preists, spec talk

[Amit]

ok so right now im shadow/disc. i have heard at 60 a lot fo people switch to holy disc. now looking at the talents it seems like you could actually get a lot of good stuff from all 3 trees by speccing some in all of them, improved shields and insta cast cost from disc, better haeling from holy, mindflay and improved swp and fear as well, am i missing something?

[Amit]

Saved Template

Class: Priest
Level: 60


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Discipline Talents (20 points)


Unbreakable Will - 5/5 points
Increases your chance to resist Stun, Fear, and Silence effects by 15%.


Improved Power Word: Shield - 3/3 points
Reduces the duration of your Power Word: Shield's Weakened Soul effect by 15 seconds.


Improved Power Word: Fortitude - 2/2 points
Increases the effect of your Power Word: Fortitude spell by 30%.


Mental Agility - 5/5 points
Reduces the mana cost of your instant cast spells by 10%.


Mental Strength - 5/5 points
Increases your maximum Mana by 10%.



Holy Talents (13 points)


Improved Renew - 5/5 points
Increases the amount healed by your Renew spell by 15%.


Spiritual Healing - 5/5 points
Increases the amount healed by your healing spells by 10%.


Inspiration - 3/5 points
Increases your target's armor value from items by 15% for 15 seconds after getting a critical effect from your Flash Heal, Heal, Greater Heal, or Prayer of Healing spell.



Shadow Talents (18 points)


Blackout - 5/5 points
Gives your Shadow damage spells a 10% chance to stun the target for 3 seconds.


Improved Shadow Word: Pain - 2/2 points
Increases the duration of your Shadow Word: Pain spell by 6 seconds.


Shadow Focus - 3/5 points
Reduces your target's chance to resist your Shadow spells by 6%.


Mind Flay - 1/1 point
Assault the target's mind with Shadow energy, causing 75 damage over 3 seconds and slowing the target to 50% of their movement speed.


Improved Mind Blast - 5/5 points
Reduces the cooldown of your Mind Blast spell by 2.5 seconds.


Improved Psychic Scream - 2/2 points
Reduces the cooldown of your Psychic Scream ability by 4 seconds.

[Beafraede]

I'm back. Y'all will see me on early mornings or briefly in the afternoons during the week, but I will be on for weekend raids/events.

However, regarding specs, I also am still Shadow/Discipline because I solo more than I probably should. Regardless, like all priests, I am effective in groups because we are essential primary healers (with some side work on CC (Shackle + Mind Control (and in emergency fear to reset agg table))). However, I know I could be an even better group healer if I respecced to Disc/Holy (not Holy/Disc).

This is how most Disc/Holy spec and why:

Discipline Talents (33 points)

Unbreakable Will - 5/5 points
Increases your chance to resist Stun, Fear, and Silence effects by 15%.
This used to be worthless and the resists didn't factor in. However, I am told that they have since patched this and that it now works. As the primary healer, resisting all of those effects is critical because when you die, the group dies. Also, Silent Resolve is silly and you need to spend 5 points to get access to later Discipline abilities.

Improved Power Word: Fortitude - 2/2 points
Increases the effect of your Power Word: Fortitude spell by 30%.
Essential regardless of the spec, more hp = more time to cast heals, > chance group survives encounter. I haven't seen or tested anything using the prayers, but I believe it affects them as well.

Improved Power Word: Shield - 3/3 points
Reduces the duration of your Power Word: Shield's Weakened Soul effect by 15 seconds.
Now that this can be cast on anyone in raid, it is very helpful. Also, essential to keeping mages casting in large crowd encounters.

Mental Agility - 5/5 points
Reduces the mana cost of your instant cast spells by 10%.
Renew, the DOTS, Power Words (Fort and Shield) are all insta-cast and eat up a lot of mana. This helps. One alternative would be to reduce this to 3/5 and pick up 2/2 Martyrdom and Focused Casting (both of which help get off spells when you are being bashed on, but if you are being bashed on, odds are you won't live long as a cloth wearer).

Mental Strength - 5/5 points
Increases your maximum Mana by 10%.
You can never have enough mana.

Meditation - 5/5 points
15% mana regeneration to continue while casting.
You can never have enough mana and if you run out of mana, you better pray for some sort of recovery.

You have some flexibility with the next couple of points because you need to spend 30 points to get access to Divine Spirit, which is really the reason you are focusing on Disc rather than Holy. Here's my recommendation:

Improved Inner Fire - 3/3 points
Increase effect of Inner Fire by 45%.
This helps your AF, which is utter crap most of the time. In turn, that reduces the damage you take and if you need to beat on someone inner fire helps your attack power as well (those of you staff wielders from DAOC know what I mean if ever you went into TG).

Martyrdom - 1/2 points
50% chance for focused casting (no interrupt from damage) for 6 secs after being hit by critical strike.
You need to spend a point to get access to Divine Spirit and Wands, Improved Mana Burn, Force of Will, and Silent Resolve are useless IMHO.

Inner Focus - 1/1 points
Cost of next cast reduced by 100%, critical effect chance +25%.
Most useful when you need a big heal and are completely out of mana.

Divine Spirit - 1/1
This increases as you level up. The bonus spirit helps a ton in conjunction with the other abilities and helps reduce downtime for all casters (saves you from worrying about it on items, which should instead be focusing on INT/STA if you are a caster).

Holy Talents (20 Points)

Improved Renew - 5/5 points
Increases the amount healed by your Renew spell by 15%.
Renew is useful because it generates agg very slowly and as an insta can be cast on the run.

Spiritual Healing - 5/5 points
Increases the amount healed by your healing spells by 10%.
As the primary healer, this is a no-brainer (but +10% heal = +10% agg).

Subtlety - 5/5 points
Reduces the threat generated by your healing spells by 20%.
Everyone repeat after me, "when the main healer dies, the rest of the group dies soon thereafter." Most people think that threat reduction abilities are useless because they don't impact other players. However, in the epic dungeons, priests invariably are quickly targetted because they are generating all the agg by healing the main tanks.

Improved Healing - 5/5 points
Reduces the cost of most heals by 15%.
More heals = > chance to survive encounter + more mana for other things (i.e. PW: Shield, etc.).

I have no idea why you spent points on Improved Mind Blast in your spec. It is worthless. It costs more mana/damage point, generates more agg, and is interrruptible in comparison with Mind Flay (Mind Flay + Vampric Embrace = Solo Priest's bread & butter). Drop the points from it to add more Shadow Focus (long live Mind Control) and/or some other Disc or Holy ability.

However, these are just my opinions and I could be completely wrong.

Beafraede - 60 Undead Priest, 276 Enchanter/300 Tailor

[Jedus]

26Disc/25Shadow.. yeah its weird...

[Beafraede]

This is my current Shadow/Disc spec. This was not my original version, but came about from continued play and recognizing which abilities were going unused (like Improved Mind Blast). I am still considering respeccing to Disc/Holy, but I'm waiting to see just what pvp looks like (if priests have to do damage to get pvp ranking, I will likely stay shadow/disc). You can still group for raids using this spec, you just have to be smart (playing with other smart players helps - I spent yesterday healing my group and most of group 2 when we did a successful complete UBRS raid - though I have to give most of the credit to Winke, Pigvig, Baedor and the rest of the BWC crew there because they were picking up the slack for the pick-up healer in the other group).

Discipline Talents (18 points)

Unbreakable Will - 5/5 points
Increases your chance to resist Stun, Fear, and Silence effects by 15%.

Improved Power Word: Fortitude - 2/2 points
Increases the effect of your Power Word: Fortitude spell by 30%.

Improved Power Word: Shield - 3/3 points
Reduces the duration of your Power Word: Shield's Weakened Soul effect by 15 seconds.

Mental Agility - 5/5 points
Reduces the mana cost of your instant cast spells by 10%.

Improved Inner Fire - 3/3 points
Increases the effects of your Inner Fire spell by 45%.

Holy Talents (0 points)

None

Shadow Talents (33 points)

Blackout - 5/5 points
Gives your Shadow damage spells a 10% chance to stun the target for 3 seconds.

Spirit Tap - 4/5 points
Gives you a 80% chance to gain a 100% bonus to your Spirit after killing a target. For the duration, your Mana may regenerate at a 50% rate while casting. Lasts 15 seconds.

Shadow Focus - 5/5 points
Reduces your target's chance to resist your Shadow spells by 10%.

Mind Flay - 1/1 point
Assault the target's mind with Shadow energy, causing 75 damage over 3 seconds and slowing the target to 50% of their movement speed.

Improved Psychic Scream - 2/2 points
Reduces the cooldown of your Psychic Scream ability by 4 seconds.

Shadow Reach - 3/3 points
Increases the range of your Shadow damage spells by 20%.

Vampiric Embrace - 1/1 point
Afflicts your target with Shadow energy that causes all party members to be healed for 20% of any Shadow damage you deal for 1 minute.

Silence - 1/1 point
Silence the target, preventing them from casting spells for 5 seconds.

Shadow Weaving - 5/5 points
Your Shadow damage spells have a 100% chance to cause your target to be vulnerable to Shadow damage. This vulnerability increases the Shadow damage dealt to your target by 3% and lasts 15 seconds. Stacks up to 5 times.

Darkness - 5/5 points
Increases your Shadow spell damage by 10%.

Shadowform - 1/1 point
Assume a Shadowform, increasing your Shadow damage by 15% and reducing Physical damage done to you by 15%. However, you may only cast Shadow and Discipline spells while in this form.

When I solo, I spend most of my time in shadow form with Inner Fire and PW: Fort up. With Mind Flay + Vampric embrace, I can pretty much non-stop for about 10-20 mins straight on lvl 49-53 mobs solo pulls (Spirit Tap helps quite a bit on preserving mana recovery and you almost never suffer damage you aren't vamping right back into yourself between dots and flay). The decreased time on Fear shouts should help in pvp and the extra damage and range on Shadow spells helps offset the extended range that mages/hunters receive on their distance casts (Mind Flay is also nice with the slow effect, but it pretty much gives away that you are a shadow priest and everyone will turn and follow the Flay to its source to kill you). Regardless, if you don't have vampric embrace + Mind Flay + increased range + increased damage + shadow vulnerability + extra damage from shadow form, you're not really playing a shadow priest. You also have to know how/when to use your silence effectively (good on pulling caster mobs or stopping mobs from healing themselves - the stun chance on your shadow spells also helps on this). One down side is that you will never be as effective against same level or elite mobs that rogues, warriors, mages, but they are built for dps, you are not (because we are a support class, not a primary offense one). Another downside is that you can't cast holy spells (i.e. most of your heals) while in shadow form (just hope the reduced physical damage + vampric embrace (which heals everyone in the group) help offset that you aren't focusing on healing). In group combat, it would be best to have a primary healer in the group (which also doubles the number of fear shouts allowed (and I really like fear because even with diminishing returns, as an insta that affects several people, this buys the group more time to kill enemy mages/priests so that you can pick off the tanks later)).

Beafraede - 60 Undead Priest, 284 Enchanter/300 Tailor