4.whatever levelling build advice

[Lantyssa]

Heh.

Time spent while dead does not count towards the DPS calculation.  Time spent typing about how the tank's shield has Int instead of doing damage does not count.  Time navel gazing does not count.  All damage done, however, still does.

Which is really convenient.  They can auto-attack a critter, have no time spent towards the calculation, and claim their power is incalculable when they throw a divide by zero error.

[Ingmar]

I am relatively forgiving of gearing wackiness in terms of actually doing anything other than /facepalming on /g about it - I'd rather grit my teeth and get the instance done with, for the most part.  Even so, I would probably drop group if I saw a warrior tank zone in with a +int shield.

[Nevermore]

Elitist! 

[Ginaz]

Been playing my priest the past few days or so (lvl 74 now).  I have dual spec with him too so he's shadow and holy.  Thought I'd try my hand at healing for a bit to reduce my waits in LFG que.  Do all priests have mana issues or does it get better once you hit and get some decent gear?  I ask this because it seems that after every big pull I'm either well under 50% mana or close to zero, and almost every boss fight sees me at almost zero at the end.  And healing makes me realize that I'm not such a bad tank afterall seeing as how I'm pretty vigilant on seeing if my healer is ready for the next pull or not.  Most of the tanks I've gotten so far at this level....not so much.

[proudft]

Can't say since 4.0 but yeah, holy priest mana took a while of gearing up at 80 to be non-scary.

[Ingmar]

This probably means nothing but I barely use any mana at all on my new little disc priest - but I'm only level 28 so far (leveling just through dungeons.)

[Dren]

Since 4.0 you have to be very selective on how you heal to manage mana better.  That was one of the biggest general changes in the system.  Blizz figured healers had it too easy and gimped their mana management.  High level equipment helps, but I noticed a huge drop in mana.  I used to never even look at my reserves except in very extreme raid situations.  Now I'm constantly working on keeping my reserves up.

You'll have to review all the different healing spells/methods and make sure you are using the right ones in each situation.  You can't just spam the quickest most mana hog spell throughout an instance anymore.  You have to be more selective.  I'm not just talking about Holy Priest.  This is for all the healing specs.

[Merusk]

Now do all that while raid dancing in Hodir, Sind, Rotgut or Princes when you don't outgear them.   Good healers who can stay aware of raid mechanics and mana are going to be a shitload more valuable in Cata than they were in LK.   It also means you're going to be bitching at a lot of other healers who aren't able to juggle both balls.

[Sheepherder]

Disc seems to be a much better spec for mana efficiency, I'm finding.  You can Smite heal forever.

[Ingmar]

Disc seems to be a much better spec for mana efficiency, I'm finding.  You can Smite heal forever.

Yeah, and a larger mana pool to start with too. Also they seem to have a lot of mana tools, there's Rapture, Inner Focus/Train of Thought, you can PI yourself during heavy heal phases, Divine Aegis generates a pretty good amount of free healing that is more or less guaranteed to not be overheal, etc.

[K9]

Holy Priest mana efficiency is a real issue before 80, then in raid gear it becomes a non-issue.

Which chakra are you using? Holy has plenty of ways to burn through mana very easily in a very inefficient way. For dungeon running I'd suggest using heal most of the time, with the PoH chakra on certain fights. Heal is a very efficient heal, while PoH has a massive mana coast, and if you go splurging on PoH > CoH spam you will eat your mana very quick. The renew Chakra (which is being removed in the next patch) eats my mana hard at 80, so I can only assume it does horrible things at lower levels.

Not also that the Holy Tree is currently very poorly designed and offers little flexibility while forcing you to take terrible talents like Surge of Light (used to be great, now it is rotten).

For talents and glyphs I guess you should be aiming for something like THIS at 74. n.b. that CoH is the only genuinely useful Major Glyph, there are no other useful ones. Surge of Light is sadly unavoidable and you have to take every other talent pretty much except for Blessed Resilience (PvP only) and Spirit of Redemption (terrible now). The fact that there are only 5 loose points in the whole tree to get to the bottom is a massive design flaw and very irritating.

If mana is a real issue you could switch to disc; with a setup like THIS you'll be hard pressed to go OOM, and you have a lot of utility. n.b. Disc has a lot more free points than holy and far fewer useless talents that are mandatory. There's actuallly two points more in Mental Agility than you need to fill the tree, and if you are fine for mana those can be moved to Darkness (shadow tree) for best benefit. Train of Thought is a very debatable talent, focused will, improved inner fire and reflective shield are right out.

Disc seems to be a much better spec for mana efficiency, I'm finding.  You can Smite heal forever.

Yeah, and a larger mana pool to start with too. Also they seem to have a lot of mana tools, there's Rapture, Inner Focus/Train of Thought, you can PI yourself during heavy heal phases, Divine Aegis generates a pretty good amount of free healing that is more or less guaranteed to not be overheal, etc.

Raiding as Disc I never use inner focus and frankly if I could drop the point I would. The only spell it is useful for boosting is PoH, and using GHeals to reset the timer through Train of Thought is a horribly ineffecient use of mana. The rest of the Disc tree is pretty good.

[Rendakor]

How is Spirit of Redemption terrible now? Still seems like 15 seconds of free, post death healing.

[Sheepherder]

How is Spirit of Redemption terrible now? Still seems like 15 seconds of free, post death healing.

It used to buff your spirit by 15%.  Now it's just utility, personally I still think it's well worth the single talent point.

[Rendakor]

Oh, I never knew it had a spirit buff (but then, priest is one of my two non-80s).

[K9]

It used to give 5% spirit which for a single point is really good. Nobody should ever be taking it for the post-death healing effect. You're not supposed to die, and if you're having to count on SoR then you are playing badly.

[Hawkbit]

The elitism over 1s and 0s astounds me. 

[Sheepherder]

You're not supposed to die, and if you're having to count on SoR then your tank are playing badly.

[K9]

I've known plenty of holy priests who needed no help from the tanks when it came to dying 

Spirit of failure is a good way to see who is standing in the cleaves.

[caladein]

As it stands, it's not so much a "Only useful when playing badly" as "15s of free healing x Probability of Death Not in Garbage Time" isn't really worth a talent point compared to points in say... Inner Sanctum or Darkness.

[Sheepherder]

As it stands, it's not so much a "Only useful when playing badly" as "15s of free healing x Probability of Death Not in Garbage Time" isn't really worth a talent point compared to points in say... Inner Sanctum or Darkness.

Except it's not Spirit of Redemption vs. IS or Darkness.  It's SoR vs. Tome of Light, Lightwell, and Surge of Light, all of which are pretty terrible.

EDIT: For reference, 2/2 ToL is worth ~60-65 MP5 assuming Holy Word: Sanctuary is on cooldown 100% of the time, unless I'm doing the calculations badly wrong.

[K9]

Lightwell and Tome of Light, while not outstanding, are better than SoL and SoR though, and offer more (limited) utility. Lightwell has been buffed like crazy, unfortunately the biggest limitation (the fact that the other players need to use it) is still it's biggest problem, but most of the other issues it used to have are gone, and it does heal for an absolute ton for its mana cost. It's a bit depressing how Blizzard absolutely gutted previously good talents like Inner Focus, SoR and SoL in their new system.

I don't know how you're getting an efficiency value out of ToL though.

[caladein]

As it stands, it's not so much a "Only useful when playing badly" as "15s of free healing x Probability of Death Not in Garbage Time" isn't really worth a talent point compared to points in say... Inner Sanctum or Darkness.

Except it's not Spirit of Redemption vs. IS or Darkness.  It's SoR vs. Tome of Light, Lightwell, and Surge of Light, all of which are pretty terrible.

Lightwell, well, it's Lightwell: you either hate it or you don't.  I agree on SoL for now as it's really much more of a Cataclysm talent.  I guess you might take it if you liked using Serenity Chakra even now though.

As for Tome of Light, 15% off your Holy Word CDs per point is pretty good in my book.

[Sheepherder]

I don't know how you're getting an efficiency value out of ToL though.

-1([talented cost] - [cost]) / [cooldown] x [unit of measurement (5)]

Or:

-1([0.44 x 3863 x 0.7] - [0.44 x 3863]) / [40] x [5]
-1([1700 x 0.7] - [1700]) / [40] x [5]
-1([1190] - [1700]) / [40] x [5]
-1(-510) / [40] x [5]
510 / [40] x [5]
12.75 x [5]
63.75

Assuming it's used at every given opportunity, less use means less value.  I assume Sanctuary because it's the least efficient (44% of base mana / 40 second CD).

[K9]

You know ToL reduces the cooldown on Holy Word spells, not the cost.

[Ginaz]

I switched to Disc. and healing now is much easier than it was with holy and I have no mana issues.  Plus smite healing is awesome.

[Sheepherder]

You know ToL reduces the cooldown on Holy Word spells, not the cost.

Ha, brain spasm.  Ignore me.  It's an okay talent.

You probably have me pegged as dyslexic by now.