% healing than I would from +10% mana. And I couldn't have this and Spiritual Healing.

Improved Renew: Again, there are other things I'd rather put my points into.

Holy Nova: This is a good spell, it is.  It's good damage, good healing, and doing it all for no threat is pretty sweet.  However, it is the single worst spell in terms of mana efficiency that exists in the priest's arsenal.  And no, I'm not going to waste Inner Focus on it.  When faced with a choice between a mana hoover and +healing, I'm going for +healing.

Prayer of Healing: A good spell, but I only use Prayer of Healing once or twice in a battle unless the proverbial piece of excrement hits the fan (in which case you may experience a short, stinging sensation know as death. This is Blizzard's fault, naturally)  And there were, of course, other places I preferred to spend my talents.  If this had been a tier earlier, I may have considered it instead of Holy Reach.

Spirit of Redemption: It used to be a good spell, but if you ask me, they've nerfed it a bit by just letting us use our own heals.  We don't have any anti-wipe spells that work, in my opinion, as well as the old SoR did, even at 60. I'd have preferred new ranks of this at the trainer at large prices.

Lightwell: It's hard to use, people complain that so-and-so has been hogging it (which causes headaches, which are bad) and I would have had to give up Divine Spirit. And put a point into SoR.

Anything else: Is either offensive (Mana Burn, Force of Will, Power Infusion, Searing Light) or defensive in a PvP-oriented way (Inner Fire, Spell Warding, Blessed Recovery).  I am not a PvP priest, if I want PvP I'll go and play my mage.

Well, that's about it. Feel free to call me an idiot, insult my heritage or whatever.  This is my build, I'm sticking with it. Honest.

- Shasto

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