Zvit
OG
Introduction:
This view into certain priest abilities n' spells is not going to teach you how to play priest, or give you all answers for which spell to use in every possible situation. Instead, it's going to look at the available spells for a priest in the 39-bracket and see what this selection of abilities can achieve. The spells listed is divided into the three different priest-trees: Discipline, Holy and Shadow.
For many this post might seem like only containing obvious points and being full of things where they're like "I knew that too lol", but I do hope it will teach some of you a few thing or two! Feel free to post suggestions/corrections/additions if you like. NOTICE: The spells mentioned in this post does NOT include talents like Inner Focus, Desperate Prayer etc.
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Dispel Magic:
One of your awesome abilities after all. Can be used offensive aswell as defensively, and that's what makes it powerful. At lvl 39 it dispels 2 harmful spells from the target or 2 beneficial spells from an enemy, meaning you can dispel a "beneficial" Hand of Freedom, Nature's Swiftness, Power Word: Shield, Sacrifice or anything beneficial for the enemy. But at the same time, it dispels 2 harmfull spells from the target, being that yourself or an allied. A good idea can be to have a selfdispel macro of some kind, to quickly escape Frost Novas, Entangling Roots, slows or removing dots without having to re-target oneself constantly. The macro could look something like this:
#showtooltip Dispel Magic
/cast [target=player] Dispel Magic
In fact, Dispel Magic has a quite useful glyph aswell, healing the target for 3% of their maximum health when dispelling - this can crit aswell, sometimes critting up to 80-100. Remember not to always dispel immediately if you know there's a second "dispellable" effect on the target incoming. Let's say you got Corruption on yourself from a warlock but meanwhile seeing a mage is casting Frostbolt on you -> Then you better wait until the FB have landed so you dispel BOTH the Corruption AND the Frostbolt-slow, instead of using 2x 124 Dispel Magic-mana for the same thing. And now remember to dispel your allied's polys, frost novas,HoJ's if it's a flag carrier or anything else - They're gonna love you for being fast reacting and helping them!
Divine Spirit:
Simple buff which can now be learned at level 31. Infuses the target with 17 spirit for 30 min.(231 mana). Buffing this one on your allied during the battle or such should only be done if you're aiming for the regen buff afterwards. But before an arenamatch or BG – buff everyone with this.
Fear Ward:
Fear Ward is quite handy due to its immunity for fear. However it only works once and it has a 3 min. cooldown. It's possible to buff on another player aswell, but if you're for example together with a rogue, you can just dispel his fears and use the Fear Ward for yourself. If you're versus another team having a priest, look carefully who have the Fear Ward-buff and dispel them before wasting your 30 sec fear-cd on a target being immune to it! - always remember to rebuff Fear Ward on yourself during a long battle, or perhaps rebuff yourself the second before a Fear lands (or a priest is incoming for you). This would also prevent the warlocks' felhunter from removing your buffs and your Fear Ward before. So even you might be immune to the first fear, he can fear you straight after, so if no LoS is available, pop shield/renew/interrupt him/tricks something.
Inner Fire:
Without Inner Fire on, I got 664 armor - with Inner Fire on together with the "Increases your armor from Inner Fire spell by 50%"-glyph and 3/3 talents in Imp Inner Fire - I'm reaching 2230 armor, which is a GREAT deal more. This major glyph makes you go from being some squishy target to a more tough one - benefitting you a lot. To see when your Inner Fire-buff isn't on you anymore, a mod like PowerAuras (/powa) can be suggested. Personally I'm having a sign when there's less than 3 charges of Inner Fire left, and then a stronger sign when it's completely gone. Quite handy. But do not underestimate the importance of keeping it up!
Levitate:
26 mana, and gaining a magical buff, this is a rather nice ability. Levitate is for sure one of the minor glyphs you should consider along with the reduced manacost Fortitude-one. Levitate works almost like Slow Fall, making you fly slowly in the air and float a few feet above the ground. This can be handy if one needs to reach a certain spot like jumping down from LM, down to GM, anything else where one usually would loose a lot of health. Also this is quite handy if you intend to catch the Sea Turtle from Northrend! Alternatively, this could be used if you keep getting dispelled, since the manacost for Dispel vs. Levitate cost is so small. So basicly you can make the opposing priest loose more mana than you, unless he looks carefully at your beneficial buffs before dispelling. Remember that you can also buff your allied with this one.
Mana Burn:
Mana Burn is really neat. If you're in arena and against another team and having time in surplus, force the other healer to LoS unless he want to get his manapool raped off. With 2/2 talent in Improved Mana Burn, it will be a 2 second cast with 30 yard range, costing 124 mana (for me). It destroys 13% of the target's mana – so no matter if it's a retripala with low mana or a holypalahealer with 3,3k+ mana, it's still 13% of the targets mana. Anyway, manaburn is useful in many situations. You can try trick a mage and going offensive with Mind Blast and Mana Burn to make him defensive or Counterspell your shadowschool, leaving your holy school open – or you can simply just burn other healers if you have the time needed.
Power Word: Fortitude:
Simply infuses the target increasing their stamina with 41 – giving them 410 more health. Buff your allied, buff them when they're running past you on mount if you have mana to spare or buff the flagcarrier for additional health. 410 extra health is a lot, especially for puggers with 1-2k health. Makes a big difference. Not much more to say else than the 2/2 talent in Improved PWF is also handy due to the 4% extra Stamina. Buff buff!
Power Word: Shield:
Absorbs 447 damage. Lasts 30 seconds. When you've shielded yourself or another, you cannot be shielded again for 15 seconds. A good idea as a discpriest can be to have an intellect staff to dispel/shield allied and burning the 400-600 extra mana before switching to SP-wep. Anyway, use shield for yourself, for your allied, for flag carriers or dieing people near you. With Soul Warding shield is not so expensive anymore, however it will soon be nerfed to 15% instead of 30% according to MMO-Champion. Shield is especially beneficial and awesome against Wound Poison, Aimed Shot or such thing. So instead of flash heal spamming a target afflicted by aimed/wound, just shield as often as you can in addition to the healing.
Shackle Undead:
No need in 39. Against death knight-pets at higher lvl for sure yes. But there's no undead-targets at 39
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Abolish Disease:
Since Death Knights isn't a possible class to play at lvl 39, the only use for Abolish Disease is versus other priests, removing the Devouring Plague-disease. Abolish Disease only costs around 100 mana so just use it straight away if you're getting doubledotted by another priest. Another thing about Abolish Disease is that it have almost the same graphic like a pvp-trinket so people without Proximo/Gladius/etc might be tricked to believe you already have wasted your trinket(Thanks to Malium).
Cure Disease:
If you have this in your actionbars – You should be ashamed! Remove it! Abolish Disease does the same for the same manacost – just better with the over time “removal”.
Flash Heal:
Funny thing is that Flash Heal is more beneficial manawise than Heal if you look at the amount healed compared to the manacost. So Flash Heal is your “main-heal”. A thing you can do if you're about to get out of combat but needs to heal allied is to use Flash Heal and spam your drink-button. Then you'll actually “heal” the target and be out of combat – drinking. Smart smart. If you're afflicted by Aimed/Wound and can wait a little moment by healing yourself till it's gone, do so and get more healing out of it. Glyph of Flash Heal is also a good opportunity – However Renew, Dispel or Inner Fire-ones might be better as I see it.
Heal:
I only use this in connection with Inner Focus when about to land a massive big heal. With 3 sec cast without any Holy-talents this is a slow heal, easily interrupted and is therefore not always the best to use. Flash Heal is better in most situations, but Heal can still be viable in combination with Inner Focus.
Holy Fire:
Awesomeness spell of doom. After Holy Fire got resigned it has developed into an awesome kind of offensive spell. Notice the low mana cost: 115 mana. 10 second cooldown and only 2 sec cast. With talents in holy in a smitespecc or a 19/11/0-specc, you even have this down at amazing 1,5 second casttime, which is just awesome. Holy Fire deals quite much damage, even more than Mind Blast as a disc-priest. But notice it's part of your holy-school so if you get silenced/interrupted/kicked in this school – it also means you cannot heal. So only use it in situations where you feel safe and sure to use it. With the low manacost, Holy Fire or Mind Blast is also your way of assistbursting enemies to help your allied.
Holy Nova:
Holy Nova is an instant cast and gives more healing than damage when used. According to the tooltip it gives 77-90 damage to enemies and around 122-141 healing to enemies within 10 yards. So only enemies/friendly players really close to you gain the benefit. Holy Nova could be used when knowing that a rogue has just vanished and is incoming for you to Sap/CS or if you're needing a final burst after Mind Blast or Holy Fire - in this case it can be used. The manacost have been reduced recently aswell a few patches ago. The only moment his ability should be spammed if you're locked within a massive amount of opponents and going to died anyway - Then Holy Nova can be your opportunity to deal out some aoe-damage like Arcane Explosion.
Lesser Heal:
2,5 sec cast, low healing and an extremely high manacost with 319 makes this spell useless at 39. Flash Heal heals for the double amount and is like 50% mana cost.
Prayer of Healing:
High manacost, long casttime and party members usually being spread, causes that I haven't found a suitable use for this ability yet. Feel free to post if you've experienced a nice situation where it was handy.
Renew:
Your hot-ability and the only one of them. In some situations you can use shield, in other renew and in other moments its better to flash heal. But if a player is having around 40-50% health but he no longer is attacked or such, it might be more mana-friendly to renew him instead of wasting mana or time for a flash heal. Anyway, when attacked, always keep up shield+renew before flash healing or such thing.
Resurrection:
You'll rarely have time for this in a BG to be honest. In an arena: Perhaps. But in general nope.
Smite:
Unless you're deep into the holy-tree or smitespecc, Smite is rarely worth using as I see it. It deals less damage than both Mind Blast and Holy Fire, so if you're having HF or MB-cooldown ready - use them first. After the 2x dots, HF and MB-burst, you can for sure put in a single Smite or two for additional burst. But with less casttime on Holy Fire and more damage, it would be a shame to start out with a Smite first.
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Devouring Plague:
Nasty dot. Very useful on rogues to prevent restealthing. Deals 400 shadow damage over 24 sec but costs 223 mana. 15% of the damage dealt also heals the caster – so this is a way of gaining a little health aswell. It's ready each 24 second and as mentioned lasting 24 sec, but spamming it all the time will run you oom very quickly. This one can be used in combination with Inner Focus too early in a match due to its high manacost even it cannot crit – it's still a good thing to fire in. In addition, DP+SWP is quite effective as “doubledot” to prevent enemies bandaging.
Fade:
Once used this by mistake as lvl 70 priest against a hunter who made Snake Traps, and the Snakes went passive for some odd reason. Well anyway – this won't make pets run to their owner or do anything useful. It's just waste of mana.
Mind Blast:
1,5 sec cast – 8 sec cooldown and blasts the target for 225 to 239 damage. In combination with Holy Fire, this is your opportunity to be offensive, assistburst and deal some damage. Mind Blast is rather fast aswell so it's a good way of dishing out some damage. And well - it's part of your shadowschool just like manaburn, so it cannot lock down your healing-school and can therefore trick your opponents to interrupt your shadowschool.
Mind Control:
This ability is a whole lot of fun, and one of the funny reasons to roll a priest. It controls your target, but its duration isn't that reliable in pvp. Situations it could be used would be places with a lot of height, let's say the bridge in Blade Edge's Mountains, the Lumber Mill or near Goldmine in Arathi Basin (for example throwing people from near BS down to GM) or perhaps the flagroom in WSG? Alternatively this ability can be used as a CC, preventing a heal or such a thing. An idea for total CC could be using Tidal Charm-trinket 3 sec stun on an incoming heal, followed by a Mind Control. However, Mind Control is not for every situation. The casttime is 3 second and it's part of the Shadow-school, so luckily you cannot get your holytree locked by using it. Perhaps you can even trick a few mages to Counterspell you? Anyway, only use it if you're in surplus and having the needed time for it - Starting to use MC when your allied needs your help is a bad and unthought choice!
Mind Soothe:
"Soothes the target, reducing the range at which it will attack you by 10 yards. Only affects Humanoid targets. Lasts 15 sec." Even this might sound completely useless, I've found out a minor trick I'm going to reveal now: It can stop the target from drinking! Lets say you're in a duel and a shaman is sitting and drinking. From a 40 yard range you can actually prevent him from drinking by using the Mind Soothe as he sits down. It doesn't put him in combat, it doesn't prevent him from drinking the moment after you've "pushed him" up either, but he will for sure get confused! If Mind Soothe would affect Grounding Totems, making them disappear, that could be a little way of using it aswell, but I haven't tested it yet. So if you want to prevent mages to drink in arena or anyone else drinking - throw in a Mind Soothe instead of having to wand/damage them to stop em!
Mind Vision:
Many would consider this ability completely useless in PvP, however there should be a few uses. If you're having troubled finding an enemy you're actually having targettted, a quick Mind Vision shows his location. So if an enemy have found a sneaky place to hide the flag, you're basicly going to know his location aswell!
Psychic Scream:
This is your only true CC beside Mind Control and trinkets. Ready each 30 sec and requires 119 mana. A good thing is to get yourself some hit to not have your Fears and Mana Burns miss too much – so getting +10 hit/crit on boots, +9 hit shoulders from SM or +15 hit gloves is a good idea. If possible, try to get as many as possible caught into your fear so CC as many as possible. Remember undeads have WotF, so prepare your “next” move when you fear immediately.
Shadow Protection:
279 mana and increases target's resistance to Shadow spells by 30 for 10 min. And actually, 30 is quite a lot. Almost like wearing 2-3 pieces of shadow-res gear. So giving your allied this will make them thankful and even more resistant against Fear, Psychic Scream, Shadowbolt, Corruption, SWP etc. Very useful buff all in all.
Shadow Word: Pain:
330 damage over 18 sec. A little costy but very important. Remember NOT to dot CC'ed targets unless it will benefit the situation. Dotting a CC'ed warrior an allied mage have just polyed will just make him pissed. Dotting rogues with Devouring Plague or SWP is on the opposite quite nice, making them run around in the midfield without being able to bandage or escape that easily!
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Hope it was worth reading for people being all new to priest or anyone else!
/Zvit
