I’m thinking of leveling a priest in classic as it has been one of my favorite classes of all time.
I did not get to experience vanilla so I have no idea how they worked. I mained Holy in Wrath and through much of Cata and have played Shadow since then.
I’m thinking of going back to my healing roots and I’m just wondering how discipline works in classic as I have never played with the spec until Legion. Are they viable for 5 mans and raids or should I just stick with Holy? What makes them better/worse than Holy?
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In vanilla the line wasn’t as sharply drawn as it is now, since you had 51 talent points to distribute and could distribute them any way you chose. The bottom of the tree was the 31 point talent, so most people put 31 points in 1 tree and split up the others among the other two.
The 31 point holy talents had fairly bad reputations and so I think actually most healing priests were 31 disc, 20 holy or something along those lines.
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Disc. is great but keep in mind that in classic it shines from AQ onward as PI’s DPS increase parallels your casters’ output. Most Disc. priests start out as Holy until their gear gets better because as 31/20 PI you’ll lose Spiritual Guidance and Spiritual Healing from the Holy Tree. Also, highly geared Disc. can get Force of Will and nova farm 5m very easily. Good luck!
30 in Holy - Healing priests should always get 5/5 Spiritual Guidance and 5/5 Spiritual Healing starting out in the raid scene. SoR and Lightwell aren’t so good, yeah those can be skipped. Most Holy priests will get up to Divine Spirit in Disc.
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I seem to recall actually running without a 31 point talent for a while for exactly that reason. Holy 31 pt talents were lame, and I cared more about my own healing than buffing other caster’s output, lol.
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Oh also, this is a PSA to all healing Priests - Improved Renew is generally avoided because it only increases the spell’s base amount not your total healed renew.
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I read the same about Spiritual Healing - that it only increases the base amount and doesn’t factor in any additional bonuses from gear. I guess that’s why a lot of people do a 26/25 Disc/Holy hybrid build.
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For whatever unknown reason, I can’t include links but if you go to the classic talent calculator on wowhead I’m pretty sure this was a basic build: 0512301305051-01505103230005
I didn’t know the subtleties about the +heal talents, I just remember caring more about mana than about +heal.
Whoa, where did you read this? Could it have just been a pserver issue? Spiritual Guidance increased +dmg/heal based on total spirit not base.
No I’m talking about Spiritual Healing, not Guidance. It’s the 10% Healing increase, whereas Guidance is the Spirit to Healing talent. I’m talking about the second talent down in the tree. The first one I think everyone takes and that’s worth it, the second one not so sure.
Spiritual Healing supposedly only increases the base healing on your skills by 10%, not factoring in the additional healing received from gear (which will be substantial).
For preists it was less about the Name of the spec than what you were going to do. Shadow clearly for damage and Healing if you were anything other than shadow. You could go down to PI but basically anything other Then Healing well was a goof choice. I even saw a few Tri-spec healers that did fine overall.
A friend of mine said they literally raided with a shadow priest who healed and did well. You’ll be fine with whatever spec you want to go. Gear is more important.
Just hopping in to say that old Power Infusion was amazing, since you could give it to someone else it was like blessing a mage or warlock with their own private bloodlust.
Tossing PI on friendly casters randomly in the world was great, they’d always be so happy. It’s like the one talent that makes you instant friends.
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If I remember correctly, disc had some wand talents that could be helpful to leveling. You can also heal 5-mans while leveling with any spec, even shadow. It’s not till late game where you’re spec really mattered.
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I healed in Vanilla but I had a horrible connection (~1500ms latent). Our guild was casual but we raided through BWL and ZG. All the priests save me were primarily Holy spec of one sort or another. I never heard anything against Spiritual Healing and I think all our priests used it. I was the Disc priest in the guild and I went all the way to PI. It was a clear loss in healing for me to go that deep into Disc but it was a visible boost to healing or DPS from others according to the meters.
Our experience was that Shadow also saw a notable decrease in healing output as well but as has been mentioned, skill can make up for that to a certain degree. Knowing how to save mana and when to heal is as importantas stats since someone overhealing badly is going to be less useful than an off-spec.
Here’s where I read that Spiritual Healing is based off of base healing:
https://www.reddit.com/r/classicwow/comments/bk6hur/classy_friday_priests_may_03_2019/emg8n3k/
I personally don’t think spiritual healing is a very good talent, as the 10% healing you gain is from the base heal - it does not factor in your +healing. In my opinion, the 10% increased mana is better to have. I do agree that spiritual healing can be good early on when below prebis and need the bonus +healing.
So Spiritual Guidance - the Spirit talent - will give you a decent chunk of extra healing because it’s based on your Spirit stat which will only get better as you get more gear. But Spiritual Healing - the base 10% bonus - won’t scale at all and is apparently a rather small amount of healing.
So it seems that it’s free 5 points there up to the player’s preference - choosing between 10% extra mana and 10% extra healing - but that the extra healing isn’t so amazing that it’s a must have. I’d say depending on how you play and what type of content you’ll be doing, your choice may vary.
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You can make a decent smite spec for leveling in all honesty. Disc priests bring PI to raids which is better than going deep holy. I plan on raiding as PI on a priest
This - the difference between being deep disc or deep holy isn’t as defining as it is now. If you really want to have some fun with Power Infusion, then you give up 10-15% extra healing in exchange for some more mana and talents that help you in PvP
I leveled a priest 1-60 as disc about 1 year ago it wasn’t as bad as people would have you believe. Having the spirit buff helps a lot and I took imp renew cause it is very mana efficient if you are grinding. The rotation was essentially smite, swp, smite, smite, wand. Carry lots of water and stack spirit. Talents like Meditation help with frequency you drink.
As far as speed you are comparable to a shaman/paladin where as Shadow is comparable to hunter/warlock.
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The issue of not scaling with gear probably doesn’t matter till at least MC. You hardly get any gear that buffs your +heal till the endgame.
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right it’s also nice because Mental Agility talent reduces it’s mana cost by 10% and your spirit 5 second tick timer starts sooner then casting something like heal or gheal.
It’s not really universal that no priests take imp renew sometimes at the high-end on horde side if you are running more then 2+ totem twisting shamans you might designate 1 priest to do more aoe healing with renew spreads. The raid setup ally side for a renew spreading priest is mostly only seen in speed running. Healing in vanilla is great because on a raid level you serve raid needs more then just try to top meters and your rotation/spell priority can change due to guild progression and kill times : )
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