I’ll admit, I’ve always dismissed Body and Soul as an odd talent that had little to no use in raids. Players should be able to run out of anything dangerous on their own or with the aid of a boot speed enchant if they’re slow. As such, I’ve never really considered it at all.
But ever since that Power Word: Fail round table event held by the Raid Warning guys where Aliena, Derevka and myself chatted, I had to reconsider. Have I mentioned that they’re my personal favourite podcast crew to work with?
The spec
Here it is (14/57/0)
This is the one I’d use as it has many of the traditional elements of a Holy spec. You can shift your points around from Empowered Healing, Blessed Resilience, and Test of Faith accordingly based on your own preferences. Personally, I favor Blessed Resilience but that’s because I’m aware of what kind of an effect it has. You may prefer Test of Faith for the extra throughput (even though it is conditional). If you’re not a Flash Heal or Greater Heal type of player, you might opt for full points in Blessed Resilience and Test of Faith. Anyway, that discussion is for a separate post entirely (hopefully soon assuming Derevka has spare time at some point).
Why would you ever use Body and Soul?
For me, I’ve discovered that it has extra utility in progression fights. The talent a minor run speed increase for 4 seconds which is enough to give players a quick boost when running away. When learning fights for the first time, I often use this at specific times.
In an extremely high level raiding guild, I would argue that this talent is unnecessary. Players can easily handle movement fights and do not require the aid of extra sprint abilities to escape hostile spells. It’s just not necessary. Connections and computers are at peak efficiency resulting in near-zero lag. Situational awareness is so high that players will move without realizing that they had to move.
But not every guild is like that. Not every raid can perform like that. For me, I need to look at every possible edge I can utilize in an encounter. Nothing frustrates me more than a player who is unable to outrun a Sindragosa explosion, or a Necrotic Plague on Lich King or any number of other abilities because of technical problems. Doesn’t matter how good the player is as bad connectivity connections will almost always negate that. I can’t make everyone’s connection super awesome. I can’t magically snap my fingers and create 102 FPS conditions. The next best thing I can do is cast a spell that’ll make people run quicker and get them out of dangerous situations faster. I may not be able to account for lag, but I can at least function as a safety net and buy an extra second or two for that player and help them live when they otherwise would have been lost.
Just keep in mind that it might annoy your Discipline Priest.
Anyway, it’s largely used on progression fights to help “smooth” things over until a fight “clicks”. You’re giving up potential throughput for increased (but selective) movement speed which comes in handy for heavy movement bosses. Plus it also makes the run back from wipes slightly quicker and I know I won’t be last back! Go ahead and give it a shot. Let me know what you think.
Good thoughts, nice post. Just don’t let your raiders become dependent on it, and become lax in how they should be executing!
.-= Avalonna´s last blog ..A Dark Nemesis Gratuitous Self-Congratulatory Post =-.
Used it on progression fights and it really helped out. On some movement fights it buys you the time you need to pull of that last heal, move quicker and still be first to get back into healing.
One downside is that the talent isn’t measurable. Did it save a wipe? That’s hard to tell. I tend to believe it has done so in the past but I’ve seen tanks and dps react with scepticism saying “they could manage without” and lavish themselves in a grand self-image of uber skills. This has made it a tough call sometimes. The throughput is measurable on those horrible meters and despite our objection against them, they are still the single most used performance measure out there out of simplicity.
In my active raiding days, I also used it as a friendly “get moving” button. It doen’t consume the energy on vent, makes less noise and is 60% runspeed more effective.
It’s also fun to make people run into the flames at Heigan, or out of position in other fights 😀
Great post, Matt.
Key thing to remember is that Body and Soul scales INVERSELY with your raid learning the encounter. So the better your raid is at a fight that requires movement (say, Defile on Lich King) the less effective B&S becomes. Handy none the less… Just remember you might get better use from those points elsewhere as your raid learns the fight.
Every holy build I have takes Body & Soul. In addition to the “Speedy Boots”, you’re also looking at self poison removal, which was invaluable being the “portal healer” on the Yogg fight.
All of your raiders will thank you for those extra few seconds on Hard Mode Putricide or Blood Princes when running from various things. Should they have been in a better place – probably. Did it save a potential death – probably.
Maybe that’s just because I’m biased against renew (we’ve got 2 full time resto druids) though, so an extra utility talents is always nice :p
I find this quite a timely post as I recently included one point of body and soul into my spec. My rational for doing so was to aid raid progression in my semi-casual guild.
For all the will in the world I often find that there is always one person slow off the mark, whether it be connectivity related or not, and have found this quite a handy tool in these situations.
It also strikes me in movement intensive fights it can allow me to get back in position to heal that little bit quicker.
The lack of measurability for this talent is obvious, but that said there are situations where although you cannot say it ultimately aided the downing of a boss, it did save x-dps from dying, which inevitably assisted a successful outcome to an encounter.
.-= cavalla´s last blog ..Dear Blizz….. =-.
I just recently changed my main back to my priest (I was Shadow in TBC), and ever since I hit 80, my holy spec has had body and soul. I do a lot of 10 man raiding, so I hardly ever step on the toes of a disc priest.
Our guild is definitely not a “full efficiency” raid group, so I get a lot out of it. I can get the paladin healer into place faster on fights like Marrowgar and Festergut, I can boost people kiting clouds on Putricide and I can help kiters move around on Rotface and Saurfang.
The best part is when I’m in a heroic with a guildy who hasn’t played with me before and I hit them with it to speed up the run. They usually freak out and have no idea why it happens.
.-= Fricassee´s last blog ..The Freeing Feeling of Playing One Toon =-.
I think its a good idea. I know on Sindragosa, for our guild there are some players who *just can’t*, for whatever reason, get the movement right yet. Either they keyboard turn, or have lag problems, or both. We’ve had a couple successful runs at p1 and p2 this week, but its still not quite a sure thing for some people.
If I hadn’t been converted to mainspec shadow since way back on Putricide, I’d consider the spec.
On a side note: I’m a big fan of 3/3 Blessed Resilience and 3/3 Test of Faith. Not only because it helps with a renew spec, but because it helps with *all* of your spells. That’s pretty amazing when you get right down to it. When both talents are activated, they beat out Empowered Healing for Flash Heal. Yes, TOF is situational, but those situations just so happen to be all the important ones 😛
I never spec holy without it. I will admit that it was originally just for the “toy” factor of a priest sprint, but it’s come in exceedingly handy on numerous occasions through progression while I was raiding holy. It’s probably one of the things I miss most anymore going back Disc.
.-= Ceralyn´s last blog ..On the Arrangement of Pixels: Holier Than Thou =-.
The main issue with Body and Soul is that the Weakened Soul effect interferes with disc shield spammers (or the other way around). But if your raid doesn’t have someone spamming shields, it is a very good talent.
Pretty much vital in the tactic we use when doing Anub25Hm.
When clearing the frost patches by kiting anub’s spikes, we run north wait for bubble, body and souls then run south to the patch. Next phase is a reverse.
.-= Echo´s last blog ..Passing Loot =-.
Tried out Body and Soul when we learned Yoggy and kept it ever since. I’m a utility junkie and like to fill the gaps others might not see. Maybe noone notice, or maybe it isn’t needed but it makes me feel smart knowing I use the tools I have. It’s not all about putting out big numbers. Survivabillty uber alles.Amen.
We’ve had some trouble with the professor in ICC, part of it due to melee to slow on green blobs and kiters slow on bown blobs, so I figured I’d try the speed bubble to see if it could buy us some margins. Well the professor still aint down but last try he was at 1.5% so I’m keeping the talent. did I mention we got him to 1.5%? that is not at all annoying, not at all.
I think that Body and Soul is a great talent. And as a Disc priest, if my Holy Priest buddy wanted to use that talent spell to help fellow raiders, it wouldn’t annoy me if i saw a bubble popping up on my turf ;D
I think a lot of resistance to this talent has come from the meter people. Most Holy Priests are hard pressed to stop their throughput long enough to add a little utility to a raid. With Droods and other healers pushing the charts, any small dip on the meters and Holy Priests get called into question on their healing style. Sitting on the sidelines because you wanted to help a raid more than stroke the meter epeen is not much fun.