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Out of boredom I rolled an undead priest on an RP server, and I'm pretty clueless when it comes to their talents.

I have two friends playing Priests. One went holy spec to begin with, hated it, and then switched to shadow. He now loves playing as his priest.

The other is still holy spec and enjoys playing his priest still since he actually enjoys healing people.

I've heard a lot of things. One is that holy spec, while neat, isn't all that useful and even a 100% shadow specced priest can heal plenty well enough in the endgame. That, and with shadowspec soloing is much easier.

So, any advice here?

http://worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/priests/talents.html

My 40 priest is 100% Shadow atm.  Soloing can be annoying, but it's ok. You're also pretty good in PvP. I can also heal perfectly well in Instances. Eventually, I'm going to get a few ranks in Discipline, but that's about it.

I don't plan on playing long-term anyway, so how I would do in "omg teh uber" high-end instances means jack shit to me. I probably wouldn't do them much, because I hate the kind of people I would have to group with; Just ask anyone from here who is in our new guild on Moonrunner.

Don't worry about end-game anything, respec is a mear 1g and thier is no reason to suffer under a holy build, weather you enjoy healing or not, untill you are 58-60.  Even if you have a regular group you play with, periodically you need to do shit yourself and a shadow build is about 2-3x more powerful in this regard then holy, while holy is only marginally superior at healing... i can tell you with complete honesty that in no instance did i ever really feel like my healing ability was inadaquate untill i tried 10-man ubrs... which was difficult mostly due to the degree to which everyone was fucking off and not paying attention.

Your first 5 points should go into spirit tap, this increasing your soloing ability so greatly that no one should be without this.  Since you're not on a pvp server you can go for a maximal +int/spirit build and kill without drinks for long periods of time.  From thier just continue down the shadow tree to shadowform which is just.... amazing.  I've only played mage and priest to a high level but it is easily the best 31 point ability in the game as best i can tell, 15% damage mitigation ON TOP of armor bonuses (and inner fire gives quite abit), 15% more damage.  I used bandages to heal once i got this (not shitting you).

Yep, you'll want to stay shadow until level 60.  Something to think about, is if you want to dabble in the disc tree.  The first two talents aren't so good- Silent Resolve is better for small teams, whereas Unbreakable Will is better for raids, but both are fairly inconsequential.  Improved Power Word: Shield and Fortitude are pretty useful talents to pick up though, and they may be worth it compared to a pure shadow spec.

This is actually a bit silly, because you'll have enough talent points to eventually pick these up anyways.  You may want to consider if you'd like a bit more oomph on your shields and fortitude sooner rather than later for early-level emergency survivability.

Only consider disc post-40.  You want Godmode... i mean shadowform, asap.  Actually its more like 42 or so, because you'll take silence asap as well, which mean you won't have 5/5 in darkness yet.  After you finish up darkness and have shadowform, then get imp PW:S and mental agility.

I'm running a 34 priest currently and I agree with the thoughts above.  Dark until high 50's.  Then I'd only spec towards healing if you want to be a Raid whore.  I expect to stay dark on mine throughout.  I can heal just fine.

I concur. Make a beeline for Shadowform. Do whatever it takes to get it at exactly 40. Your solo ability goes through the roof. And the only important thing before level 58 is to kill another foozle for another drop as quickly and efficiently as possible. The only thing keeping me from plowing through red-con mobs with Shadowform is their resists. The damage mitigation from fear+shield+shadowform is freaking amazing. Contrary to what idiots will tell you in a PUG, you can heal perfectly fine in an instance.

I've also ditched trying to get +dmg/+healing equipment. The amount gained from them is insignificant. You're much better off trying to build up your int and spirit for extra longevity when casting.

...and don't waste money training Feedback. And you can skip Smite once you get Mind-Flay if you want.

56 Dwarf Priest here.  (Retired from a PvP server.)

Most of the advice here is spot on.  Holy will give you more healing power.  However, when you look at the larger equation of the number of talent points spent to gain a relatively small increase in effective Healing power - versus what 20+ points could get you in the other 2 trees... ehhh yeah.

- Shadow is teh w1n for levelling.
- Best Priest Talents: Improved PW: Shield, Inner Focus, Spirit Tap, Blackout, Mind Flay, Silence and Shadowform.
- Get yourself the Autobuff Plugin (http://ui.worldofwar.net/ui.php?id=1041).  You don't really want to melee, but if you have to, Inner Fire is our best mitigation.  (Technically Psychic Scream is the best, but that's another story)


For Talent Progression I would go:

5/5 Spirit Tap
2/2 Improved Shadow Word: Pain
3/5 Blackout
1/1 Mind Flay

Then -

5/5 Unbreakable Will
3/3 Improved Power Word: Shield

Then -

5/5 Blackout
5/5 Improved Mind Blast
2/2 Improved Psychic Scream
1/1 Silence
5/5 Shadow Weaving
4/5 Darkness
1/1 Shadowform

 
After that I'd pick up the last point in Darkness, and spend the rest on Discipline.  Discipline is a GREAT tree but most of its benefits are subtle involving mana eficiency and making you tougher overall as a caster.  You can spend your remaining points in a few areas and still get a good return (Shadow Reach and Improved Fade for example) but I recommend Discipline.  At 56 I re-spec'd from 33/14 Disc-Shadow to 26/21 Disc-Shadow.  Simply because you move away from grinding situations to more instancing.


That all being said.  In my experience levelling is fairly slow until 40.  Then 40-60 you pretty much melt faces.  (see WoW Priest Forums). 
For PvE grinding: Get yourself some +Shadow gear.  At 56 in Shadowform I chewed through mobs at an amazing rate.  Caveat mobs that ARE NOT immune to Fear and/or Shadow Damage. (IE - undead type mobs or demons)  SF + Shadow Weaving + Darkness = PvE Win.  Try to train yourself to observe the 5 Second Rule, and not rely on PW:S too much.  It's a fat hog for mana and you have other tools at your disposal to save your ass.  (Like a well timed Fear.)
 
In PvP unless you get the jump on someone most people will have the Honor Trinket and have seen all your Shadow trickery before.  The tables can turn for or against you very quickly. 
     

I respec'd my priest alt to get improved  powerword: shield around 22 or so and it was so easy to solo from that point on I didn't miss shadowform for the extra 10 levels. With pw:s you can sit inside the bubble and wand most mobs down in reasonable time and end every fight full mana. Between a wand and mind flay my priest literally flew to 60 mostly solo, and still heals fine when he runs instances. I didn't start working on him until they put in the auto wand patch though. would have sucked prior to that.

As nice as improved power word: shield and fortitude are, I'd get shadowform asap, and then pick up my disc talents.

I don't have the heart to really play my priest anymore. After getting Shadowform, it's like, "What's the point?"

Soloing sucks, PUGs suck, uber-catass guild instance runs suck. The only viable option is grouping with friends...and they're not around.

I think a lot of the problem is that a lot of shadow priests think they are mages who can heal. Yes a shadow specced priest can heal pretty good, the real question is will they?

In pvp a priest is almost always more useful healing than nuking. On the pvp server I play on a bunch of the shadow priests totally refuse to heal anyone except them selves while in pvp.

It's kind of silly to expect a priest to run around and spot heal an entire raid.

The nice thing about healers in WoW is unlike EQ, they don't have to be melee's bitches. They can stand on their own in PvP, solo fine, actually killing stuff faster than some other classes manage and generally are quite self sufficient. A general complaint I've heard from priests is, at least in AV, no one sticks around to deal with the npc adds that aggro the priest when he heals, so why should they.

No.  The trouble is healing in PvP is seen as Useless.  That's why they don't do it.  The reason is the Tarran Mill Zerg.

Way back when that was the only PvP option, they didn't bother healing because keeping some other chucklefuck alive gave no HK or CP whatsoever, so fuck them, right ?

Nowadays they haven't adapted their thinking to "I will get Honor if we complete and win this game.  To complete and win this game, I really ought to heal the flag-carrier or possibly the warriors trying to take the graveyard."

People are selfish fucks.

When I meet a priest in PvP who heals (and they are out there) I am the nicest, most curteous and generous Rogue you will ever meet.  These people are Gold.

I may stick to the dark path, but when in a group (especially one with a warrior or rogue) I will heal constantly and not even touch my damage spells (unless I feel I have the mana pool for it.)

The best duo is Priest/Warrior with second best being Priest/Rogue.  The first is for taking down large numbers at once.  The second is good at plowing through 1 - 2 mob encounters non-stop.  I haven't been in an PvP with my priest yet, but I'd imagine it is much the same.

I'd attach myself to some melee characters and be their shadow healing them or buffing them as needed.  When I'm solo, I'll use my dark powers to melt faces.  If I spec Holy, I won't have that flexibility and I won't be all that much better of a healer either.

If I just nuke beside a rogue, the result is a priest with low mana and a rogue with low hp's. -->Easy Target.

You should definately nuke when grinding with a rogue, the synergy is rediculous.

Rogues starts off with ambush, you throw on SWP, VE, and then mind blast, which causes and insane amount of threat, pulling the mob off the rogue and twords you.

Rogue backstabs, you mind flay.  Mob approaches melee range,  you Inner Fire if its not already yup and wack with staff unless mob turns attention to the backstabbign rogue, in which case you toss another mind blast, and its dead.

If you pay attention and have a rogue that does too, rogue/shadow priest is a GREAT grinding duo, only  slightly inferior to priest/mage.  You should barely need any healing spells.

I did forget about bouncing agro like that.  I did that once with a rogue and we did kick much ass.  The mobs were so confused between my face melting and the rogue's backstabbing they would never really deal any damage.  That was actually fun.

I got invited to a WSG group, and the first thing that was said was our priest "I dont heal in WSG, I only nuke". Coming from our only priest in the group, thats horrible. You NEED heals some times in PVP. I have seen it first hand, the major difference a really good PVP healer priest can make on the outcome of fights.

I am sure there is some of that but when I play my shaman I find healing anybody but the flag carrier pretty trickly mainly because A>I am usually not in that persons group B> they are running around like headless chickens trying to get into or out of pvp. This drives me batshit crazy healing people in the flag room cause they insist on dodging out of los every freaking time the heal is about to go off.

The healing interface in wow is pretty craptastic compared to eq2 and if there is one thing I wish wow would steal it would be implied targeting.

kaid

You don't have one of the group/raid healing AI mods?  It IS impossible without them.

I think another reason so many people avoid Holy is the talent tree really sucks. There's not much usefulness in it. Improved Smite, Holy Nova, Spirit of Redemption? Crap. I hope they look into those talents soon, as they did with Hunters and Warlocks. I'd consider respeccing if it was as much of a leap in effectiveness compared to the shadow talents.

I'd guess they won't do a whole lot with it though.  If you made it so that tree gave both better healing and better damage, now you would have made shadow useless.  Perhaps they could make it more useful from a healing standpoint and move the damage talents to a different tree all together.  Then you would truly be choosing between being an uber healer or an uber nuker or somewhere in-between.  Right now you can choose between uber nuker or in-between only.

Holy priests have been complaining about thier tree... gee, pretty  much since forever.
The other 2 trees have choices and value, even if divine spirit is rather underpowered.

Shaman get sexy things like Nature's Swiftness and Mana Tide
Druids get Nature's Swiftness and Enervate
Priests get Stiff Dick and Bubblegum.

I don't mind holy that much, actually.  It certainly isn't very useful for soloing, or even small teams, relatively, but I think it makes enough difference in raids.  Here's my spec (http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/priests/talents.html?50003205050510050500055202100000000000000000), if ye be curious. 

Subtelty will make the difference between a dead and living priest in some cases.  Spiritual Healing improves your heals by 10%, and when combined with IR, increases renew by 25%, which is quite nice considering that renew is your 'safest' and second most efficient heal.  My favorite holy talent however, would have to be improved flash healing- it's actually quite useful in many PvE and PvP situations, which runs counter to the mindset that holy isn't useful when fighting other players.

Be careful what you wish for. I for one wish they'd never looked into hunter's talents because we got our dps nerfed because of it. A holy tree fix would probably lose shadow priests 25% of their dps.

Can I get a hooray?

To be honest, if they stripped every damaging spell and ability from priests when they hit 60 and gave extra healing, defensive, and utility abilities to compensate I'd be playing a priest right now (hell, if they NEVER had offence I would force my brother to babysit my ass to 60 and like it). But as it is now... they die too quickly, and a squishy nuker/healer hybrid with no kiting ability is not as fun as a melee/healer hybrid to me. As of now I have 3 priests at 40, 1 abandoned on a server move, one abandoned for a shaman, and one abandoned for a paladin. I WANT a dedicated healer but priests give up too much (except for damage) in order to be only slightly better than the others. In PVP what they give up is immense.

I would do this if WSG wasn't such a clusterfuck for Alliance.

Also, the priest class Calantus describes is great for the catassing uber, but sucky for anyone else.

If anything, Shamen, are the ones who need a nerf.

Hyperbole. It's great for anyone who wants to be a pure healer and can semi-expect to have group pvp/pve on demand (and there are alts for when that isn't available) That doesn't require an uber catass guild, that can require a small group of friends that tend to play at the same times, or anything of that nature. Also, why do all classes have to appeal to everyone?

Calantus, why would you make it impossible to melt faces just so you can strictly be a healer.  My thought was make the trees so that you have to make that decision for yourself.  That also allows you to get your healer to 50-60 solo or in groups much easier.  Once you are there, dump your damaging spells and go all out healer.  I have no problem with that. 

Right now, you can do heavy damage or be moderate in healing and damage.  Yes, there are some nice healing talents, but not enough to make a marked difference (although improved flash heal is the bomb.)

I really have issues with a number of the talent trees for most classes.  They don't give them enough bite in different areas.  They should really give an advantage in certain areas, but force you to make that decision on what you want that particular class to do.  Most trees fail in this I think.  The only trees I've been happy with so far is Rogue and the new Warlock trees.  The rest are plagued with mediocrity or that "one template beats all" problem.

Hmmm, I'd say the problem is the same with rogue too.

You've only got 3 possibilites really, endgame;  the combat rogue, the BS rogue and the instance rogue.

Admitedly, that beats only having one choice, but still...

If you need a group/raid healing AI mod to do this job effectivly then I stand by my statement that the healing interface in wow is totally craptastic. The fact people feel compelled to get an AI mod to automate this just is further indication for how shittastic the interface in wow is for healers.

I have never once not once felt the need for a mod for healing in EQ2 nor felt like I was having trouble doing my job as a healer. WoW's interface for healers is just shit which is in general why you don't see much healing in WSG. Most people either don't know about the AI mods or find them offensive and won't use them other than the raiding priests. Ya this sucks but bitch at blizzard for making healing so fugging frustrating in this game people try to bot it.

kaid

Yeah, that is what I meant really.  Rogue trees do a better job at giving you a choice than the others.  If they want to improve them even further, by all means do it.

Played my rogue again last night for 1 1/2 hours ===> fun.

No argument there from me, but I'll still choose to use AI mods to help me instead of being frustrated.  Keep charging the windmills though.  :-P

Heheh more like shooting at them with my gun. The whole sucky healing interface is one of the main reasons I went hunter. I had started off trying both shaman and druids. I liked both but I felt like gnawing my arm off every time I tried to heal in a shitstorm.

kaid

Define 'shitstorm'.  I haven't had any problems playing my priest in WoW and healing who I needed to when I needed to.  Of course, I played a druid in EQ for several years, so I'm quite used to hitting F1-5 for party members, then punching the right heal key.  I don't see why healing needs to be any more complex than that.   In a raid, if you're not in my group and you're not the MT you're not my responsibility. /target <mt> is a simple macro key to keep tabs on their health.

I don't see how you can have a problem with using the WoW default UI to heal (not even in a raid now that it has its own CTRA knockoff, though CTRA is still better). Personally I click on people's health bars to select them as I mapped over the F1-F5 keys and I've solo healed up to 2 groups by myself in PVP. I also HATE decursive, I'd rather target people manually.

Also I'm not saying they should strip away every offence on priests, just that any offece I do get as a priest I could care less about. Basically I'm saying that I'd be perfectly happy to play a pure healer so long as the healing abilities were worth it. Right now I can't say that about a priest because they do only slightly better healing than "the hybrids" (priests are actually just nuker/healer hybrids) and survivability is just not there. Now I'm not someone who sees the priest as frail, as I've partied with armor priests, but the tradeoff of survivability for healing is not balanced. They trade their survivability for a little bit of extra healing, but a lot more damage. Since I could care less about damage the tradeoff turns out to be a very bad for me. I look at the shadow tree and see an entire tree basically deleted for a priest I'd play. So now I find myself playing melee/healer hybrids over the supposed primary healer because they offer a better balance of healing/survivability. That to me just doesn't seem right.

This thread surprises me a bit.

Question:  how often when you group with a warrior or priest do you feel that they are competent in their role as a tank or healer?

My experience going to 55 - not often.  Warriors and priests generally suck big in this game.  It's the players - not the game design.

Why?

"I'm gonna arms spec to 60 and then switch over to protection for tanking"

"I'm gonna pwn with shadowspec and may switch over to healing talents at 60".

The only people who feel this is an adequate way to proceed are those doing it - not those grouping with them.

You have to grow into these roles - with the needed talents. Talents often tweak - but sometime provide critical abilities.

 I think the more pertinent question here is "How often when you group with random people do you feel they are competent in their role?". I've been doing pickup groups a lot since my warrior hit 36 (protection specced since level 26); I'm now approaching 50, so that would be SM, RFD, Mara and ZF. Since I tend to drag along a guild priest, the people that raise my blood pressure tend to be DPS types. The egregious examples I can think of...

Druids: Trying to main tank (yes, with a prot warrior in the party) or main DPS.
Hunters: Leaving the pet on. Worse, leaving the pet on and not passive. Entering melee in non-confined spaces. Leaving growl/taunt on their pets.
Mages: Not moderating damage in the first 5-10 seconds of battle.
Rogues: Moderating opening damage, same as mages. Wanting to pickpocket every last mob. Assuming all lockbox / locked chest drops are their sovereign property.
Other warriors: Arms/Fury specs occasionally wanting to 'try' maintanking with a protspec in the group, then doing it ineptly.
Priests: STOP MIND BLASTING DAMNIT.
Paladins: Not much, really, other than occasionally refusing to heal other people.
Warlocks: Not turning off torment on the voidwalker. Soulstoning themselves instead of the main healer.

Focussing fire seems to be a concept lost on many; they seem to believe tanks magically radiate aggro, when, in reality, it takes a good two or three sunders or one revenge to get a decent amount of hate per mob. (In guild runs with TS, I tend to do a charge->shieldblock->revenge->sunder and then announce 'open up'.)

Also, casters seem to think that running directly away from the main tank will solve things when one of the peripheral mobs or an add gets on them.

If I'm somehow missing some amazing AOE aggro-adding ability (a la CoH), please smack me upside the head here.

If a lock did this (SS themselves) in my group I'd either demand he be kicked or I would dump right now.  Voidwalker in a group that has a tank?  Why?  Pull the succubus out man.

Back to priests:  Even though I shadow spec I heal quite well in groups and people request me back.  The reason I change at near 60?  The game changes at near 60.  Before that, I do 95% of the game solo. *shrug*

I've had no problems healing people with my shadow priest.

The main priest in our guild is shit hot.  Really, really shit hot.

And I'd say that if she wasn't my wife.

Heh, we all have stories exactly along these lines I wager.  Just last night I had a rogues doing this and a hunter who insisted on running ahead and sending-in the pet to aggro the group and 'pull' and a priest who thought they were a mage. (I think I got 1 heal that wasn't a regen all night, but the priest had an empty mana bar the whole instance.

I didn't bitch because my warrior is 55 and I was doing a Zul'Farak run with a guildie as a favor. (Though come to think of it, he lit-in too early sometimes as well, also a rogue.)   But just I know that hunter's doing the same shit in appropriate level instances and wondering why he gets bitched at.

And to be honest, hunters having their pets out isn't a problem except in a few specific rooms of a few instances.  I know the class gets a lot of hate because there's a very high % of chucklefucks, but if you've got a competent one there's no reason they can't have it out.

As for warrior aggro, I haven't come across any such uber method, but I'll let you know if I do.  So far I just rely on a really fast weapon so I have more opportunities for revenge to pop.   Added-in with the fury talents that give a chance for extra range and a few in shield block it's working out fairly well.

My warrior build is 31 Arms/5 Fury/15 Protection and has been built that way from the ground up. I never had any problem holding aggro unless someone did something stupid (like priests mindblasting or mages with Arcane Explosion spam).

So far I'm rather enjoying my priest, but man, Priests burn through mana way worse than any other class I've played, including my mage.

He's asking about initial aggro, though.  Like as the pull comes in and your 3 happy hosehead chums decide to each attack a different one and you have to get their attention before they die and say "wtf the tank sux" as the priest pulls their hair out.

Your priest mana issues are likely Power Word: Shield related.  That sucker chews up the mana. I think I should have added more +sta gear early on, when PWS is even more of a mana hog, so I wasn't as worried about dying since i had low HPs.

 I have no problems with competent hunters having the pet out for added DPS, so long as they passive them and turn off growl. But, like you said, there's a huge number of idiots (of any class, really), so I assume they're Stupid Until Proven Innocent.

 As for a fast weapon, I was under the impression (from the tooltip text and experience with using shieldblock to crank out revenges) that revenge opens up when I dodge/block/parry, not my target, which is why I haven't been worrying too much about 2.5+ second swing times on 1h weapons.


 Bingo. The only way I've found to handle it is to pop a rage potion and ChallengingShout, then pray I can sunder/revenge fast enough on at least two of them. Problem is, CShout is an "oh shit!" panic button ability with its 10 (or 5?) minute recharge time, so it doesn't work when they cock up every other pull.

 As for priest mana, I've only run a priest to 16, but I've had little issue with my normal combo of Smite/SW:P/MindBlast then autoattack & mindblast as possible. Thanks to spirit tap, it's a recipe for almost no downtime soloing and little reliance on drinkables. I hear that won't hold up so well in groups due to spirit tap proccing a lot less, though.

We all joke about the Ebay player:  the guy that buys his character at level 60 in EQ - and immediately signals his noobness, in sharp contrast to his level /gear because he is not competent in the class (or at least is learning).

Respeccing at 60 for this purpose is vaguely similar.  Its more than just the talents - its the gear and role that go with it.  An arms warrior is often an 2 handed ox - who suddenly thinks that by going protection at 60 he can be a "tank".  Apparently, skipping over the role of tanking in a group the first 59 levels was not needed to learn how to play your role.

Maybe I am not as good as most players here - but for what it is worth - I have been discipline / holy all the way to 55 and I am still learning new tactics and gear combinations to make my role as a healer more effective.  If someone else has been short gifted on their gaming prowness like myself  :-D respeccing at 60 omits 59 levels of learning to heal in groups with the right talents and gear that will affect you in the end.

Summary:  whatever priest you want to be at 60 (shadow or healing spec) is the kind of priest you should learn to play from level 10 when you get your first talent choices.  I think most people are fooling themselves they can just respec and choose the appropriate gear for the new talents at 60 and be just as competent as someone who has experimented for 51 levels.

While there can be exceptions - as a tank and healer in general I have found that shadow priests  do not hold much respect as healers (e.g. shadow priests posting here may may be good healers - but in general...)

I agree about the gear, but in general, I think you're overstating the effects of talents a bit.  Yeah, a holy priest is going to be a bit better at healing than a shadow priest, but if they group, their role is going to be the same (healing, presumably), regardless of if they've specced shadow or holy.  Holy priests get what, two, three abilities that shadow priests won't get?  The rest of it's all "reduces casting time by 0.1 sec" and "increase effect by 3%" kind of stuff, and if you're really relying on that tenth of a second very much, you're more hardcore than anyone I know.  If you're actually incorporating it into regular strategies, well, hell, I can't even come up with a word to describe how l33t you must be.

For the rest of us, though, the actual practical effects of talents are fairly small.  They don't really change how you play your class (in my experience, anyway; never played a priest who got shadowform, so maybe there are a few out there with radical, game altering effects), they just slightly nudge how effective you are at certain things.  An arms/fury warrior is still a good tank, just not as good as a protection warrior.  The reduced cooldown on taunt is helpful, but it's rarely going to totally change the way a warrior plays.  If he sucks as a tank, it's probably because he hasn't grouped very much.  If he'd been protection specced from level 10, he'd still probably suck, he'd just suck with a ten percent bonus to armor.

(Good healing as a priest is actually a mix of Protection and Holy - so in assessing the talent choices for this purpose - it is misleading to look at only the holy tree.)

Big picture mate - by themselves your right about talents.  But talents spill over into gear choices and role.  A shadow priest cannot heal in shadow form - and is therefore there for the express purpose of doing damage.  His gear is not "+healing" but "+shadow damage".  Gear choices and class role are both affected - in this case - by the decision to spec for shadow or healing.

As a priest loaded with shadow damage gear - by far you get the most mana efficiency doing damage - not healing.  Conversely, a priest loaded with + healing gear - is very mana inefficient at dealing damage, but excels at healing.

Another example - consider mana regeneration.  If you're shadow spec - you achieve mana regeneration by dealing the "killing blow" to the mob.  That means your shadow priest is getting a lot more aggro in combat for reasons outside of healing - it also means he has his eye on much more than the health of the party.  The shadow priest has to be on the ball to be damaging that mob towards the end of its life in order to achieve mana regeneration.  This directs energy and attention away from healing the party.

This is not trivial.

Or you have people like me that play rarely enough to only have items that either:
a.) I have found once in every great while.
b.) Buy off AH for less than 2 gold.

I guess if it was raining items on me, I'd be able to pick +healing or +shadow.  As of right now, I have no choices.  I'm typically poor after each training expense.

Hardly.  Its more difficult to heal a 48 warrior doing princess runs as a shadow priest then it would be as a holy priest.  So when you finally hit 58+ and go holy, you will feel more powerful in that role since you were essentially playing talentless in that capacity beforehand.  Its like a boxer that trains for a fight by running in the mountains where the oxygen content in the air is lower... he comes back down to ground level and feels supercharged.

I still spent the majority of my time in instances.  The fact remains that you need to do shit solo sometimes, and a holy priest is more gimped at soloing then a shadow priest is at healing, by alot.

PS:  As far as "player skill" at healing, nowdays its alot more a matter of will or desire.  Thier are so many fucking mods that automate everything and make things so much easier that anyone can be a good healer if they really want to do so.

I play a shadow priest, but I can also heal well.

One of my items may have +healing, but most of my gear is high on INT, or Spirit.

Unless you plan to be jack of all trades - swap you int gear for + healing gear - and compare the difference.  If your focused on healing - "+ healing" gear has a huge effect on heals compared to trying to increase your stats.

Mana regen > + healing gear > stat gear.  Generally for 55+ fights in instances as a healer.

If you plan to do both damage and healing - then you might consider a mix of + shadow and + healing gear, and drop the stat gear all together.

Interesting but I don't buy it. 

I would contend that it is easier for a priest to pull aggro off a mage by healing the party - than by trying to out damage the mage.  Having said that - the analogy is in reverse - you have had a free ride in aggro control - now that you're doing some real healing for a change - you're going to grab a lot more aggro and will have to learn strategies to manage it - and survive it (uninterruptable casting etc.).  Aggro management is more than the warrior's responsibility - and you will be on a new learning curve as you move up the hate list in the eyes of mobs in healing.

Unless of course your another shadow priest who thinks his damage can compete with rogues and mages.

I don't buy that aggro control is all that much of the priest's responsibility. If a warrior is doing his job properly, and the DPS is being careful not to draw aggro, healer aggro is either a non-factor or you're far over your head (ie. the warrior is being hurt disproportionate to their aggro generation). Of course, alot of warriors are crap, and most of the rest are just passable. Even then most of your aggro management is waiting for the right time to heal the tank and then fade away the loose mobs such that they are being atacked or dead before your aggro comes back.

I disagree.  Although +healing improves your spells innately, there are several things to consider:

1) Discipline and Shadow spells recieve no benefit from +healing.  This means that +healing does nothing in cases where you need to use smite, shield, fade, fear, etc.  Basically, half of your toolset receives no advantage.  Int, on the other hand, can be used by every spell.

2) In the event of an overheal, which can be frequent, +healing does nothing for you.

3) There are very few decent blue + healing items to easily find.  You could go with greens, certainly, but devout blows those out of the water.  The ratio has been roughly calculated (http://wow.allakhazam.com/db/guides.html?guide=407) as +4 healing = +1 int, and few + healing items can match this ratio.

4) Flash heal, your most frequent spell, only gains 40% of +healing bonuses.

5) Wipes occur far more often when you run out of mana.  There are few situations where damage outpaces your healing.

If you plan to do damage 55+, you're going to be PvPing.  In that case, you want Stam, int, and + damage; nothing else.

It is generally agreed that mana per 5 sec > Int > Spi/+ healing.  That is, at least in this MC Priest's opinion, and I do have calculations if we want to get complicated. :/

I for one do not even want to get complicated. People getting into the nitty-gritty mathematics of a damn game gets me stabby nowadays. I just really don't care about that shit anymore; I'd rather simply play the game.

But, take note that I no longer have interest in "end-game" content, or even high-end raiding; The people I would have to associate with are the type I would shoot int he face before talking to them.

I fail to see  how this has anything to do with what i was saying?  Who said they were trying to pull aggro off a mage by outdamaging him?  I said that if you can main heal a party as a shadowpriest, you can most certainly do the same once you have allocated points to improving this role.  Furthermore, if you are going to respond to someones experiences with "i don't believe you/your lying" then thier is really no point to discussing anything.
Never had a problem managing hate post-60 as disc/holy.  Hate managment does mostly ride on the warrior, if you are playing with lesser warriors then yes you need to be very careful with your heals.  This goes wether you are shadow or not, its an extremely simple matter to realize you are healing for abit more and thierfore need to heal abit later and abit less often.
Another irrelavent point that hasn't been mentioned.  Assume less, you'll look like less of an ass.

I assume you meant UI mods, not AI mods?  UI mods are required to make the WoW interface usable.  There shouldn't be any AI in the client to modify.

Alkiera

First, don't get your dress in a knot.  I am disagreeing with you - but if you take that as synonyomous with questioning you on a personal level ... you have issues well outside the scope of this thread.

My paraphrase of your comment - correct me if I am wrong (you can correct me - I won't take it personally):  Going shadow is tough because you have less healing capacity to work with, so by the time you respec for healing at 60 - it will be a welcome change that is easier since your capacity for healing will be greater.

I am saying the reverse happens with respect to aggro control.  Because your capacity to heal is less (being shadow specced) your ability to draw aggro by healing is also reduced.  With a few rapid group heals I can pull aggro off almost anyone.  When someone respects from shadow to healing at 60 - with increased healing comes a lot more aggro - and tactics are needed to address that.

For shadow priests who feel they do * effective * damage some of them - not necessarily you - would argue that they draw aggro through the damage they do anyway.  This is false in my view - while shadow priests may not be able to compete for aggro with mages/rogues by damaging, healing priests can most certainly draw aggro through healing.

* If you have a good warrior - aggro control is not an issue *

Where do you guys get this dribble?  Ya sure - one or two mobs and and I agree - this comment holds.  Anyone done anything challenging recently other than step next in line on their heal rotation?

When you have group pulls - mob counts of about 5 or more - e.g. in Uldaman main boss fight area - a warrior cannot control aggro on that many targets for any sustainted period of time.  The pull is linked - so getting a "better puller" is not a solution.  We often have 2 mages that AoE with this many targets - so the tank does little aggro control here - so the mages and the priest have to "ping" the aggro.

Or you can just invite some 55's into your group to make it a candy run - something we did not do.

Also on such pulls - group heals are needed given the number of mobs in excess of the tanks ability to control them all.  Fade is not enough sometimes for the priest to dodge aggro given its timer and PWS does not last long in the face of a beating and is expensive - Focused casting (8 second uninterruptable cast from Protection tree) can be critical to getting group heals off.

In these fights the healing priest is pulling aggro off of warriors and mages - something shadow priest would not be able to do by doing damage in my experience.  This ability to move up the hate list is something you have to learn to manage in tougher fights has a healing priest which can be used to strategic advantage in "ping ponging" aggro back and forth with mages for multiple targets on a big pull.

I can't comment if this strategy scales to higher instances - in Mauradon it was not needed - and BRD is still new for us.

A good warrior can tank 3-4 elites and still keep aggro on all of them over your healing (more is possible but depends alot on gear and the mobs in question). For more elites a rogue can generally "tank" the one the group is burning down, and any more will generally be CC'd. Below UBRS you wont see that many elites in one group though (and unless you're 5-manning it for your epeen/amusement you will have either enough CC or more warriors), most are mixed elite/non-elite groups. For those the warrior tanks the 1-3 elites while the mage/warlock AoE's the non-elites into oblivion. The best way to heal that is to pre-shield the mage and tank, then flash-heal spam the mage as he does his thing (you will also get another shield if you time it right). The warrior generally doesn't need much attention before the non-elites are dead as it doesn't take long (remember you will also get a new shield if you wait before engagement). If a warrior cannot keep 1-3 elites on himself during this time the warrior is at fault. If the mage can't keep aggro on himself for the duration he will be shocked. I don't see how you can be pulling aggro if the party does the pull properly. Also, secondary healers are good.

A shadow spec priest will have the same aggro practice as a holy priest on the way up. If a person can't adjust to +10% healing to all, and +10% healing to renew on their spells they need to delete their fucking priest and roll something non-essential, like a hunter. This coming from someone who thinks the shadow tree should be wiped from the face of the earth.

I'm with Calantus on this. The amount of improvement to healing from the holy tree is shockingly bad, even AA in EQ gives more effectiveness to your healing skills than the holy tree does.

Stop hating on the shadow tree. It's fun for those of us who don't give a fuck about the e-peen fests which are raids and "high end" guilds.

... or would like a better support class for group PVP

EDIT: Needless hate removed. Also, I do recall there being 3 casters, 2 of which would be perfectly sufficient for nuking.

It should be quite possible, through talents and such, to make a priest that can appeal to both of us. If you want your priest to be a bastion of healing magic, talents should allow that. I would rather be able to heal comptetantly and also damage as I need to.

I don't hate the shadow tree so much as I would replace it if I had the choice. I think it was a bad idea to make it like it is. I would prefer if the base damage and damage utility of the priest was upped and all talents go to efficiency, defence, healing power, and utility. That way there's no need to spec for damage so nobody has to sacrifice to be able to "solo well". That way if you made a nuker you would get defence/efficiency/utility talents, for PVP support you might want any combination of the 4, as a PVE healer you'd want healing/efficiency/utility. The best part? Even as a nuker ALL your points are useful to varying degrees in every role (defence less useful in PVE than PVP, but sometimes you do get aggro).

Right now there's a whole tree that is completely useless to the main role of the priest, to me that is something you should be trying to avoid.

Shadow Priests make more damage than my druid. So lets them, I'm main healer, they nuke, and in a tight spot they assistheal. And they can rezz more often than once every half hour. Granted, thats not because I heal better, but because my damage output is worse.

Win for everybody. And, I've seen Shadow Priests (Level 60, Molten Core/Onyxia Raid level guild) ease up multipulls (in Dire Maul for example) with great reliability thanks to Mind Control and their spec.

So I don't buy this "All Group and Raid Priests have to let go off Shadow Spec" dogma.

I hate how that happens, it makes sense for the priest to DPS because they do way more damage than a druid, but they have to use mana in the process and so are less able to backup heal in emergencies. Blizz really does need to boost catform DPS.

Only classes searched for in groups because of shortages? Tanks and Priests. I'd rather they up aggro abilities of Baerform so that Druids can manage as tanks if no Warrior is available, than make Druids compete as YET ANOTHER class with Rogues, Hunters, Mages and Warlocks. There is enough competition there already.

Isn't that only because their role is vital and so many warriors suck at or hate tanking? Because there's no shortage of warriors for either faction on any server I've been on. If you stacked them up, they'd reach higher than Mount Hyjal. Priest populations are often low, and being vital, you could call it a shortage. There are as few druids and warlocks, but people seldom care.

Its a simple problem of supply and need, not of absolute numbers.

There are not as many warriors as there are possible groups. And since every group needs a warrior to tank (talking high level instances here, up to the midfourties my druid had no problem whatsoever tanking with a Shaman as mainhealer). Its the old EQ-Enchanter problem. 4 people without a warrior are screwed, 4 people without a priest can manage with a druid/shm combo, 4 people without a warlock shrug their shoulders and take a hunter, rogue or mage instead (if there are no special warlock mez abilites needed). At least it seems to me this way, but thats Horde side on one server, mileage may vary.

I've never had to ping-pong aggro in strath (either side), scholo, dm, l/ubrs, or brd.  Nor MC/BWL/Ony/Kaz/Azur.  I did uld a very long time ago (around january) and can't recall many details about the place other then some really cool/complex lore at the end.  My most noteworthy memory of Uld is the warrior i met thier, who is on my friends list to this day.  I added him percisely because he held aggro so well, i don't recall any of this aggro-bouncing you mention as being a necessity, the run where we actually killed the last boss went like clockwork, again mostly in my view due to the skill of the warrior.  And my guild had/has a very "do it yourself" mentality, so my pug had noone to power us threw it.  I believe the final boss was orange or red to me.

Only time i bounced aggro as a priest is when duo'ing with a rogue questing/grinding, in which mind blast is better since it has some obsurd hate-multiplier attached to it and gives the rogue lots of free backstabs.

Finally i will (again) reply to your statement about needing to manage more-powerful heals and the threat they generate as a trivial shift in gameplay.  You are healing for 10% more... thats a meager 10% more threat, assuming you dont take subtlty.  The biggest boost a disc/holy priest gets in his ability to heal comes from meditation, and a change in focus from +int/sta/shadow damage gear to int/spirit and +healing, which the prophecy has tons of.  At lower levels it marginally increases your capacity in groups, while significantly hindering your ability to solo quest.

One of the best duos for questing I've ever done was with a guildmate who was a restoration druid and my shadow priest. He would heal, I would nuke, shit would die. When the horde jumped us they foolishly assumed I was the one keeping us alive, and quickly died as I just sat there being healed. His Regrowth spell was just amazing compared to my Renew. All his other talents really boosted him to be completely efficient at replacing me as a healer. I wouldn't trust it in an instance, but out in the wild, it was sublime.

Warrior/Shaman ftw.

We just "pinged aggro" last night in lbrs - first time I was there.  Frankly, we did not even need the warrior until the boss fight(s).  It's a different style of fighting (2 mages + priest).  Still early to say if it can be applied to other runs at the high end for 5 mans I admit.

The possible difference in our fighting styles may explain differences in healing.  I heal mages more often than I do the tank.  That in turn gets me a lot of aggro since I am doing a lot more healing than if the aggro were neatly focused on the tank.

We know the paradigm - all aggro on tank (if you can).  But if you can ping the aggro - you can use AoE and cut through battles in no time.  To make this possible you need more than just increased healing - the Protection Tree uninterruptable cast can be critical as well as the interrupt reduction in the holy tree for flash heals.