Question for 475+ priests

PVP Battlegrounds
1

OK so my sub runs out in 5 days and I’m trying to figure out if I should resub or not. Currently I’m 442 ilvl, rank 6 cloak, and all rank 1/2 essences.

  • For priests at 475+ what’s the gameplay like, do you struggle to out-heal single target DPS on teammates?
  • How much do you worry about enemy PvE trinkets?
  • Can you out-damage enemy DPS self-heals, and if so, how quickly? My main worries are rogue and fury warrior.
  • How often do you come across other 475+ geared DPS, and what is fighting them like? Could you comfortably tank two in situations without dampening?
  • I know it’s subjective, but how much fun are you having in PvP?

Thanks for your time.

2

I’m not sure what specific spec you’re talking about so I’ll answer your questions based on all 3. I’m also 466 but whatever.

As Shadow I’ll easily top the meters, especially in fights like EoTS or Arathi Basin (good places to rot the the enemy team) As Holy and Disc I can easily top the meters too, and healing using those two specs is fun.

A downside to Priests is for example on CTF maps. If the enemy team is smart enough to slow you while the DH flag carrier leaps miles away, that’s a problem. You can’t escape from mosts fights if stuff gets bad, you gotta tank it until you get peels or die. (or the enemy gives up and runs away)

Even then, I feel like a lot of people underestimate Holy Priests if played well, we have mitigation up at all times as well as well as greater fade, holy ward, etc. Assuming I don’t oom, It takes around 3-4 melee to bring me down, (can be 5 or more if they’re undergeared or bad) whether I’m Holy or Disc.

No. Disc and Holy are both good. Disc has good cooldowns and Holy is great with throughput in general.

Disc is pretty gear dependant though, you’re gonna want the voodoo totem from Atal’dazar and good traits like 3x depth of the Shadows. With spirit of preservation I can hit 300k Shadowmends. The Power Word: Radiance pvp talent can be taken if you think you’ll need a lot of burst heals.

If left to freecast Holy can do some great HPS (I don’t use Greater Heal either) Spriest heals are garbage.

In BGs the drest trinket is annoying, but not as threatening as it is in arena. Most of the time I’m not by myself, so the damage is split. The bike trinket is the worst one, but usually I’ll be fine. As holy I have 30-40% damage reduction up at all times when a melee attacks me. Disc is a bit squisher without cooldowns but I can still live. I don’t even notice when a caster uses claw on me. If I sense that someone is gonna try and burst me, I’ll just pop Greater Fade as Shadow or Holy.

Not really. Unless I have my psyfiend I can’t do much against dps self heals, especially if its some fury war with enraged regen.

It honestly depends on the week. If it’s the bonus honor week then yeah I’ll come across them a lot. I’m not 475 and I could tank 2 475 DPS easily, whether it’s Holy or Disc.

I love bgs. I wish they would fix some issues with them like gearing, but otherwise I think they’re pretty fun.

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3

I’m disc right now, but I was a spriest in Vanilla and holy for MoP so I’m aways happy to try out the other specs. Thank you so much for responding, especially with the mechanical stuff concerning spirit of preservation and the Revitalizing Voodoo Totem.

It’s unfortunate that fury healing can’t be overcome by disc dps.

Since you know a ton about shadow, how is their survivability? Could a good spriest 1vX others, or will they get eaten by rogues/fury/rets?

Edit: I see you’re running tentacle corruptions, those are better than other options, even for healers? And if you had access to PvP vendors would you choose different corruptions, like leech or versatility-on-hit or haste?

4

Shadow is probably one of the worst 1v1 specs in the game. I can hold my own for a while against a warrior, rogue, or ret pally but win a 1v1? Most of the time, no. A rogue can just infinitely reset the fight. Fury warrior self heals are too much to DPS through and paladins do so much damage with wings. I only have so many defensives to go through before I have to take the damage because I can’t kite a pally. We’re just too squishy outside of greater fade and dispersion, and our self heals are really bad compared to theirs. This doesn’t mean Shadow is bad, one of my favorite things to do is rot the enemy team down. We just aren’t the strongest at 1v1. Of course, it’s 8.3 and with that comes corruptions. Sometimes my mind flay procs come in handy and that’s when I would win a 1v1 situation.

The only corruption worth using that I personally have is mindflay. In battlegrounds, it’s a lot of free damage because no one ever kills the tendies. Even as a healer it’s good to put out some pressure.

If there was a PvP vendor and I could choose my corruptions, I would go with gushing wounds and mind flay. I would take a versa on hit corruption or 2 if I wanted to heal.

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5

… Before the newer patches as a holy priest my main literally just spammed gheal every time in arena my warlock or fire mage casted gpie or chaos bolt. In battlegrounds; no one gave a care enough to kick my gheal so I was top heal all day.

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6

Yes, Greater Heal in battlegrounds (particularly epics) is broken because no one kicks it or you can sit at the back of your team.

As disc (whose primary play is battlegrounds), I feel fine against 1-2 DPS. The problem is mana conservation because in BGs I prefer to run offensive rather than defensive so don’t tend to use Lucid Dreams. I’m fine when I am running that in terms of mana.

I also have no trouble killing people - it just takes a while (as you would expect it to). Fades is pretty spot on with the trinket advice, it is those two that are the problem. Corruption is far worse but I get great joy out of killing mind flay tentacles and making infinite stars a little less infinite.

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7

What are you running? I’m currently using:

  • Vitality Conduit (rank 1)
  • Lucid Dreams (rank 1)
  • Artifice of Time (rank 2)
  • Conflict and Strife (rank 2)

About half the time I want to play incredibly defensively, but the other half I want to be full offense, so knowing what you use would be really helpful for me.

8

I tend to run:

Conc Flame (major) (sometimes swap with conduit, sometimes with invocation (for epics for lots of ae healing)
Conduit
Strife
– this one I change between Spirit (beefier Shadow Mend) or Lucid Dreams (vers proc)

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9

In BGs, disc is the best throughput, no other healer competes.

Prio haste > crit
CoS major.
Arch,Radiance,Trinity - swapping arch for enhanced dome if your d on fc maps.
Talents will always be: 3333113
Best traits are depths of shadows, and then anything else you want that isn’t Death Throes.

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10

What would you guys recommend to level as a priest going from 85 to 120 or so doing mainly BGs. I don’t mind doing anything but would prefer the best possible 1v1 spec out of them all. (I think it might be disc?)

11

Why do 1v1s matter to you?

Disc has the highest healing throughput and shadow has the highest damage throughput, even beating affliction. The entire class rn is complete pad

12

I hate being helpless if i get jumped and want to turn it around and I do that really well on my survival, ret, DH, feral so… :slight_smile:

I might try disc, can you describe what I would be doing in a typical m+ as disc to be successful :slight_smile: ?

13

Disc is pretty difficult in pugs when groups do not know the mechanics and get hit by stuff they shouldn’t be getting hit by. You end up spamming shadowmend when the strength of disc lies in being mega offensive. Shadowmend is an inferior method of triage healing compared to other healers.

On the flip side, disc in dungeons can be very enjoyable if you get in with a decent group of players that know the fire is bad.