Firstly solo viability with a mainly healing specced healer…
Yeah for the patch, no more stocking up and carrying around of a DPS as well as healing set of gear. Tbh the + healing gear was very nice to heal in but you could hardly kill a mouse in it. With the new combined stats you basically only need now spell power to be able to heal and dish out decent damage, yes you won’t top the damage charts and will still have some issues around mana (Holy DPS is mana inneficient). I went into Wrath still specced as a pure raid healer but respecced to shadow in this last week, though my DPS did go up by about 25% I must comment that on the raid healing build I had was nothing but healing efficiency (our guild lacks healers badly) as our guild pushed 10 mans with 2 healers (none more were available). If you do raid with 3 healers in a 10 man the healers does have the option of taking a few solo talents (just not in a pure raiding guild).

@Dechion

If you want to have a healing focussed spec but also wants to be able to do some decent damage some of the following talents I’d recommend, Meditation (Holy DPS is mana inneficient), Spirit tap (same reason as Meditation). Searing Light that extra boost in damage will help you go quite a bit.

On the mention of shadow priests being so sought after their utility in raids were just incredible. If my memory serves me correct the few times I did spec to shadow I calculated that my I am capable of adding 115 - 125 MP5 in combat to my party. Considering that I was in about Kara level gear then your T5/T6 shadow priests pushed 200+ MP5 out. Putting 3 shadow priests in a group not only sustained thier mana usage to DPS but you had 2 extra slots you could use to rotate your healers and other mana using DPS in during a battle. Imagine for lvl 70 an in combat MP5 of 800-900 and out of combat MP5 of 1200+ MP5 (that’s as far as I have it that the T5/T6 gear provided for healers). That coupled with low numbers of priests as well as quite a large ammount of people rolled priests to heal gave a large demand / low supply of shadow priests. Thus for raiding I’d say that both Shadow and Holy is quite viable (esp CoH at later raids) for raiding purposes.

This all have changed now with a lot more classes giving mana returns (ret Paladins, Frost Mages, Shadow Priest) as well as it being raid wide. So looking into Wrath you will find that a Shadow priest will be mainly valued on DPS and not the mana returns they used to have.

As mentioned a lot has changed with the latest expansion to improve Holy DPS, to such an extent that I leveled my first 4 levels into Wrath with a raid healing spec and only respecced as I wanted tod o some instances with a resto druid friend of mine.

All builds are possible solo - but I don’t think that any other than shadow is going to be a “fast” or “easy” solo. Skill and familiarity will take you a long way on that route, but as far as being good for soloing - probably neither heavy healing or heavy disc.

You can solo with any build and heal with any build - it’s just a question of how well you want to to any of it. And I don’t think that just anyone can pick up a healing priest and find a way to easily solo with it.

The question I have is will I be able to solo as a 23/38 holy/disc? I have seen several other builds such as 30 holy/ 31 shadow, 14/6/41 shadow, even my current build of 14/0/47 (14/0/46 till I ding).
what I am looking for is a build that will be a decent healer and yet still be able to solo without getting pounded flat.
Gear wise, i already have the primal mooncloth set sitting in the bank and am grinding the primals for the whitemend to finish out the last half of level 69. I will have something like 1500 +healing at about 370 or so spirit and about 75 Mp5 to go with it. When I put on my damage gear I should be somewhere around 600 or so +damage Just so you know where I sit gear wise.
any help would be most appreciated,
Dechion, Stormrage-us

@ Ego
Thank you for the information! I run hunters with BM alot and I'm making my first priest tonight! Don't let whiny people get to you on threads. I'm an instance runner all the way. Gear, XP, and that group feeling of working together makes it the best thing in the game to me. This is the best WoW forum ever :] thanks.

@ Everyone defending Ego

Good job. your not assholes =]

Thanks!

I took a good long look at the tree after the 2.3 patch came out and found some pretty viable PvE talents squirreled away in the tree that seemed almost perfectly suited for my situation. Well, during that good long look at the tree, its eyes met mine and we shared a calm moment; I could balance my already competent healing with some survivability against the soul-crushing harshness of never finding the ideal group. So, I went to work on the talent-builders looking for that perfect balance, and the best one I found and put to work was a full discipline spec with a bit of a holy “crutch”.

I did this to prolong my survivability with terrible groups. My situation is so astronomically different than what the normal environment that I had to reduce my overall effectiveness to work with the people that I’d become friends with. I hate having to adjust myself to others, but it really seemed like a choice when I decided to take the plunge and respec.

There’s one thing I noticed as soon as I got done choosing my talents: I had the mana pool of a GOD. This can be balanced out by the mana cost talents in the Holy tree to bring out the most in a priest’s sustained healing, stack that with the reduced cost of instants, inner focus, and mana regen from the heavens, and I’d outlast every encounter as long as I didn’t need to spam Greater Heals that whole fight. What I was missing was any sort of Clearcasting proc and seeing any unexpected AoE would strain me beyond my spec, and I don’t think it’s possible to really change this in the direction I was going.

I’m not exactly set on +healing now that I didn’t have the talents spread all through the Holy tree, but I ended up taking the time to really run instances especially for the gear from the earliest moment possible. I also managed to grab the extra stats from Divine Spirit, which added meagerly to my +damage and +healing.

Agro: The biggest problem I faced in my situation. I consistently grouped with tanks that had no skill for keeping agro, no matter how hard I tried to stay below a certain level of threat. In come two talents that knock agro away with a machete, 20% agro reduction of Holy/Discipline spells and Pain Suppression. That immediate 5% agro reduction is strange for a talent buried at the end of the PvP tree.

So, theoretically, I could keep the heals coming, but when I land a heavy one that the tank wasn’t ready for, I could either wipe that agro off permanently or Fade and hope to the lord he knows what he’s doing. That heal land even harder than 5% agro reduction? No worries, I’m not taking 40% of that damage until the tank notices what’s happening. My heals need to land even harder? Power Infusion temporarily bumps me up to the power of a Holy priest. That boss need some burning down? Power Infusion the other caster in the group and pray to god you get some return-on-investment.

I had to lie to groups by saying I was holy/disc, but not one group ever noticed the difference, and I sure as hell noticed I wouldn’t die as fast, leaving only a tiny heap of frustration with PUG groups.

I do not recommend it. I don’t. It’ll gimp you beyond belief for anything else other than isntancing with terrible groups. They call it a specialization; you specialize in something.

-i pull with holy fire (adding a DOT)
-mind blast while they run to me (1.5 cast time and chance for a stun)
-shadow word: pain (instant with 10% less mana usage)
-shield (same instant mana reduction)
-starshards (no mana)
-wand (no mana)

In this order, I have 3 DOTs on the mob, at least until holy fire drops off and I can start the 5 sec clock once the shield is up. Also, by hitting mind blast early, I start the cooldown period early in case they need a little touch up towards the end or they resisted something along the way. I can also use mind flay for CC or for a stream of damage (rather than the all-or-none damage of my other spells)

Some have suggested that disc is a slow leveller. That may be true. But I mostly solo. Yet I can heal instances no problem and I almost never die unless I am really pushing the envelope and pick up 2 mobs 3-4 levels above me. However, I tend to prefer durability over DPS. The imrpoved buffs I can give any groups I am with are always worthwhile and dropping an improved shield at a critical moment helps a great deal.

My grinding has seemed to slow down now that I am into the 50’s. Part of that is just that I need 130k XP to get to the next level and I have focused on mobs 2-4 levels above me. A number of griding guides suggest 1-2 levels *below* for fastest work. I will try that.

By the way, I am night elf and I use starshards all the time. I can pull 2 or 3 mobs, putting SW:P on all and dropping starshards on the third one of them. By the time the first one drops, I pop shield again, renew SW:P on the other two and by the time the second one drops the third one is just about dead. I use my wand for most of the damage along the way. Spirit tap, divine spirit and wand usage let me regenerate my mana for endurance.

When I grind one at a time (my level and 2-3 above me), I MB, SW:P, starshards, shield, and then wand until death with the ocassional extra mind blast or mind flay. At this rate, I drop 2 mobs a minute and I almost never stop for mana or food breaks.

So, I guess I vote for “the other one”

Caerroil
Guild: Aegis
Server: Shandris

great blog BTW