Delves as a Priest (Solo) tips and tricks

Classes Priest
1

I have solo most delves to 11 in beta and also now up to 9s on live. I thought this might help some players who are not grouping up for this.

Mind control is the strongest ability you can have. Mind control a mob before combat preferably a caster with bolts that deal a ton of damage, fade to drop agro and unload on the mobs. If the mob is left alive command them to stand on one of Brann’s traps and proceed form, there. (big lizards in fungal folly can blow themself fun fact)

If you can just skip all the mini bosses and rare monsters the fights are just not worth it. I will just die on the mini boss and the rewards for the rare monsters are not worth it.

Bring potions of invisibility and potions of water breathing you can sneak past mobs that you don’t want to fight and the water breathing one makes it so you can take your time and not worry about droning in the underwater ones or flying off the edge of the delve as you get the speed buff from the air bubble.

Fade works hard in delves you can drop agro to Brann his pets or your mind-controlled minion. Talent to reduce damage when you fade to reduce unavoidable damage helps a lot.

Take the talent where you take less damage when you flash heal yourself, when I play archon I almost always a free heal up for this buff.

Mind sooth can be used to make it past some packs that are near objectives that you need to get to can help avoid unnecessary pulls.

Mind vision can help by scouting out a delve when available, you can just leave if any of the mob placements are bad (mini boss on an objective).

Fear works extremely well for me I talent into petrifying scream to make them stay in one spot to not agro other mobs. when paired with archon you can get a second scream which can help.

I do delves in Holy so I will give advice on that.

Frist take all the dps talents you can need them chastise stun is so important I can’t stress it enough. POM talents are useful they jump around all the time since Brann and you are getting beat up all the time.

For the most part I put more effort in priority cc, single target healing and then dpsing. For bosses I hit them when I can but mostly focus on healing me and Brann trying to make Brann tank the boss either by watching agro or fading.

I have found Archon better to solo in vs Oracle the double fear and the halo damage is nice for me in fights, free surges of light for flash heals. I have played Oracle it is just Archon is easier for me now with juggling all the stuff going on.

  1. As of yesterday tuning, do not take Restitution right now if you die and go into your spirt of redemption form you will lose a life regardless of if you pop back up with restitution, before you didn’t so it was just a bonus life but now it will be a liability. This talent isn’t adding any value so don’t waste your time right now.

  2. Fearing a sporbit helps a lot when they are chasing me and allows me to get away and have them blow up on other mobs that are feared. (do not mind-control the sporebit as it is trying to explode it can bug out and not die and will keep you in permeant combat).

  3. I will say it now as I did on the beta the biggest problem, we priest have is the design pass fail mechanics with kicks. I know the 13 devel requires a kick or the boss heals up so I guess I will never get that kill as a priest. Also a few bosses and sub bosses require a kick, or you die.

If other have advice or tactics feel free, I am interested in how other are doing in delves.

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I find lightwell useful, it let’s Brann and yourself take a bit more damage so you can keep dpsing a little longer.

3

Good guide but I feel like we’re needlessly handicapping ourselves trying to go holy and not disc in delves. Too few survivability cool downs for holy to pass up. That’s not to say you can’t just switch to disc once you get to a boss with pulsing AOE.

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I prefer Holy’s burst damage, holy words and instant casts over disc. Holy is quite tanky.

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I can see the benefits of disc but I have never really liked playing it. I am not knocking it just it not for me lol.

I have been playing holy so long I feel lost when I play shadow or disc. I just need to know what my limits are, and I feel fine.

The most recent changes made solo play better at least for me. All that need to be fixed now is our lack of a kick.

Honestly, they should just make a kick button you control for Brann.

3 Likes
6

Atm I’ve been fully avoiding trying to solo delves. They’re bugged a bit right now as solo scaling assumes you actually have several party members.

My DH friend tried a 7 and kept getting one shot.

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Yeah, there are several bugs, The sporebits from Fongle Follie, also if you agro a mob they will teleport up to you if are on a different elevation. The candles and the air totems de-spawning on you when you pick them up.

But I guess after the beta I am not bothered by these anymore; I just wish I could report them problem faster like in the Beta.

I think the problem most people are having is they don’t know what to kick(stun) when to use a defensive or avoid. It is early in the season you can get killed in secs if you’re not careful. Some mechanics are just dodge this or die, use a defensive or you die and if you get tunnel vision well you die.

Good rule of thumb is if you see a ground effect move. And until people get a better understanding of the delve layouts and the mob albites they will keep getting killed. I still get killed every now and then by getting stuck somewhere running away from a mob or getting tunnel vision focusing on the wrong thing.

I am only doing so well because I choose to play test delves as holy on the beta, I got beat down and learned the layout and mobs before delves went live.

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They’re doable solo.

As far as tanks getting oneshot, it makes sense. They’re tuned to take 3x the damage of a DPS and armor doesn’t matter (ilvl is the only thing reducing damage). :slight_smile:

Delves just… don’t work like the rest of the game.

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What is weird they were first unkillable in the beta then they put a patch in to make them take more damage. I was playing a play testing a protection paladin, and I was getting destroyed I reported it and moved on. I thought they fixed it.

I feel what they did yesterday just reverted thing back to the days on beta where tanks felt like they were wearing paper armor.

10

It’s just blizzard messed scaling mob damage/health pools up based on party composition, it was something like a solo tank taking more damage and having bigger mob health pools than a tank with a dps or a tank with a healer when it should have been the other way round.

Similar situation if you are solo as a healer, you take more significantly more damage than had you entered a delve with another healer or a dps, which doesn’t make sense at all.

But then if you have a 5 man, the damage taken and mob health pool scaling is cranked up way past what is reasonable and everything starts to 1 shot with even autos, and minibosses taking 5 minutes to kill.

11

Delves finally gave me a Pve use for void shift.

I can take a beating and then just steal all of Brann’s hp

2 Likes
12

might be selective (on the delve, Branns build, etc), we have a druid (in guild) solo’ing 8’s quickly…
like it was stated above, just sneak past a lot of the time killers…
:laughing:

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[[Holy Priest POV]]
Will keep adding tips as I think of them.

Tips:

  • If you have a water breathing fishing pole equipped in the fishing profession tool slot, you can save on underwater breathing potions (and stress).
  • Dominate Mind on casters is often nice since when it drops you have their cast time to get your recast off in time.
  • I’ve heard dominating mobs buffed by Zekvir’s influence is the way to go since it gives some sweet extra DPS.
  • Just avoid the minibosses and reset the delve if they’re by an objective and you can’t get around 'em. On a 10 solo Velo’s Grasping Darkness hit me for almost 6 million.

Observations:
Fade and aggro being buggy
IDK if it’s just me, but it feels like there’s something really weird and wrong going on with fade, Brann and aggro dropping. It’s extremely annoying. If I fade, I shouldn’t have to deal with that mob again for more than ten seconds (fade duration plus amount of time it takes for the mob to run back to me). Some casters don’t even seem to notice when I fade - they’ll keep chain bolting me to the face for half my HP.

It’s not a new use for fade - it’s how we kite. It’s the core part of the holy priest kiting toolkit. Since baseline we have neither armor to tank hits, nor speedy mobility to outrun mobs, nor snares to perma-slow them, nor interrupts to silence them - instead we force a melee mob to create the distance and casters to stop targeting us, whether with either fear or fade.

That’s how it’s worked back unto ye old days, even when the only ones we were fade-diverting onto were just our shadowfiend. Since bosses can’t be feared, being able to fade them onto Brann and have him tank for us as a breather is even more important.

It’s very aggravating.

Interrupts
I’m fine with not having an interrupt… if you’re not going to tune around the assumption that interrupts are available. Blizzard needs to make Brann about 200% smarter and quicker at interrupting when he’s paired with a holy or disc priest.

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