Questions for Priests (DPS and Healing)

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1

Despite playing a priest to like 42, I only know the basics - don’t get lightwell and Shadow Priests are good as long as there are like 4 Warlocks in raid to benefit.

That being said, can you help me with some questions?

What is the ideal Shadow Priest spec for PvE?
What is the ideal Shadow Priest spec for PvP?
What are your thoughts on SWP - should not be on raid bosses or crucial?
Is Holy Priest DPS a meme or does it actually work in 5mans and PvP?
Which heals should a Holy Priest avoid to conserve mana?
With DM and even Benediction possibly behind Phase 2, what is your MH/OH BiS?

Thanks :+1:

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Holy priest dps is slower than shadow but its not that bad. I played Disc priest dueling was fine and healing was for dungeons. Its easier to level in holy or disc because you can easily find groups for dungeons. You barely have to ask you will probably get a few whispers a day from people wanting a priest in a dungeon. If you have money and time go ahead and respec when needed. Shadow priests were barely a thing in vanilla honestly.

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3

If you’re a smite priest, roll alliance and group with a ret.

They have sanctity aura which will increase your holy damage by 10% and seal of the crusader will also increase your holy damage

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4

Yeah I remember the stigma they had until about ZG when spell hit was a little more common, then I saw more. Mostly in PvP, a very few in PvE.

Yeah and since it can’t be resisted, it might be good for a leveling duo for sure.

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Ret and smite priest sounds like a really fun leveling duo. Might be a bit slow but extremely safe

Edit: also a full “crusader raid” would be pretty interesting. All paladins and priests for onyxia or something

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I believe holy spells can be resisted. But, they don’t have a resistance category.

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Or at the very least strat speedruns and water runs.

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Smite it up, Holy Brother.

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PvE: https://classic.wowhead.com/talent-calc/priest/A8gxwAAEz808TQ
Adjust shadow affinity/silent resolve to wherever your threat levels are comfortable. You can take points out of improved mind blast if you have mana issues and can’t cast it as often.

SW:P is part of your rotation. If your raid won’t let you use it, then why are they even bringing an spriest?

Holy priests DPS is a meme but can work ok and can work pretty well with a ret pally in the group.

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As a shadow priest you’ll melt faces in pvp.

And you’ll respec holy for pve.

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Can’t answer your first 2 questions…
Shadow Word Pain is a good enough DoT to warrant being on the boss. Although it might still get knocked off which could be frustrating.
I don’t see Holy Priest dps working in dungeons unless you can continously chain Killing Blows on mobs for 100% Spirit Tap uptime. I feel like a Power Infusion specced Priest could play more offensively than a Smite Priest in PvP as well.

For Mana conservation in most cases, Priests should avoid max rank Renew, Power Word: Shield, and Prayer of Healing. It sounds silly saying this because this is majority of Priest’s healing kit, but these spells are fairly situational and have high costs/drawbacks. Renew results in overheal and only one Renew can be on a target at a time. Power Word: Shield is expensive and scales horribly in Vanilla. Prayer of Healing is very inefficient unless all 5 of your group members benefit from it. It is a great spell to combine with Inner Focus however.

If you’re not concerned with mana, then feel free to use these spells still, or consider downranking (ex. rank 6 renew instead of max rank). Otherwise, Heal and Greater Heal are probably the best spells to use, with Flash Heal being less efficient but still worth using. Renew is still a good spell that scales well, but if you use max rank, you will probably waste a lot of mana on overheal.

Also, downranking is important to avoid wasting mana. Alternatively, you can try to heal with max rank spells, but in order to do so efficiently, you would have to let your heal targets get really low on hp which makes this style more risky. This style benefits more from the “5-second rule” as you won’t be casting as often.

Also Pre-Benediction, a good weapon would be the Hammer of Grace from the 7 Dwarves in BRD. Offhand options are lacking. Maybe the offhand from the Linkin quest chain would be good enough.

This was a longer post than I expected it to be.

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12

Since I’m fine with super safe but kind of slow (and not really fond of shadow priest as a personal story), I’ll be doing some sort of discipline/holy build with 5/5 wands and 5/5 spirit tap for the starting point. Probably a 14/32/5 build. I’m still thinking about whether I want to do holy points or discipline points first (after the obvious first 10). Either start defensive (better self shield and fortitude) or start offensive (5% holy crit). And still not 100% that I want the mostly holy build. I could trade the later holy tree for deep discipline with better inner fire, power infusion, increase mana pool, and increased spell damage.

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I think getting Spiritual Guidance asap is best, as it synergizes with Spirit Tap so well. If I was doing a pure farming spec, I’d probably end up something like 21/25/5 picking up Divine Spirit in the Discipline tree. It might look different during leveling though.

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I just read through all of this, thanks for replies everyone :+1:

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Resist and miss came up as Resist in combat text and logs. With an equal level target they had 0 chance to resist but you could miss 5% of the time which would show up as resist.

Spirit tap is the best talent for leveling period. If you want an even more efficient rotation, be a Nelf for Starshards. Fear ward is nice to have but not necessary.

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16

Yeah smite is totally doable, especially with a Ret paladin companion. It is also better damage than Shadow until you can reach Shadowform at level 40. Shadow is slightly more mana efficient but that might not matter unless you are super diligent about staying in combat as much as possible while leveling.

The other nice thing about a Holy DPS build is for just one point in Holy Nova you suddenly have a very powerful AoE grinding tool. You can technically reach it at level 20 but you really want to wait until at least 25 or 30 because of Spirit Tap and Wand Specialization. There are some great spots to grind AoE with Holy Nova such as Dire Maul when Phase 2 hits that might also allow you to drop Spirit Tap down to (1/5) and pick up some healing talents or deep Disc utility.

Go for Spiritual Guidance while leveling, but when you hit 52 or so you have the option to respec into Force of Will (and Power Infusion) without losing all the mandatory talents. Which one is more DPS at 60 will depend on your gear and what you’re farming specifically. TBC smite priests can reach both Force of Will and Spiritual Guidance, but not Vanilla.

Shadow is more self sufficient later on because of the incredible physical damage reduction at level 40, better DPS 40+, and stronger CC toolkit. Even still, Smite scales well with spellpower, and if you score the right pieces of gear it’s still respectable at 60 though highly dependent on consumables. It’s definitely the way to go from 1-39. In PVP the only advantage aside from the fact that there is no holy spell resistance is that it allows you to swap from healing to damaging seamlessly whereas a Shadow priest even though they have great healing capability is hampered by the 40% base mana cost to enter Shadowform. You’d have significantly less passive damage reduction than Shadow though there are some options to close the gap like Martyrdom.

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For leveling I found that 5/5 Wand Specialization and 5/5 Spirit Tap are essential, everything else is preference. At level 30 my wand damage was at least as good as my spell damage. Thankfully, unlike when vanilla first launched, wands are autofire.