Some figures on talents pulled from the Armory

[Flood]

From WoWinsider, interesting, if unsurprising look at talent spreads.

Link to WoWInsider Article

[Ironwood]

That's pretty much expected as far as I can see.

I think it is the first real use of the armory I've seen yet.

Whoa, hang on ?  Dark Pact least popular ?  I love Dark pact !

 

[Merusk]

76% of (holy) priests skipping Improved Death & LOLwell and 83% skipping Circle of Manablow.   Who'd have thought? 75% skipping Pain Supression surprised me until I remembered IT CAN BE FUCKING DISPELLED. 

5.1% of hunters spec survival.. and then skip the Wyvern Sting talent.. buh?  I can understand skipping the insta-cooldown one, since it affects so very few skills.

Any mages care to enlighten me why the 41-point arcane talent blows so much?

[Ironwood]

Slow ?  Isn't it dispellable too

[Merusk]

Slow is it?  See I didn't know what it actually was and didn't go looking it up.

Dispellable or not, seems a waste as a mage spell when you can just cast some ice that does damage AND slows.  That explains it then, thanks.

[Rasix]

I'm somewhat shocked that only one offspec/PVP spec is the most popular spec for its class -- feral druids.

lolwut? Feral is the preferred leveling and grouping (tanking) spec considering most people don't like being a healer.  Plus you can do decent DPS in cat form.  It's not a really the best PVP spec by a long shot.  I guess he said that since the most popular spec isn't the healbitch, which funny enough is probably the best arena spec.   Feral is simply the talent spec that makes the most sense for any druid that isn't a poopsocker.

The popular "dreamstate" build is probably what's skewing the druid 41pt talent numbers for balance/resto.  Trees being mostly a pvp/solo pve gimmick and tree form's utility being questionable doesn't hurt either.

Kind of surprised that most priests are holy.  Shadow is just so strong right now.

[Dren]

I'm staying shadow on my priest when I hit 70.  I was looking to go Holy for the guild, but I'm not so sure that would really help them.  I can put out some crazy DPS and heal as shadow right now.  Plus, it is 10x more fun than holy imo.  I'm surprised holy is more popular too.

[Jobu]

Dispellable or not, seems a waste as a mage spell when you can just cast some ice that does damage AND slows.  That explains it then, thanks.

It slows attacking and casting speed too, an d it's instant/no cooldown.

But totally useless in BC. In the "old world" you could cast it on most bosses in MC and BWL. Now all the new bosses seem to be immune to it. And it lasts about 5 seconds in any organized PvP before it gets dispelled.

[ajax34i]

That article's missing some of the interpretation that the guy who did the research actually posted on the priest forums as he posted his results, namely that when he's saying "percent that skipped the 31/41 point talent" he means people that put 31 points into the tree, but avoided the actual 31 pt talent, and chose something else from the tree instead.  He's not talking about priests who went shadow because holy sucks, he's saying that "of those priests that put 31 or more points into holy, 76% avoided the lightwell talent like the plague."

Link to original on the WoW general discussion board.

[Miasma]

I just cancelled my sub but before I did I went holy to see if that would keep me in the game, man does it suck.  I basically had to sit in a city until I got a group because I was next to worthless outside of an instance.  I could barely kill the mob that spawns when I create a piece of spellcloth.  I would have had to bring up a hunter alt to farm for me if I stayed holy.

I like healing a lot but the price is too high.  I just don't understand blizzard's insistence that they will never allow some system of multi specs.  Everyone should be able to have three specs which take effect based on your location.  A world spec that you have to use when outside, an instance spec which takes effect on entry to a group/raid zone, and a PvP spec that takes over if you are in a battleground or arena.  What is the harm in that?

[bhodi]

I was a FEMALE dwarf holy priest, and pretty much quit the game after the expansion. It sucks and gets no love. My rogue wasn't much better.

[Merusk]

I just cancelled my sub but before I did I went holy to see if that would keep me in the game, man does it suck.  I basically had to sit in a city until I got a group because I was next to worthless outside of an instance.  I could barely kill the mob that spawns when I create a piece of spellcloth.  I would have had to bring up a hunter alt to farm for me if I stayed holy.

Holy is mostly worthless, this is nothing new.  My hybrid Holy/Disc build has let me farm plenty well, however.  (Granted, nowhere near as well as pure shadow did.)   The only part that sucks is needing to store two sets of gear, one for healing one for soloing.  (The profile is my current damage gear.)   So far I'm at +1005 in healing stuff, and have yet to pickup the mooncloth robe or a few other good, easy upgrades from quests in Shadowmooon & Netherstorm (I ground instances for 68 & 69, so I have both zones to go through.)

One thing I WILL bitch about, however, is mana cost.  I need to go back and run an actual comparison, but just from healing instances in the last week (I hit 70 on the priest last Thursday) I notice that I'm going OOM a fuckton faster than pre-BC, and actually NEED to pop potions and Shadowfiend in simple non-heroic boss fights.   I think the higher-rank heals are actually LESS mana efficient than their old version.  That's fucked up.

[HaemishM]

Shadow is fun and soloable, yet more priests are holy. THANK YOU, RAIDING ENDGAME.

Fuck that noise. I wouldn't do a Discipline spec because there's just not much there that isn't meant to support other specs, and Holy means you get to be everyone's heal bitch.

[Rasix]

Shadow is fun and soloable, yet more priests are holy. THANK YOU, RAIDING ENDGAME.

Unless I'm mistaken, a lot of priests are shadow for raiding now.  It's a more desirable spec due to utility + dps.  Paladins, shaman, and druids seem to be the ones forced into healing roles currently.  This is all what I've read/heard though, I don't have firsthand knowledge of the raid scene anymore.

[Strazos]

lol @ all the warriors in Prot spec. Have fun with that nonsense.

[Merusk]

Shadow is fun and soloable, yet more priests are holy. THANK YOU, RAIDING ENDGAME.

Unless I'm mistaken, a lot of priests are shadow for raiding now.  It's a more desirable spec due to utility + dps.  Paladins, shaman, and druids seem to be the ones forced into healing roles currently.  This is all what I've read/heard though, I don't have firsthand knowledge of the raid scene anymore.

I looked up a few of the priests in the uberguilds on my server, one of whom had a world first bosskill around Naxx, and they looked mostly holy.  As such, wasn't sure how much of that is theorycrafting and how much is reality.  My sample size was really small though (5 folks) and I dobuted I'd done enogh reseach until I read this poll.  (fucking slow as hell armory)

Nobody needs another DPS class in a raid but healers are as rare as ever and therefore needed. Even the ones with crappy talents.

IMO, Priest/ Pally is the best main heal combo for the small raids. (At least until the Insp. nerf)  Druids go OOM PDQ tossing big heals instead of regens, and shaman are good multi-healers with chain heal, but all I've ever heard is how mana inefficient their single target is.

[ajax34i]

Unless I'm mistaken, a lot of priests are shadow for raiding now.  It's a more desirable spec due to utility + dps.  Paladins, shaman, and druids seem to be the ones forced into healing roles currently.  This is all what I've read/heard though, I don't have firsthand knowledge of the raid scene anymore.

Yeah, I think that's the case right now because a shadow priest will provide DPS, and mana to paladins who then can heal (and can deal with aggro better).  I think they'll nerf the whole mana thing and paladin healing, though, in the next patch, so we'll see who ends up being required to heal after the patch.

Edit: maybe not.  The quotes at the top show 54% of priests holy, 13% discipline, and 33% shadow, and these are L70 characters, so supposedly they're end-game (raiding, or PvP).  Not sure what the ratios were pre-BC, for L60's.

[caladein]

Raid specs for Healing Priests: 23/38/0 for the Divine Spirit bitch(es) and 20/41/0 for everyone else. You have a Shadow Priest or two around to help the healers out (along with a tree Druid in the tank group) and that's pretty much it. Shadow Priests are probably on the top of the niche support food-chain though. Also, the only change they're making with regards to VT/VE is that Paladins won't receive mana back from being overhealed. They're still getting a ton of mana back from regular VT (or when they actually get healed).

On Pain Suppression, I honestly rarely see it dispelled in arena games (and you're going to have the dispell resist talent anyway), in a crowd of people it looks just like PW: Shield (except for the blue shields around the middle). From the top arena teams that actually have a Priest though, they're all 41+ in Holy with Circle of Healing: it's just such a big boost to HPS that it doesn't really matter... since you're going to die first anyway :(.

[Paelos]

lol @ all the warriors in Prot spec. Have fun with that nonsense.

It's basically the spec if you don't give a shit about pvp. I don't, and I happen to enjoy tanking instances with groups of people I know. Oh and phat lewts or some shit.

[Chenghiz]

http://www.geekboys.org/arena/ is another site that uses the Armory to find the most popular specs in top arena teams.

[Kail]

Kind of surprised to see the shaman specs, there.  As far as I'm aware, restoration is generally the demanded raiding spec, elemental is generally the PvP spec, and ehnancement is the solo grinding spec... yet on that sheet they're pretty evenly balanced, with enhancement being the most popular by a slight margin.  Is there some raiding role for lv.70 enhancement shamans that I'm not aware of?  Or are we talking about a third of all shamans getting to 70 and quitting before they respec, or something?

[Rasix]

Some people don't raid.

[Kail]

Yeah, so what are they doing, I mean?  Maybe I'm reading the tree wrong, but to me it looks mostly like enhancement is tilted towards efficient DPS, which is not really the most sought after role in PvE groups (since other, very common classes can do it better) or in group PvP (where "efficient" doesn't count for a whole lot).  I just respecced out of enhancement because I felt like a third wheel in every group I joined, and I wasn't aware that there was that much solo content at 70.

[Teleku]

Shadow is fun and soloable, yet more priests are holy. THANK YOU, RAIDING ENDGAME.

Fuck that noise. I wouldn't do a Discipline spec because there's just not much there that isn't meant to support other specs, and Holy means you get to be everyone's heal bitch.

Shadow is a mixed bag.  I played shadow for a long time, but am actually doing a Holy DPS build for fun right now.  The problem with shadow is that its all about DPS, and has low burst damage (this was helped a little with the inclusion of Shadow Word Death).  For pvp, burst damage is king, and in the wild melee of target switching that is PvP, you rarely have time to get vampiric embrace up and do much damage to that target.  You also burn through your mana really fast, and healing becomes much more difficult and mana consuming (which is bad, because heailng in PvP is a major scale tipper).  In short, Shadow I have always felt is a PvE spec.  Its good for grinding and good for Raiding.  Many people just PvP end game in WoW for their entertainment.

I can actually do some insane burst DPS with surge of light right now.  I often get it to chain proc, letting me hit a warrior one time for about 1900 damage 5 times in a row in the course of 4 seconds.  Single handedly dropping him that fast was good times.  Of course, they are fixing that bug next patch, which will really suck.

[Trouble]

A lot of the top end guilds have switched over to running with 1 holy priest and 2-3 shadow priests. Holy priests just don't bring much to the table that Paladins, Druids, or Shaman can't do as well or better whereas shadow priests bring something no one else can give (mana battery) and with the length of fights in 25 mans it's becomes and more and more beneficial to have shadow priests for all your healers and casters. A lot of middle and lower tier guilds take longer to catch on to the "new trends" and are still stacking holy priests out of sheer pre-tbc habit when holy priests were the best healers.

The mana a shadow priest provides is just...insane. Divide a shadow priests dps by 4 and that's how much mp5 they provide to each group member. Raid buffed I'm usually running a minimum of 800 dps..that's 200 mp5 to every member of my group. At this point in time, shadow priests are actually one of the most desirable members of a raid. They are niche no longer for raid leaders that know how to use them. They do extremely good dps and their mana battery alone is enough utility to outshine most other classes. It's just a matter of guilds learning the value of shadow priests.

[Trouble]

Also of note is that there is a small problem of the data that seems to have not been mentioned in thread. The guy who came up with the data mixed up the Warlock affliction talents and had another talent set as the 31 point talent instead of Dark Pact which is why it came out as unpopular.

[Ironwood]

I was sure it had to be something like that.  Dark Pact is just awesome.

Further, I'm Prot Spec and always have been.  I have no fucking idea what you're talking about with the 'that nonsense' comment.  Really.

I lol at the fury/arms warriors trying to hold aggro.  We all got a boost in the last patch for threat, but before that it was a real fucking joke.  Prot was 100% neccesary unless you're group was tight.

[Calantus]

I imagine prot and holy talents being so prevalent is not so much about raiding, and more about heroics. I know a lot of warriors who have told me they don't even bother with most heroics unless they're prot as it's just too painful. Priests... well it's not because of power that they are holy. Holy is viable but shadow is seen as equally viable in everything but 5v5 arena. I've been getting lots of "wanna come mech? if you shadow?" these days because people are catching on that shadow priests rock, and I even got a kara invite the other day from a guild wanting to take a shadow priest. I guess a lot of priests just want to actually heal, and the "zomg I want to DPS" priests were just the vocal minority all this time?

For me... I'm actually liking shadow now when I never did before. I guess the "lol shadow" part of me wasn't against shadow persay, but against what I saw as an unviable spec. I still would rather be holy because I prefer healing, but having a viable dps build is nice for when you need/want it. Right now for instance I'm specced PVP shadow because our 3v3 is mage/enh shaman(gearing up for elem)/holy paladin/me and it just didn't work the first day we tried it with me being holy. Soon as I specced shadow we pushed our win/loss to ~2/1 and we haven't played together for half a year. As an aside I totally rape paladin healer teams, in seconds I can have 4+ debuffs on everyone in their team with 16% dispell resistance and I'm pretty good at dropping the mass dispell on their shield. We've also moved away from the focus fire method for these teams, if we split dps focus between 2 players and the 3rd taking dot damage it's just way too hard for the paladin to keep up while having a really good shaman locking them down and soon enough someone dies. Hardest team so far has been UA warlock, shadow priest, warrior. It's just really hard to keep people alive against them.

[Threash]

A lot of the appeal of shadow in heroics is that mind control is just such a good cc/dps spell, you can take one of the very dangerous trash mobs out of the fight, let the mobs kill it while doing insane amounts of dps = win.  And i guess it works better for shadow priests or something.

[Modern Angel]

Yeah, so what are they doing, I mean?  Maybe I'm reading the tree wrong, but to me it looks mostly like enhancement is tilted towards efficient DPS, which is not really the most sought after role in PvE groups (since other, very common classes can do it better) or in group PvP (where "efficient" doesn't count for a whole lot).  I just respecced out of enhancement because I felt like a third wheel in every group I joined, and I wasn't aware that there was that much solo content at 70.

Besides damage approaching non-combat rogues, improved windfury/grace of air and a pretty much constant 10% increase to your group's melee attack power?

Nope, can't think of why anyone would bring one to a raid.

Every smart raid leader wants one.

[SurfD]

A lot of the appeal of shadow in heroics is that mind control is just such a good cc/dps spell, you can take one of the very dangerous trash mobs out of the fight, let the mobs kill it while doing insane amounts of dps = win.  And i guess it works better for shadow priests or something.

Not sure what kind of gear most shadow priests roll around with, but I imagine the Mind Controll works better for Shadow Priests comes from the fact that:
Shadowpriests prefer lots of +damage and +hit on their gear (since crit is only margianally usefull, due to lack of crittable spells)
Holy/Disc priests prefer lots of +heal and +crit (since they spend their time healing, and +hit is meaningless because you cant miss a heal)

Anyone who did naxx raiding would probably have figured out that the single key to getting the max efficiency out of MC (for Tanking Instructor) is +hit (spell penetration has no effect, +hit helps land the spell, and keep it up when the resist check ticks come for breaking early)

So since shadowpriests probably roll with lots of +hit, they get full duration out of MC more often.

[Merusk]

Yeah, so what are they doing, I mean?  Maybe I'm reading the tree wrong, but to me it looks mostly like enhancement is tilted towards efficient DPS, which is not really the most sought after role in PvE groups (since other, very common classes can do it better) or in group PvP (where "efficient" doesn't count for a whole lot).  I just respecced out of enhancement because I felt like a third wheel in every group I joined, and I wasn't aware that there was that much solo content at 70.

Besides damage approaching non-combat rogues, improved windfury/grace of air and a pretty much constant 10% increase to your group's melee attack power?

Nope, can't think of why anyone would bring one to a raid.

Every smart raid leader wants one.

Absofuckingloutly.  Which is why I told my Guildleader he was a dipshit for demanding any shaman who wanted to raid be resto.  Fucker finally stepped down.

[Teleku]

A lot of the appeal of shadow in heroics is that mind control is just such a good cc/dps spell, you can take one of the very dangerous trash mobs out of the fight, let the mobs kill it while doing insane amounts of dps = win.  And i guess it works better for shadow priests or something.

Not sure what kind of gear most shadow priests roll around with, but I imagine the Mind Controll works better for Shadow Priests comes from the fact that:
Shadowpriests prefer lots of +damage and +hit on their gear (since crit is only margianally usefull, due to lack of crittable spells)
Holy/Disc priests prefer lots of +heal and +crit (since they spend their time healing, and +hit is meaningless because you cant miss a heal)

Anyone who did naxx raiding would probably have figured out that the single key to getting the max efficiency out of MC (for Tanking Instructor) is +hit (spell penetration has no effect, +hit helps land the spell, and keep it up when the resist check ticks come for breaking early)

So since shadowpriests probably roll with lots of +hit, they get full duration out of MC more often.

True, they do try to get +hit for mind control, but as I recall, Shadow Affinity also helps alot in that regard, which is why they have a bonus to it.

[Nonentity]

Yeah, so what are they doing, I mean?  Maybe I'm reading the tree wrong, but to me it looks mostly like enhancement is tilted towards efficient DPS, which is not really the most sought after role in PvE groups (since other, very common classes can do it better) or in group PvP (where "efficient" doesn't count for a whole lot).  I just respecced out of enhancement because I felt like a third wheel in every group I joined, and I wasn't aware that there was that much solo content at 70.

Besides damage approaching non-combat rogues, improved windfury/grace of air and a pretty much constant 10% increase to your group's melee attack power?

Nope, can't think of why anyone would bring one to a raid.

Every smart raid leader wants one.

Absofuckingloutly.  Which is why I told my Guildleader he was a dipshit for demanding any shaman who wanted to raid be resto.  Fucker finally stepped down.

It's Resto or go home, currently. But they've said they wanted an Enhancement shaman, so I'll start snagging some of that gear.

I showed up to a raid as Elemental the other day - Totem of Wrath, the whole 9. I said to the raid leader in whispers 'don't you want to put me in the group with the mages for the totem of wrath?' and he said 'there is no place on my raid for elemental shaman, so no'.

Yay.

[Modern Angel]

Tell your raid leader:

a) to think outside of the box since he's a hidebound retard
b) to go peruse Death and Taxes, Nihilum, Fires of Heaven Armory profiles to see precisely how many EVIL shaman specs they bring
c) that you quit

Elementals are a little iffy but still bring such amazingly good gear overlap that I could totally fit one in a raid. One Enhancement is such a must have that I'm floored people are still thinking thumbs down on them.

Are you horde? I've heard that horde guilds are way less flexible about shaman specs than their alliance counterparts; most of the forums posts you see about restorestoresto are horde by a large margin.