Priests
From TCWiki
Priests are one of the classes in World of Warcraft. The primary purpose of a priest is to heal and keep party members alive. There are additional support roles or damage dealing roles that a priest can fulfill.
Contents |
Tenebrae Cor Priests
Level 80 Mains
Level 70+ Alts
Inactive/Retired
Healing
Most of the spells on a priest are geared towards healings. Healing spells fall into several types:
- Direct Heal
- Heal Over Time (hots)
- Mass Heal
As your character increases in level, for direct heals you will mainly rely on Greater Heal and Flash Heal. Greater Heals ("gheal") will allow 85.7% of your bonus heal to be applied while Flash Heal will only allow 42.9% of your bonus heal to be applied. While more bonus is better since it will reduce the amount of mana consumed, gheal often takes too long when a monster is doing heavy damage to a character. You will find that Flash Heal is better when your target's health is less than half and/or when it is dropping rapidly.
The only heal over time spell available to a priest is Renew. It applies 100% of your bonus heal to the target.
Mass healing is arguably the greatest trait for a priest. No other class comes close in this category. A typical healing priest has Prayer of Healing (28.6% of bonus) which will heal party members close enough for a great deal of health. There is also Holy Nova but it's range is very small, not mana efficient, and does not heal a great deal. For holy specialized priests, there is Circle of Healing (14.3% of bonus), but it is limited to a radius of 15 yards of the target healed and also does not heal for a lot. The major advantage of Circle of Healing is that it is an instant cast spell. A shadow priest can use Vampiric Embrace to heal the entire party, however, the amount healed is in smaller increments over time since it requires the priest to be causing damage to heal.
The last major healing spell does not really fit in any of the categories. Prayer of Mending will heal the target after it has taken damage and then jumps to the next player within 20 yards who has the lowest percentage of health. It is highly efficient as a healing spell but only when it lands on someone who is taking damage. The best use is where you have a warrior and rogue who are at the mob and they are getting cleaved. The spell will bounce back and forth and fill their life very quickly. The threat on this spell works differently as well. The threat only comes from the person who triggers the spell and not from the priest who casts it. It is a good opening heal spell but it often bounces back to the healer if within range. To get it off yourself, cast Shadow Word: Death. It will cause damage to yourself and cause it to trigger, heal yourself, and bounce to another target.
Support
Sometimes it is useful to have a second healer to heal the rest of the party. You'll find this most common in raids. One healer will be the main tank healer while the other one heals the rest of the team or takes over when the main healer needs a break or is incapacitated. There are other support roles that a priest can provide.
Buffs
The most common buff a priest will cast is a Power Word: Fortitude buff on the group to increase the maximum HP considerably. All priests can also cast Prayer of Shadow Resistance on the entire party. The last commonn buff is restricted to priests who devote enough points in the Discipline talent tree to learn Spirit Power.
Crowd Control
Although most players are not aware, a priest has a few tricks up their sleeves when it comes to crowd control. The best one is Shackle Undead which... shackles an undead target. Several high end dungeons (Scholomance, Stratholme, Karazhan) feature undead monsters.
Priests can also AOE fear mobs near them, however, this is usually shunned since the mobs can easily run into other groups and eventually wipe the team. Fearing should only be done in cleared room and when you have high confidence that it will not draw more enemies to you. It takes much experience to know when to fear and when not to fear.
An interesting sort of control that a priest has is Fade. With Fade, you are removed from the aggro list temporarily and then put back at the same position you were last at when Fade... fades. The most common technique is to build up a lot of aggro by healing or doing damage to a mob that has already taken damage. As it approaches you, you Fade and let it go back to the next highest on the mob's list. This technique is highly DISCOURAGED in heroic or raid dungeons. In those types of dungeons, one hit is all they need to kill a priest.
As an aside, an interesting technique for Fade is to pre-Fade before you cast any spells. This effectively lets you open with as much healing or damage as you want in a party while the Fade is active. The drawback is that if you are placed on the aggro list after the Fade is gone, you will have burned up your Fade and the tanks have to pick up everything that may come to you.
And the last type of control is Mind Control. This has a very limited range but can be useful if the mob has a great spell that can aid the party. This should only be used if your tank is confident he can last the battle with little to no heals and can pull off the mind controlled mob after the spell is gone, or your team has a secondary healer.
Shadow Priest Abilities
Vampiric Embrace for heals and Vampiric Touch for mana. Silence.
Damage
The most common priest is a shadow priest simply because they can do a great deal of damage very quickly. Sometimes they are jokingly called "Shadow Mages" for this reason.
To be added.
Category 1 Raiding Requirements
Please refer to TC Forums for the LOI associated with our category 1 raiders
Holy/Disc Spec (healing)
Stats (Holy/Disc Specced)
- 7K HP
- 9K MP
- 1500 +healing
- 350 mana regen / 180 mana regen while casting
Recommended Talents (Healing Specced)
- 5 points in silent resolve (4/8/12/16/20% reduction in threat)
- 3 points in meditation (5/10/15% mana regen while casting)
Holy/Disc Gear Suggestion
Weapons
- Shard of the Virtuous (Karazhan/Maiden)
- Gavel of Pure Light (Shaatar/Exalted)
Armor
- Primal Mooncloth Set (Crafted, required Mooncloth specialisation)
- Whitemend Set (Crafted)
Gems
- Royal Nightseye (red/blue)
- Royal Shadow Draenite (red/blue)
- Dazzling Deep Peridot (blue/yellow)
- Dazzling Talasite (blue/yellow)
- Luminous Flame Spessarite (red/yellow)
- Luminous Noble Topaz (red/yellow)
- Gemming gear with blue +stam gems can be a good idea
Shadow Spec (DPS)
Stats (dps/shadow specced)
- 8K HP
- 9K MP
- 850 +shadow damage
- 15% total hit (Shadow Focus can give 10%)
Required Talents (dps/shadow specced)
- Vampiric touch
Recommended Talents (dps/shadow specced)
- shadow affinity 8%/16%/25%
Shadow Gear Suggestion
Very good site and write up on shadow gear http://shadowpriest.com/viewtopic.php?t=6594
Alternate Gear Set
Not part of this review, it will make the Q2 2008 requirements that shadow priests have a healing gear set with ~1400 +healing and a decent amount of MP5.
Gear
+heal, +int, +spirit, +sta
Spirit is good; even better with spirit talents.
To be added.
Resist Armor
Talent Builds
Level 70 Mains
Level 70 Alts
Add-Ons
Since the default game user interface only shows a limited amount of buffs and debuffs on party or raid members, it is advised to get a mod to increase the number of buff/debuff icons shown. We highly recommend installing the latest version of CT_Mod and in particular the CT_PartyBuff mod.
There are other mods that may aid you on healing group members or resurrecting fallen characters. A popular useful modification is one that declares who you are healing or resurrecting. This can save party members from panicking or double resurrection which eats a lot of down time.
Priests Addons
Required for Raids
- Raid Management tools (eg CT Core with RaidAssist, ora2)
- Strongly suggest UI replacement/enchancement (x-perl, pitbull, CTCore/RA)
- Ventrilo
Recommended for Raids
- Threat Management (Omen, KLHThreatMeter is being phased out)
- DamageMeters (recommended to monitor overhealing), do not post results, just use for personal improvement
- ScrollingCombatText (recommended to monitor overhealing)
- Bigwigs (boss calls in direct and timer management on your screen)
Other healing related stuff
- Chronometer (all timers on spell cast, hot, dot, etc)
- Sacredbuff (all your buffs on one addon, free up like over 10 bar slot)
General Mods
- Cartographer
- Littlewigs (same as bigwigs but for 5 man instances)
- Mobinfo2 (Gives you stats on mobs, resists, hp, class, etc)
- Outfitter, Itemrack (allow you to change gear, lets say dps/stam/healing with one click or key)
Macros
Here's the adapted macro for using a focus target to shackle
/clearfocus [modifier:shift] /clearfocus [target=focus,dead] /clearfocus [target=focus,noexists] /focus [target=focus,noexists] /cast [target=focus] Shackle Undead(Rank 3) /stopmacro
Additional Information
- Lux et Umbra: a PvE Priest Handbook by Nightshroud (Alleria) - Much of the information comes from this WoW priest forum post.
