For Holy Priests interested in capturing a glimpse of how and what top end players do push themselves to the limit, one of Ensidia’s Holy Priests has written a guide to specs, gems, gear, and spell casts.
Quick Notes
One of the suggested specs is a 13/58/0 build which does not have Mental Agility nor Inspiration. This is a more specialized build which relies on Test of Faith and Healing Prayers for short, high healing demand type of encounters where Priests can afford to blow through mana.
In regards to gems, Poptisse advocates any gems with Intellect in the various sockets but notes that other gems will work just as well based on your personal preference. While I knew Intellect gems were the go-to gems for Discipline, I didn’t know it would be prioritized as high for Holy Priests. It must be due to the result of the Spirit nerf. Intellect didn’t really get better. Spirit just got slightly hit.
Caution: The guide you’re reading is written by one of the top Priests in the world. She’s in Ensidia after all. That’s a guild that probably has a plethora of raiders and players to choose from based on varying roles that are needed by different encounters. Most of us do not have that luxury. We have to make do with what we have which means we have to be more “all aroundâ€Â. There is a ton of valuable information but that doesn’t mean you should go out of your way to copy everything exactly. This is just an insight as to what a top tier Priest does. Read it, learn from it, and find out what works best for you.
Monday links
- Brigwyn is hosting a Child’s Play Charity Auction – All donations going to a good cause. Do check it out.
- Kestrel wants to know if WoW is Losing Its Hold on you – I know Megan has called a retirement from blogging (not sure if that includes the game). A lot of bloggers have called it quits recently. Rest assured, retirement is far away for me right now (Hopefully for Syd and Lodur too).
- Wrote to Done: Three Tips to Avoid Being a Boring Writer – Read it.
- Leadership now: 5 Leadership Lessons: Ultimate Leadership – Leading in Context – Great and short read. I liked this line the best:
- General P.X. Kelly: "Listen carefully to the principles of leadership we will teach you here at Quantico, but always apply them within the framework of your own personality. A successful leader never languishes in the comfort of a swivel chair. The most important of all troop-leading steps, yet the one most often neglected, is the last – to supervise. And you supervise by being out with and devoting the bulk of your time to our most important product – people. You can always catch up on what you thought was essential paperwork during the evenings or on weekends, but once neglected, you will find it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to catch up on people."
- Zen Habits: 5 Tiny Steps to Quit Being Such a Jerk
Other notes
- Noblegarden sucks. Haven’t seen this level of spawn camping since the days of Halo and Day of Defeat.
- Had a few questions about this. Yes I’m always interested in guest posts and promoting blogs of others. Just be sure to follow these guidelines.
I think the biggest thing I’ve always noticed about all world 1st type healers is they really focus on HPS, most often favouring haste over just about anything. I think this is a symptom of the fact that their dps is so strong that the fights are so much shorter than a standard guild would be used to. I sometimes wonder if these player’s views on gearing/specing would be different if they had to consistently deal with much longer fights.
I found it intriguing that Shaman were considered better Tank healers. I’ve never felt this way and generally, find my own Shaman are really uncomfortable as Tank healers. Is this a shifted paradigm or have they been missing the beat always? (or more to the point, have we missed out on how we should be assigning them in fights?)
Veneretios last blog post..The Art of Warbringer
as said above, I think these “world first” type of players have a different view of encounters than the other 90% of the player base. Though, its a good read. With some tweaks to the spec and taking the advise with a grain of salt, I think all holy priests could benefit from this.
Great and informative as always, Matt. Don’t ever leave us 🙂
Surprisingly high level and undetailed explanation from Ensidia. They blissfully forgot to mention crit and its value in 3.1.
Favoring MP5 over spirit made my stomach turn. Seriously… stacking int and then dropping spirit over mp5 is bad maths 🙂
The holy builds are good, but not flexible. Perhaps the dual spec system cancels the need for some flexibility but I think they take it a step too far. I suppose I favor utility over specialization.
@Veneretio: I have played Resto Shaman for a long time, but not in 3.1 yet. But the focus of Shaman has shifted. It is easier to heal single targets now and not run out of Mana. With Haste casting time of Healing Wave isn’t as bad and Shamans should have plenty of crit (both from talents and gear) to throw out massive single target heals.
I was never really comfortable stepping up to Tank heal in a raid but I found that Shamans adept nicely and with enough Manareg on gear they should be good tank healers. And with Earthshield being able to crit… and a longer ticking glyphed HoT – should be as good as a priest.
😉
@article: thanks for posting this. It is always interesting to see how top end healers do heal in certain environments – and what they consider to be important. Of course in the end you should always try out what is best for your own situation. But it’s always good to keep an open mind and not take this as THE formula for success.
🙂
Keep on healing!
pokayokes last blog post..Nysir, the Noble
Interesting that Ensidia priests gem for intellect like how holy paladins gem for it too…
I would take any theorycrafting out of ensidia with a grain of salt. They get through these encounters with skill and teamwork. Their guild’s MT has often been disproved when it comes to his theories about spec and itemization.
Being in the worlds top guild means they can get away with not being perfect in gear and talents, because they are perfect where it counts (alot of the time).
Also, the pushing of HPS over HPM becomes way more viable when you don’t have raiders sitting in aoe’s. One of those things the average raider can’t count on
The ensidia article is nice… but I’m definitely not going to take it as gospel.
I think I do a fine job with Clique/Grid and using click healing. For her to say no one can do a good job at click healing is a little egocentric. I’d like her to at least post a video of her method in action before she says that a method that many healers use is inefficient.
Maybe its because I expect a lot more out of the top guild but I think that her post lacked a lot of hard information and was filled with a lot of opinion pieces. Not saying the info is invalid, I would just hate to see everyone change their play style because of it.
@Veneretio: I agree, guilds like Ensidia probably can afford to keep their DPS better geared since they raid often, clear new instances early and change their roster around less than more casual guilds. This probably does lead to shorter fights. As Matt said the spec Poptisse recommends is very specialised, it’s high HPS because it’s all about bursting out AOE heals for as long as you can.
In real situations for the average raiding guild, we have to deal with less than ideal situations a lot more often. I doubt Ensidia need to deal with going without certain classes as often as my guild does or needs their mostly raid healing priest to help out with tank healing just because the new Paladin is under-geared. As the article says, the rest of us need to be more versatile and well-rounded.
This is still a very good guide for a priest who is still learning the ropes but people need to pick talents which compliment their own style. I believe this most important for tanking and healing because those roles are less about squeezing out the numbers and more about adapting to encounters and balancing different factors.