The Horde Leveling Guide» holy

Priest Talent Builds: The Holy Priest Spec

Jon — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 12:54:02 +0000

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Holy Priests – How to Build the Ultimate Group and Raiding Spec

Holy and Discipline Priest Build

When it’s time to be in a large raid group, or quest with a group of friends, getting the most out of your Holy talent tree is important. It’s the only tree where you can maximize your health regen and at the same time increase places like spirit, mana, and movement speed in your favor.

And now that you can duel-spec with the patch 3.1 changes, it will be important to keep the Holy talent tree set up for specific runs.

I’ve played my priest a lot, and actually respecced the guy so many times I’m almost embarrassed – but in the process I’ve worked out what really works in a hard-core raid.

This is it.

Row 1 (Healing Focus, Improved Renew, and Holy Specialization)

As a healer you probably know how important it is to be able to heal without interruption. This is why you should place 2pts in Healing Focus and gain 70% reduced pushback during any healing. Right now, don’t worry about the Holy Specialization. Instead, fill the IR and increase the amount you heal by 15%.

Row 2 (Spell Warding, Divine Fury)

I played back and forth with these 2 forever. When it comes down to it, just add 5pts to each run and move on. You reduce the amount of damage you take from spells by 10% with SW, and reduce casting times for 4 different abilities by .5 seconds.

Row 3 (Desperate Prayer, Blessed Recovery, Inspiration)

Well, you definitely need to add 1pt to the DP because it gives the caster an instant 263 to 325pt heal. The other 2 abilities I just skip for now because they don’t give me immediate results.

Row 4 (Holy Reach, Improved Healing, Searing Light)

Even after only adding 2 points in the 3rd row, you should have opened up the 4th. Here it’s important to maximize Holy Reach out because you gain 20% extra range on 6 different healing spells. IH will need to be full as well so you can get the 15% reduction in mana cost for 5 different abilities. I skipped over Searing Light for now, but only because it increases damage from spells and isn’t a healing setup.

Row 5 (Healing Prayers, Spirit of Redemption, Spiritual Guidance)

Healing Prayers is another mana reduction, and when full it will take away 20% of the mana cost for Prayer of Healing and the Prayer of Mending. The Spirit of Redemption is a great weapon when you’re in a group or raid. It allows you to run out of health, but heal others for 15 seconds, and then die. You never know who will need more help. Obviously you need a little fight in you during your adventures and the SG will do this easily. Add all 5pts and receive a 25% increase of your Spirit to spell damage.

Row 6 (Surge of Light, Spiritual Healing)

Okay, you have two options here. I personally try to stay away from Smite and Flash Heal when I’m at the higher levels, but if you use them a lot you’ll want to fill Surge of Light. I say skip it for now and fill the Spiritual Healing. It increases the amount of health you heal by an additional 10%. Plus it opens the next level.

Row 7 (Holy Concentration, Lightwell, and Light Resilience)

One of my favorite abilities in the Holy talent pool is the Lightwell ability. It is kind of like the equivalent to a portal, and members of your group or raid can click on it to gain additional health. They will receive 801 health over a 6 second period. It’s a lot nicer then shuffling through each person. Plus, you can skip over the other two and still reach level 8.

Row 8 (Body and Soul, Empowered Healing, and Serendipity)

I like the body and soul ability, but it’s not needed right now. I pass on it when trying to keep some of the talent points, and only add 2pts to Empowered Healing. The idea here was to keep 5pts in the row, and filling up Serendipity with 3 did the trick.

Row 9 (Empowered Renew, Circle of Healing, Test of Faith)

This is probably one of the most important rows to fill up. The Circle of Healing is my 2nd favorite trick, because it can heal 5 party members at the same time. Keep in mind they have to be within a 15 yard radius of you though. Test of Faith gives you a 12% increase in healing abilities towards any friends that are below 50%. Then of course, the ER does pretty much what it says.

Row 10 (Divine Providence)

You will notice that you don’t need to fill this up with 5pts to reach row 11, like other trees. Just use 3pts. It will still give you a 6% increase on several healing abilities, but we don’t need the other 4% possible.

Row 11 (Guardian Spirit)

As a player this isn’t my favorite thing to use, unless I throw it up on a tank or something. Whoever you heal gets a 40% increase in HP. There’s a few other things as well, but if you haven’t paid attention to it before, I won’t spoil everything.

20 Points Away! Do you go Shadow, or Discipline?

Personally, when I’m healing raids I’ll use up the rest of my points on Discipline to up my survivability a tad. The last thing your group needs is their primary healer getting killed (don’t you HATE that feeling?), so I tend to err towards Discipline.

Will that in mind here’s a bonus Discipline suggestion for super dedicated raid healers who want to keep that whole dying thing to a minimum:

Unbreakable Will 5/5, Silent Resolve 3/3, Improved Power Word Fortitude 2/2, Martyrdom 2/2, Meditation 3/3, Improved Power Word Shield 3/3.

All of the effects under these talents will boost your survivability by either making you harder to kill, or by reducing threat. The combo of which should help you stay alive that extra 10 or 20 seconds you need.

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Priest Leveling Guide: Get Holy With A Shadow Spec

Jon — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 06:01:08 +0000

Class Guide: Priest Leveling Guide

How to Level Up Your Priest Faster with the Proper Talent Tree!

How many times have you been running around a city and you see the chat filled with requests?

You know, things like, “LF 5 Priests for Violet Hold” or “Need Healers for the Underbog- Will Pay.”

It would be nice to hang with everyone else, but unfortunately you are still 15 levels away from getting the chance. For the “Average Joe” it could take days, if not weeks to go from level 60 to 75, but with a little direction I can help you solve this problem.

The Priest Leveling Build:

The first thing you need to do is check your talent tree.

One of the biggest reasons players can’t level up faster is because they don’t have the right build on their toon. In order to respec your character, find the nearest Priest trainer. Keep in mind this will cost you a little money, but it will be well worth it when you’re done. So what can make the difference?

As you well know, World of Warcraft can easily distract you within the game. Whether it’s the AH, going on a raid with friends to heal, or even looking for that epic gear can take away from actually leveling up faster, but so does sticking all your talent points in the Holy area to help everyone else. In order to take down your enemies in a timely fashion and lookout for yourself, it’s important to hit up the Shadow Tree.

Shadow Tap (3/3) should be filled first since it will give you a 100% boost to your bonus after killing something that disperses experience or honor. Then you can max out your Improved Shadow Tap (2/2) in order to reach the next level of talents. Your next build should involve the Shadow Affinity (3/3), which will reduce the threat against you by 25%, and the Shadow Focus talent (3/3) that gives a 3% hit increase for Shadow Spells and decreases mana cost by 6%.

The third level is going to depend on what spells you use the most. Since I’m a big fan of the Mind Blast, the “Improved Mind Blast” (5/5) will be helpful since it takes off 2.5 seconds of your casting time when it’s maxed out. Also, your Veiled Shadows (2/2) ability is important to have since it drops the cooldown period by 6 seconds of your Fade and two minutes off your Shadowfiend.

You can read how the rest of them work on your own time, but for now let’s just make a short list of what else you should use on your Shadow Tree.

Vampiric Embrace (1/1)

Improved Vampiric Embrace (2/2)

Focused Mind (3/3)

Darkness (5/5)

Shadowform (1/1)

Shadow Power (5/5)

Misery (3/3)

Vampiric Touch (1/1)

Pain and Suffering (3/3)

Improved Shawdowform (2/2)

Twisted Faith (4/5)

Dispersion (1/1)

Now, once your Priest is equipped with these tools you should head over to the AH and bulk up on health and mana potions. Also, having plenty of First Aid bandages will be helpful as well.

The whole idea is to be prepared, just as if you’re getting ready to go on a week long hiking trip. This way you cut down on deaths, save time, and go questing for a substantial amount of time. Oh, and one other thing before I get outta here. Make sure you set your Hearthstone to the main area you’re questing! This way when you’ve completed all the quests, you can simply hearth back to the town instead of riding.

Doing all these things and many others you find along the way will allow for a strategy that works wonders. Do this and you’ll see that while you might have a different priest leveling spec than you initially wanted, the “meat” of the game starts at level 70… Lets get there first without wasting DAYS of /played time! Don’t be afraid to respec your to a leveling build, it will only help you!