Spiritual Guidance: Progression vs. farm, identifying the right raid spec
by Dawn Moore 
Jun 13th 2011 at 7:00PM
Not a raiding tier goes by where the forums aren't littered with posts from novice healing priests asking why some well-known priest from some high ranked guild doesn't have a cookie cutter talent spec recommended by the community's leading theorycrafters. The post always goes something like this ...
"I looked up Lawliesthesiaspec from
Sometimes there is an amusing theory about why the priest has taken the talent, or an accusation that the player must be terrible at the game. Whatever the tone of the post, the question is ultimately rooted in the inability of many players to identify one talent spec from another. Today I intend to fix that so you're all prepared for Firelands in a few weeks.
The first thing you need to know before you go armory-stalking a popular priest is that high-end players don't necessarily use the same generic spec for every fight when they haven't killed the boss yet. This is especially true if the player's raid is having difficulty with the fight. In such a scenario a priest would put together a talent spec which is designed to give him the best possible chance to beat the fight. As a healer that could sometimes be a spec that allows for the most possible output, but it could also be a spec that provides more utility to the raid, more survivability to the individual priest, or more mana return over the span of the fight so you don't go OOM.
Do top players care about how much healing they do? Of course! But usually not until a boss has been killed a couple of times and the stress involved in healing the fight has passed. When that happens top players definitely start picking up more throughput oriented talents so they can try to set records with their healing numbers; but it's usually just something fun to do until the next content patch is released. Most serious raiders prioritize killing bosses to individual meter performance, and during a progression boss fight they know that an extra 1% or 3% healing doesn't make as big a difference as 1% extra damage does to a DPS.
So how do you differentiate a spec used in progression versus one used during farm content? Easy, just look through the priest's spec and look to see what his talents provide him as a player. If he only has talents that increase his healing output, then he's probably farming all the existing content in the game. If he's got a bunch of seemingly random survival talents that you've never taken before, he's probably working on a specific boss where he finds those talents valuable. Let me go over some possible progression or farm talents.
Discipline talents
Evangelism, Archangel, and Atonement This package deal of talents could either be used for a very specific fight (think Halfus Wyrmbreaker) or for fun during farm content. Most of the time if you see a priest using it for raids it's because the content is on farm and there are too many healers in the raid to keep healing interesting. (For progression, as I've said before, there are too many better talent options for healing since Strength of Soul was buffed.)
Inner Sanctum For both discipline and holy priests, Inner Sanctum adds the option to reduce incoming spell damage taken by the priest while using Inner Fire. This is a very beneficial talent since it will help to keep you alive and reduce the amount of mana you have to spend healing yourself. Keep in mind that you miss out on using Inner Will if you try to use this for survival though.
Soul Warding These talents are standard for a disc priest, but a holy priest should consider grabbing them if she's ever feeling short on healing. With Circle of Healing and Prayer of Mending having a cooldown, and Renew only able to heal so much in a given time, adding Power Word: Shield to your repertoire of spells can be quite handy. It also allows you to spam Body and Soul on your allies if you need that kind of utility.
Holy talents
Desperate Prayer This self-heal is an amazing progression talent, and while most holy priests can grab it without making compromises to their spec, a discipline priest has to give something up to get it. If you're prone to injury, or just want to conserve some mana when you heal yourself, this is one of the best progression talents available. Take it whenever you're worried about dying to something that is not entirely avoidable.
Surge of Light For both disc and holy priests, Surge of Light is a fantastic pair of talents ... If you're single-target healing. If you're shield spamming or AoE raid healing, you're going to get limited use from these talents so keep that in mind if you're in a raid where your assignments are more narrow. I think it sounds ideal for healing in 10-mans, but I know many of my 25-man peers skip it.
Rapid Renewal This is one of those talents that some priests might think is standard but actually it's extremely situational. Everyone likes the idea of having Renew on a 1 second GCD for spamming, but when you think about it, how often do you use Renew like that these days? It really depends on your gear and whether you can support upping the frequency that you cast the spell, so remember that when you take this talent.
Lightwell This will be the first talent you drop when a boss goes to farm, but when you're working on it you should definitely keep the spell on hand. Whenever a fight leaves you short on mana or time to heal everyone up during a heavy damage phase, or if your raid is split up between two locations, Lightwell is perfect. And believe it or not, it's much easier to get your raid members to use Lightwell when they can't stay alive any other way.
Blessed Resilience Much in the way that Inner Sanctum is valuable to survival and mana, Blessed Resilience can also help you out if you're in a fight that involves heavy raid damage (like Al'akir.) As long as you're being hit for good chunks of damage, this talent will allow you to heal back up to full faster and more efficiently than you would without it. If you find yourself taking a lot of damage and short on healing in a progression fight, this could be an option.
State of Mind I've come to hate this talent for existing, but I admit there is still potential for it to be useful as a progression talent. Particularly for 10-man raids where a holy priest may be trying to fill multiple roles, being able to switch between different Chakra stances every 24 or 27 seconds could be preferred to the full 30-second cooldown of Chakra. Many boss abilities are on on 30-second or 45-second timers, so being able to switch just a few seconds earlier helps you get ready. So if you find yourself needing to swap between stances frequently in one fight to keep your raid alive, consider this.
Shadow talents
Darkness This is one of those talents that could actually be used in either farm or progression content, but most of the time it will be for farm content throughput. Early in tier 11, many holy priests grabbed points in Darkness to supplement the lack of haste we had on our gear. We did this to get an extra tick of Renew. Nowadays though, you can get all that haste through gear and gems, so Darkness isn't all that necessary. If a priest was to take this progression, it would likely be on a fight where he felt short on time to get casts off.
Veiled Shadow This is becoming a standard talent for progression to ensure you don't go OOM. Any serious priest will want to take this during progression, but with the way mana is in Cataclysm it's possible priests will want it during farm content too.
Now that you have an idea when and why a talent is used, I hope that most of you will be able to apply this information to your future raiding specs in the Firelands. If you're running into a problem in a boss fight consider exactly what the root of it is, then look over this list and see if there is a talent you can drop or pick up to make the fight easier. Good luck!
Spiritual Guidance has the inside line on pre-raid gear, valor point and raid gear, and healing strategies for bosses such as Atramedes and Chimaeron. Newcomer to the priest class? Look into Discipline Priest 101 and Holy Priest 101.
Filed under: Priest, (Priest) Spiritual Guidance
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Aurilia Jun 13th 2011 7:46PM
I've actually use an Atonement/Archangel spec for 10N progression healing. One example being on Maloriak, where the guild was having trouble defeating him. I pushed to close to 4k dps as Discipline (while somehow still topping the healing meters), and we downed the boss a few seconds after the Berserk timer. I did 1.6mil damage (little under 5% of the overall damage), but my being able to heal by doing damage is what allowed us to down the boss when our DPS weren't yet up to par for the encounter.
Also, this tier of raiding has been very nice to the Atonement spec. Not including the instance bosses (guild hasn't tried them yet, so don't know the encounters and necessary healing enough to judge), at least half the encounters have some sort of "increased damage" gimmick that an Atonement spec can play off of.
Aurilia Jun 13th 2011 7:53PM
Conversely, while I'm the guild's strongest healer when I'm in my Atonement Discipline spec, I'm about tied with the rest of the healers when I switch to Holy. However, I find myself using that spec on Atramedes for utility - especially the PW:S run speed buff - as well as our semi-progression style attempts at Chimaeron where "the bubbles, they do nothing"
rice2007 Jun 13th 2011 7:48PM
Dawn did a great job explaining how these pivotal talents can really up your ante, but I think that struggling preists shouldn't just stop there. Delve all the way into your tree and see what needs to be fixed.
As Dawn said, a lot of top level priests don't use the cookie cutter spec. I think that cookie cutter specs are great for getting a feel of your class, but once you get the ropes and understand how YOU play as a priest, you should analyze your talents. Go beyond those major talents listed above and really consider what talents are going to make you a better healer.
Nadia Jun 13th 2011 8:08PM
I'd also like to note that specs can vary depending on what other healing classes are in the raid.
That is probably going to vary more in a 10 man than in a 25, especially tweaking a spec between 2 bosses.
Artemisian Jun 13th 2011 9:53PM
I'm a disc priest who's in progression (though not exactly cutting edge) and I also still keep A/A. I find it takes great advantage of the lull in healing requirements - for example Chim H (insert bad words here) I use A/A during the standard healing to get 15% up for Feud. It also gives me quite a chunk of regen, especially when popped when Power Torrent and my weave proc are up.
I understand it's probably not optimal for many people, but I find it highly useful.
Prissa Jun 14th 2011 12:31AM
I enjoyed using A/A in heroic Maloriak. It was the first time (outside of H Halfus gimmick) that I managed to top our holy priest in heals. It was super handy for healing in the Black phase. I targetted the add tank, and spammed away. The heals went to the tank, the extra dps on the adds helped, and then I could pop wings for the narrow window of heals to the main tank as necessary.
But as the whole point of this article says, just coz it works here, doesn't mean it works everywhere. I'm just too lazy to keep a different spec :P
Dawn Moore Jun 14th 2011 12:28PM
Yeah, once something dies changing specs becomes more of a hassle.
Smite + Atonement is definitely nice on Maloriak, and I used to do it, but I ended up dropping it when they changed shields to be bigger and more expensive. I found the new price of shields drove me OOM during Black phase so I spent most of Red, Blue, and Green phase recovering mana instead of spamming smite. On our kill though, I definitely had Atonement and Smite going in full force though.
I'm guessing if you found atonement effective in black phase you're running 10 man - if I'm wrong, my apologies - with my 25-man raid black phase is the most strenuous so you spend all your mana on PoH, Shields, Penance or Flash Heal. I'd never leave healing it all to single target casts with all the targets who take damage in my raid. Before the shield buff/nerf, my fellow priests didn't use shields during black phase because they got more meter credit from PoH. So I shielded while they PoH'd and even though I wasn't top on meters the healing was a lot more stable. WIth the change one of our priests went disc and we split the raid who would take damage from sludge in half and shared shielding duties. We'd both be hurting for mana, and the alternative (PoH spam + spot healing) wasn't working either. Up until that change, Maloriak was my favorite fight =( they broke it!
Prissa Jun 14th 2011 5:33PM
Yeah I was in a 10 man group. Often I would be distracted by the raid dmg, and find myself using more PoH and spot heals, but then I was kicking myself coz we were playing catchup with the tank. I had to remind myself not to be distracted and keep my stacks up for good smite heals and wings. Things went so much better if I managed to do that - at least, I certainly didn't feel as flustered.
Lipstick Jun 14th 2011 3:22AM
I am double disc -- one is strength of soul and the other is A/A. I wanted to touch on one talent I didn't see mentioned in this list, and that is Train of Thought. Train of Thought is the only other "contested" points that I ever see in different builds. The tool tip reads as follows:
You have a 100% chance when you heal with Greater Heal to reduce the cooldown of your Inner Focus by 5 sec. You have a 100% chance when you Smite to reduce the cooldown of your Penance by 0 sec. (assuming 2/2).
This talent is often taken with A/A specs, but I have at times some use for in in Strength of Soul build. The reduction of 5% doesn't seem like much, but there are times when it feels critical. It comes down to personal play style.
Also -- adding to what you've said about Soul Warding I've been running into a lot of priests who no longer take it because "bubble spamming is out." In 4.2 with the additional nerfs going out to external mana sources going out I think the final nail in the coffin of bubble spamming will begin to be felt by priests. As a result it will be come more common practice for priests to omit this talent from their builds if they listen to what goes on, on the forums. I personally like to always have the option to shield the tank and the off tank right away thereafter without waiting for PWS to be off cool down, as it helps me maintain a rapture rotation to some degree when I shield them both at the same time. It gives me and the other healers I run with (especially when 2 healing some fights) more leway to focus on the raid, and allows me to still feel like at least some of the old "mitigation" part of our tree hasn't gone out the window. I think it comes down to personal play style, but felt I should mention this, just because I didn't see you mention this at all Dawn.
Lipstick Jun 14th 2011 3:23AM
Note -- 5% = 5 secs. I fail at typing late at night.
Dawn Moore Jun 14th 2011 12:04PM
I wasn't sure where I stood with ToT at the time I wrote this. It feels baseline to me because the Greater Heal and Inner Focus integration. Almost every priest I know also uses Greater Heal more than me (I think I may be the only person in the world who baby's my mana enough to cast Heal regularly) so I just assume no priest would skip it. I could see myself skipping it though.
For Soul Warding I definitely see where you're coming from, but I'll never drop it. The simple act of being able to drop three shields on three tanks in tandem is too important to me. I could spread them out, but if I'm the only disc in raid, I will often strategically let weakened soul fall off without immediately reapplying a shield if I know there is some incoming wave of damage. Halfus' knock down, for example. I definitely think shield spamming is dead but I think the ability to blanket shields for specific mechanics in a fight is one of the strongest things disc can do. Much like Holy queuing up a PoH for incoming damage. We might not spam shields from start to finish, but we might do it on 5 targets at 3 points in a 9 minute fight, and if that's the case, I'll take the two talent points. =)
Vector Jun 14th 2011 11:47AM
Great article Dawn -- as always.
Question for you guys, probably relevant to either farm or progression content. What are you settling on for your weapon enchant nowadays between power torrent and heartsong? I'm still on heartsong and I don't really like the low power torrent uptime, but obviously int is really important so I know there are arguments out there either way.
Dawn Moore Jun 14th 2011 11:56AM
Depends on what you're interested in, mana or throughput. Power Torrent obviously will give you more output, and heartsong more return. Tyben determined if you use shadowfiend during a power torrent proc you can get the mana regen to comparable to what you get from heartsong, but in different amounts based on your spec. Holy gets 40-50 more mp5 using heartsong passively than power torrent + shadowfiend. Disc gets 10 more mp5. So for disc you get almost the best of both if you're smart with your shadowfiend, with holy you lose some mana return to go with power torrent.
If you don't time power torrent with shadowfiend, then it's a straight up comparison of whether you want mana return or throughput. I'll almost always take return over throughput, since having the mana to cast one or two more spells is usually on par with whatever bonus amount of healing I'd be getting from throughput.
Dawn Moore Jun 14th 2011 11:57AM
meh blah typos - ignore them.
Xaklo Jun 15th 2011 2:52AM
This is something most casters didn't have to do for a while (or at least it wasn't very viable) but I've learned in the past months the sacred art (used mostly by melee, esp rogues) of "Weapon Swapping." (cue Angelic singing)
See, most healers think you need to make a choice between the 2, but guess what? You don't! >:D
Keep 2 caster weapons on you, one with Heartsong, the other with Power Torrent, and you can switch them during fights to get whichever proc is off it's internal CD. I personally have heartsong on an ilvl346 spirit weapon (which I have equipped for the majority of fights), and PT on an ilvl 359 pvp weapon (most SP on it, matching throughput with more throughput). The nice thing about this way of healing is you can very quickly adjust from throughput to regen with ease, match your weapons (if they be 1-handers) with appropriate off-hands and the customization gets that much better.
Here's the kicker though.... lean in close, as Blizz might not be aware of it, and it might still be a secret....closer....closer......... the procs are not exclusive to each other! I.E. Heartsong and Power Torrent STACK with each other!!! You don't even have to choose between the 2, you can have both at the same time!!!!
Xaklo Jun 15th 2011 3:02AM
I suppose if you can get your hands on 3 (which is fairly easy), you can even add Hurricane to that list. idealy, I guess the weapons would be matched thus:
Power Torrent = Highest SP/mastery/crit
Heartsong = Highest Spirit
Hurricane = Highest Haste.
Given the choice between a high throughput weapon and a speedy one, I'd probably go with throughput, but there are a few situations that are the exception:
for example, perhaps you want to cast Hymn of Hope to it's full duration, but don't want to be useless (not healing) for quite that long. Switch out to the haste weapon, wait for the proc, (maybe -if disc- Power Infusion, or pw:s) then Hymn away!
Bikee Jun 15th 2011 1:02AM
Dawn, I love your posts, but find myself continually confused by your and others' position on A/A. You have consistently and strongly taken the position that disc priests should go with SoS rather than A/A. By contrast, Jhazrun from Paragon (who I assume knows what he's doing) insists that A/A is the way to go for all disc priests. I recognize that it is impossible for 99% of players to try to compare themselves to Paragon, but it does seem like he is talking about all priests. See, e.g., June 2, 2011 post by Jhazrun at http://www.paragon.fi/forum/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=418&start=250 ("There is no such thing as a non-Atonement spec.")
Can you elaborate more on why you think SoS is the way to go? Is there room for disagreement on this? Does it wind up just being a personal preference thing? Thanks!
Dawn Moore Jun 15th 2011 1:21AM
I don't want to read that whole thread, but it seems like they're talking about specs for specific bosses and 10-mans. I talk about things from a more general standpoint a lot of the time, and I do have a 25-man bias that I unfortunately, thanks to blizzard, cannot remedy. That said, you have to determine what's best for you based on the needs of your raid. Don't take my word for it, don't take Jhazrun's word for it, sometimes you have to think for yourself. You might not be sure of your decision at first but feel it out and see. The confidence comes with time.
That said, I explain the weakness of Atonement vs. SoS in this post http://wow.joystiq.com/2011/05/02/spiritual-guidance-the-aftermath-of-patch-4-1-for-holy-and-disc/
SoS throughput is very sustainable, unlike what Jhazrun says. He didn't mention Heal at all, and it's unfortunate that so many priests ignore it when it's incredibly versatile. You have to use it strategically with borrowed time and such.
But like I said, there is room for disagreement. Keep in mind that there are tons of top priests in the US who don't and won't take Atonement. The numbers on it are pretty terrible but as a utility/filler it is viable.
Fejuai Jun 22nd 2011 10:54PM
Jhazrun asserts his AA/A preference to 25m, where all of his experience comes from.