Shockadingle
Legend
Contents:
Glossary of terminology:
Who I be:
The Short Version(of the guide): The End.
The Long Version(of the guide):
Basics:
Keybinds
Priorities
Raid boxes
More advanced stuff:
Gear
Weapons
Trinkets
Enchants
Strategy: The fun Stuff: How to play:
Spells(Defense)
Spells(Attack!!)
Partners for 2v2:
Dear Reader:
Glossary of terminology:
Priest: Discipline Priest, the best lvl 20 class.
SWP: Shadow Word: Pain
PWS: Power word: Shield
dmg: damage.
f2p: free to play
CC: Crowd Control
HoJ: Hammer of Justice
FoF: Fists of Fury
Other important acronyms you may find useful for expressing yourself about life:
GISC: Greasysorrow is so cool.
GITUCC: Greasysorrow is the Uncaused Cause.
ILGSM: I love Greasysorrow so much.
IWTHGB: I want to have Greasysorrow's babies.
IMTAG: I masturbated thinking about Greasysorrow.
GITGK: Greasysorrow is the God-King.
GITPK: Greasysorrow is the Philosopher-King.
GIASFN: Greasysorrow is a sexy female night elf.
GIEIAT: Greasysorrow is everywhere, in all things.
FTGFTKNWTD: Forgive them, Greasysorrow, for they know not what they do.
GGWHTFM: Greasysorrow, Greasysorrow, why hast thou forsaken me? (If I forget to heal you. Sorry about that.)
Who I be: meh, who cares, right? I know. But, so you know I'm writing from actual experience and not "theorycrafting," I've played about 1500 2v2 arena matches at lvl 20 on my current character, and at the moment of writing this I am the #1 rank lvl 20 priest in the US on XPOFF, with a rating of 2049, queuing with Dre, lvl 20 warrior. Aww yeeah! Snap into a Slim Jim.
I have played at lvl 20: Holy paladin, Priest, Hunter, Rogue, Prot warrior, Moonkin, WW monk, BM monk, Resto druid, and Ret paladin.
I've been well known(and feared, and admired, and loved, and worshiped, [e'rybody wants to be like me{who can blame them?}]) in the f2p bracket since the beginning on many characters. I'm pretty important. I'm basically like a god. Like I'm kind of a big deal?
I think I covered everything there. So, what I mean to say is, you should listen to me and bow down. Prostrate thyself at my feet and grovel. For I have come among thee to dispense my wisdom.
Well, that went from humble to narcissist with disturbing alacrity. But you have to understand, there's a lot to cover there. It would take too long to try to subtly hint at my amazing greatness.
After all, you're reading this guide because you want to be more like me, and who can blame you for that?
The Short Version: Keep SWP on stealthies(and everybody else), heal with Flash heal/shield, Blow shit up with penance, Holy Fire. When you get spell locked, use that time to renew SWP on everything, or vanish with Spectral Guise if you need to. Use Spectral Guise and run away when a Feral Druid attacking you uses Tiger's Fury. Spam those heals. Press that damage. Heals. Damage. Heals. Damage. Heals. Damage. Spectral Guise and run away! Heals. Damage. Heals. Damage.
You win! Easy.
The Long Version:
WoW is not very well class-balanced at level 20, and Discipline Priest is the best.
Disc is overpowered with both high damage and high healing, and it's easy to play. But that doesn't mean there isn't a lot to learn to maximize your success.
*disclaimer: I wrote this mostly with 2v2 arena in mind, and tried to mention differences for battleground situations. But I don't know much about 3v3. Still, most of the principles are universal for priests in all situations. Also, I can't cover everything. Finer points of strategy take too long to explain. (Also you probably wouldn't understand, because, you know, you're not Greasysorrow.)
Basics
Keybinds.
Pick 3 adjacent keys (Q,W,E, or W,E,R, for example) for Strafe Left, Move Forward, and Strafe Right, respectively.
Assign all your other ability keys around those 3 movement keys, so you don't have to stretch your hand too far.
*Note to bear in mind: Assign Holy Nova and Shadow Word: Pain to keys that you can hit with one finger while holding any one of the 3 movement keys with another finger, because you want to be able to spam those while moving. (I use Q,W,E to move and 2,3, for SWP and Holy Nova.)
Priorities
You're a healer.
Priority #1: Keep everybody on your team alive.
Priority #2: Help them kill, kill, maim the bad guys.
Note: Even though your first priority is healing, you can put out a much damage as pure damage classes, because priests are overpowered. Your goal, therefore, is to maximize your damage output without letting the good guys die.
Here's how you maximize your damage output: First, keep SWP on everything that moves, and some things that don't. Second, use Holy Fire and offensive Penance on cooldown.
Raid boxes: Very important. In arena skirmishes and war games, you will automatically see your and your allies raid box on the left hand side of the screen. You can click on those boxes to select the endangered targets for heals.
However, in battlegrounds, if they are not already visible, you will need to click the little arrow on the middle of the left side of the screen to bring up the raid boxes. You can't play a healer without the raid boxes.
Note 1: For battlegrounds, make sure the Range indicator is selected (I don't remember if it's on that pullout menu or in the main game settings) so you can see which allied targets are in range of you.
Note 2: Also, on the mini-map on the top right, select "show target location" so that when you select a friendly target who is out of range, you can see which way you need to move to get in range to heal them. (This will also help you located your Flag Carrier in Warsong Gulch.)
More advanced stuff:
Gear: I'm not going to go over most of the gear, but you can look up my character, Greasysorrow on the bnet armory and copy her gear.
But I will mention:
Weapon: If you are playing without enchants, the Heirloom staff with haste is the best weapon.
If you are Playing with enchants, the 1-hand mace and off-hand book with haste are best.
Trinkets: For most situations, use the PvP CC-escape trinket and the emergency 15% bonus health trinket for your faction. These are both heirlooms.
Note: keep an heirloom intellect trinket or 2 in your bags for special circumstances.
Enchants: Hopefully there is another guide for all the specific enchants, because I don't have that information. However, the general principle to follow is this: Get as much stamina and intellect as you can.
For arena, I would actually prioritize stamina over intellect, because you will be the enemy's target, and will mostly die to burst damage not to lack of healing power.
For battlegrounds, I would prioritize intellect for more healing power and damage.
On your Necklace, cloak, ring, ring and weapon, there are 2 ways to go:
Haste and elemental force.
Versatility and spell power.
Most priests use Haste and elemental force for more damage and faster heals.
I use versatility and spell power, mainly for more defense against burst, like Ferocious bite or Fists of Fury. The goal here is to hopefully be able to sit in the full FoF or paladin's HoJ without trinketing, since the CC-trinket is on a 2 minute cooldown, and to take a druid's Ferocious Bite without dying.
In Arena, you will almost always be the enemy's kill target, so you need to be hard to kill.
Note: Even if you use Versatility/spell power as I do, also keep an elemental force weapon in your bags for certain situations. It's usually better for dueling and 1v1 Arena situations(You can switch weapons inside the arena.)
Strategy: The fun stuff: How to play:
This means, for example, in a 2v2 arena match, you can keep your partner targeted, and just hit SWP, Holy Fire, Smite to add damage to his target without your having to switch targets. (You'll still have to switch to use penance offensively or it will just heal your partner.)
Tip: Math-y stuff: In a pvp game with significant healing (like wow) what matters in trying to secure a kill is not so much your damage vs the enemy's health pool. Rather its is about your damage to a target vs the healing received by the target. You can try to "burst" the target down by doing all of his health in damage during a time in which he doesn't receive any healing. Or you can try to do more damage over time than he can receive healing over time. At lvl 20 WoW, the healing is so strong relative to the damage that the second option is difficult to achieve until the Fatigue mechanic sets in within the arena, or without focusing the healer in a battleground.
One effect of this dynamic, as pertains to Disc Priests, is as follows: People often think feral druids, for example are overpowered, because they can kill a player from full health with one ability. But in truth, their damage is balanced closely enough with player health such that they can BARELY do that. This means that a little extra stamina or versatility will very often make the difference between death and surviving with 1-5% health. As a priest, because the healing is so high relative to damage, surviving a ferocious bite or Fists of Fury or Hammer of Justice with 1-5% health left usually means surviving to heal back to full health. Thus, although reduction to damage taken from enchanting versatility on your gear is only about 5%, it could potentially make you survive a huge percentage of burst attempts upon you, because: the MARGIN of enemy burst vs your health is often only about 5% if you keep yourself topped off. Extra stamina, like versatility, accomplishes the same effect.
(As a Disc priest, to beat a skilled Retribution paladin(like my friend Wayze) in a duel, for example, you will need to survive 3-6 Hammers of Justice without using your trinket before you can make the paladin run out of mana. That may not be possible with a smaller effective health pool.)
Tip: Don't use your trinket to get out of CC unless you need to. Otherwise it will be on cooldown when you really need it. For example: When a feral druid opens on me with Rake, I wait a couple of seconds to see how much damage he is doing and if he uses Tiger's Fury. If he takes 2 seconds to break through my PW:Shield, then I know he is just building combo points for later and I don't trinket the rake, because I'll be able to (Spectral Guise if I need to, and) heal back to full. It's a gamble. Occasionally I do die trying to save my trinket. But occasionally, having saved my trinket saves me from certain death. Judging when to use it vs when to save it is a skill that takes time and experience to improve.
Partners for 2v2:
Because Disc Priests are so overpowered, and do both damage and healing, they can work well with almost any partner. Some of the best are:
Priest/warrior: Extreme pressure comp. There's not a really great bust kill potential, but you beat everything over time if you can survive long enough. Priest damage on top of the warrior's damage and Grievous Wounds debuff grinds enemy teams down pretty brutally.
Priest/Wind Walker: This is a frequent burst kill comp. It's not so much about constant pressure as it is about lining up the priest's burst with the wind walker's Fists of Fury stun burst to get a kill. You can do it every 25 seconds, and pvp trinkets have a 2 minute cooldown. The currently #1 ranked US player is a wind walker monk who, I was told, was queuing with a priest.
Priest/Ret paladin: I used to do this. It is a hyprid comp somewhere between the warrior/wind walker. You get a HoJ stun ever 1 minute to focus kill somebody(as opposed to the wind walker's 25 seconds). You don't get nearly the pressure of a warrior. BUT, you get great off-heals which makes your team very hard to kill. So it's about keeping pressure up and bursting during the HoJ.
Priest/Rogue: I mention this only because I think BoP and Original were running this. Kudos to them, because I don't think it's all that strong a comp, but they made it work somehow. Rogues at lvl 20 just don't have that much to offer. It's about lining up the priest's burst with the rogue's kick, and rogue peeling with crippling poison and saps, which is tricky.
Priest/BM: This is also a defensive pressure comp. It's like priest/warrior, but not as good because the monk doesn't have Grievous Wounds. Monk can peel with slows, like the warrior, and does good dmg like the warrior, has great mobility like the warrior; but his weak off-healing doesn't make up for the loss of Grievous wounds.
Priest/Priest: I know. People think this is lame, and considering how OP priests are, I understand. But I think it definitely loses against priest/warrior, at least, for example. I highly doubt Dre and I could lose to a Disc/Disc team. Still it is a strong, very defensive comp. Similar to Priest/Warrior, in that it is about winning over time with pressure, less pressure, but much safer. I have tried it, and I believe it is a top comp with good communication, and it's fucking fun and hilarious.
Communication is particularly vital for this comp, because it's all about efficiency. And to maximize efficiency without dying, you have to know who is healing and who is casting damage, at each moment. If you both spam heals to counter enemy pressure, you'll over-heal a lot and lose your own pressure. If you both to dmg at the same time thinking the other one is covering the heals, you die. You also have to work out who uses PW:S in which situation, etc, etc. I'd love to try this competitively.
I also mention it because I notice that 3 out of 4 of the top European lvl 20s are Priests, which suggest they likely either got there by queuing with 29s or as Priest/Priest, though those are not the only possibilities.
Priest/Mage: I hate this comp, because I can't put SWP on everything as I'm used to. But it is a top comp, and others are good at it. It's quite different from the others in that the priest does most of the damage. The mage is just there to CC.
I faced this comp once in a tournament. I was with a ret paladin. Every time he tried to attack, I'd get CC'd and they'd try to kill my partner. But we were ablle to counter it by having the ret pally sit back by a pillar and be my healer while I ran out and did all the damage. That way, if they cc me, he can hide behind the pillar, and if they cc him, they can't kill me cuz I'm a priest. This only works with an off-healer though, like a ret pally or shaman.
I have not found a way to reliably avoid the CC of a good mage, so your partner has to have some defensive abilities to survive the cc chain or interrupts to interrupt the cc chain. And most of the match is one long cc chain, so it's a pain in the ass.
Dear Reader:
Say lots of nice things about me in the comments. Don't say anything mean. That would hurt my feelings, for I am only a little elf girl, with bunny ears and large eyes. I'm very sensitive. Also, if you see me in the arena, please throw the match so I can have a high rating. Ty, Ty so much. Ty so much.
Glossary of terminology:
Who I be:
The Short Version(of the guide): The End.
The Long Version(of the guide):
Basics:
Keybinds
Priorities
Raid boxes
More advanced stuff:
Gear
Weapons
Trinkets
Enchants
Strategy: The fun Stuff: How to play:
Spells(Defense)
Spells(Attack!!)
Partners for 2v2:
Dear Reader:
Glossary of terminology:
Priest: Discipline Priest, the best lvl 20 class.
SWP: Shadow Word: Pain
PWS: Power word: Shield
dmg: damage.
f2p: free to play
CC: Crowd Control
HoJ: Hammer of Justice
FoF: Fists of Fury
Other important acronyms you may find useful for expressing yourself about life:
GISC: Greasysorrow is so cool.
GITUCC: Greasysorrow is the Uncaused Cause.
ILGSM: I love Greasysorrow so much.
IWTHGB: I want to have Greasysorrow's babies.
IMTAG: I masturbated thinking about Greasysorrow.
GITGK: Greasysorrow is the God-King.
GITPK: Greasysorrow is the Philosopher-King.
GIASFN: Greasysorrow is a sexy female night elf.
GIEIAT: Greasysorrow is everywhere, in all things.
FTGFTKNWTD: Forgive them, Greasysorrow, for they know not what they do.
GGWHTFM: Greasysorrow, Greasysorrow, why hast thou forsaken me? (If I forget to heal you. Sorry about that.)
Who I be: meh, who cares, right? I know. But, so you know I'm writing from actual experience and not "theorycrafting," I've played about 1500 2v2 arena matches at lvl 20 on my current character, and at the moment of writing this I am the #1 rank lvl 20 priest in the US on XPOFF, with a rating of 2049, queuing with Dre, lvl 20 warrior. Aww yeeah! Snap into a Slim Jim.
I have played at lvl 20: Holy paladin, Priest, Hunter, Rogue, Prot warrior, Moonkin, WW monk, BM monk, Resto druid, and Ret paladin.
I've been well known(and feared, and admired, and loved, and worshiped, [e'rybody wants to be like me{who can blame them?}]) in the f2p bracket since the beginning on many characters. I'm pretty important. I'm basically like a god. Like I'm kind of a big deal?
I think I covered everything there. So, what I mean to say is, you should listen to me and bow down. Prostrate thyself at my feet and grovel. For I have come among thee to dispense my wisdom.
Well, that went from humble to narcissist with disturbing alacrity. But you have to understand, there's a lot to cover there. It would take too long to try to subtly hint at my amazing greatness.
After all, you're reading this guide because you want to be more like me, and who can blame you for that?
The Short Version: Keep SWP on stealthies(and everybody else), heal with Flash heal/shield, Blow shit up with penance, Holy Fire. When you get spell locked, use that time to renew SWP on everything, or vanish with Spectral Guise if you need to. Use Spectral Guise and run away when a Feral Druid attacking you uses Tiger's Fury. Spam those heals. Press that damage. Heals. Damage. Heals. Damage. Heals. Damage. Spectral Guise and run away! Heals. Damage. Heals. Damage.
You win! Easy.
The Long Version:
WoW is not very well class-balanced at level 20, and Discipline Priest is the best.
Disc is overpowered with both high damage and high healing, and it's easy to play. But that doesn't mean there isn't a lot to learn to maximize your success.
*disclaimer: I wrote this mostly with 2v2 arena in mind, and tried to mention differences for battleground situations. But I don't know much about 3v3. Still, most of the principles are universal for priests in all situations. Also, I can't cover everything. Finer points of strategy take too long to explain. (Also you probably wouldn't understand, because, you know, you're not Greasysorrow.)
Basics
Keybinds.
Pick 3 adjacent keys (Q,W,E, or W,E,R, for example) for Strafe Left, Move Forward, and Strafe Right, respectively.
Assign all your other ability keys around those 3 movement keys, so you don't have to stretch your hand too far.
*Note to bear in mind: Assign Holy Nova and Shadow Word: Pain to keys that you can hit with one finger while holding any one of the 3 movement keys with another finger, because you want to be able to spam those while moving. (I use Q,W,E to move and 2,3, for SWP and Holy Nova.)
Priorities
You're a healer.
Priority #1: Keep everybody on your team alive.
Priority #2: Help them kill, kill, maim the bad guys.
Note: Even though your first priority is healing, you can put out a much damage as pure damage classes, because priests are overpowered. Your goal, therefore, is to maximize your damage output without letting the good guys die.
Here's how you maximize your damage output: First, keep SWP on everything that moves, and some things that don't. Second, use Holy Fire and offensive Penance on cooldown.
Raid boxes: Very important. In arena skirmishes and war games, you will automatically see your and your allies raid box on the left hand side of the screen. You can click on those boxes to select the endangered targets for heals.
However, in battlegrounds, if they are not already visible, you will need to click the little arrow on the middle of the left side of the screen to bring up the raid boxes. You can't play a healer without the raid boxes.
Note 1: For battlegrounds, make sure the Range indicator is selected (I don't remember if it's on that pullout menu or in the main game settings) so you can see which allied targets are in range of you.
Note 2: Also, on the mini-map on the top right, select "show target location" so that when you select a friendly target who is out of range, you can see which way you need to move to get in range to heal them. (This will also help you located your Flag Carrier in Warsong Gulch.)
More advanced stuff:
Gear: I'm not going to go over most of the gear, but you can look up my character, Greasysorrow on the bnet armory and copy her gear.
But I will mention:
Weapon: If you are playing without enchants, the Heirloom staff with haste is the best weapon.
If you are Playing with enchants, the 1-hand mace and off-hand book with haste are best.
Trinkets: For most situations, use the PvP CC-escape trinket and the emergency 15% bonus health trinket for your faction. These are both heirlooms.
Note: keep an heirloom intellect trinket or 2 in your bags for special circumstances.
Enchants: Hopefully there is another guide for all the specific enchants, because I don't have that information. However, the general principle to follow is this: Get as much stamina and intellect as you can.
For arena, I would actually prioritize stamina over intellect, because you will be the enemy's target, and will mostly die to burst damage not to lack of healing power.
For battlegrounds, I would prioritize intellect for more healing power and damage.
On your Necklace, cloak, ring, ring and weapon, there are 2 ways to go:
Haste and elemental force.
Versatility and spell power.
Most priests use Haste and elemental force for more damage and faster heals.
I use versatility and spell power, mainly for more defense against burst, like Ferocious bite or Fists of Fury. The goal here is to hopefully be able to sit in the full FoF or paladin's HoJ without trinketing, since the CC-trinket is on a 2 minute cooldown, and to take a druid's Ferocious Bite without dying.
In Arena, you will almost always be the enemy's kill target, so you need to be hard to kill.
Note: Even if you use Versatility/spell power as I do, also keep an elemental force weapon in your bags for certain situations. It's usually better for dueling and 1v1 Arena situations(You can switch weapons inside the arena.)
Strategy: The fun stuff: How to play:
Spells(Defense):
Flash Heal: Your main heal.
Power Word: Shield:
Your other heal. This has no cooldown to cast, but has a 12 second cooldown for being placed on each character. The cooldown per character puts a debuff on the character called "weakened soul"(I think). Get in the habit of keeping track of that debuff on everybody so you can re-new PW:S as soon as possible. Generally, try to keep PW:S on everybody all the time.
Penance: Emergency heal. Use this spell to deal damage, never for healing, unless it is an emergency.
Holly Nova: Use this to try to find enemies who are stealthed, like rogues and druids, before they can use their stealth abilities on you.
Spells(Attack!!):
Shadow Word: Pain(SWP): This is your most efficient damage spell. It's a DoT, so it does it's damage slowly over time, not in a burst. However it is the highest damage per cast time(1.5 second global cooldown) by far. Keep SWP on as many enemy targets as possible all the time.
Note: Very important: When rogues or druids re-stealth, the first tick of damage they take, including from DoTs like SWP will pull them back out of stealth. Thus it is one of your highest priorities as a priest to keep SWP on all rogues and druids. (Sorry rogues/druids, I know you hate that.)
Holy Fire: Use it as often as you can.
Penance: Use it as often as you can to deal damage. Can be used for healing instead in an emergency.
Smite: Not often worth using, but sometimes. Use it to add some extra damage when SWP is already on everything, Penance, and Holy fire are on cooldown, All allies are healed up to safe health levels, and you don't need to move to a more preferable position. Only when all of those conditions are met.
Note: if all of those conditions are met except the last one, spam SWP on an enemy while adjusting your position, instead of using smite.
Tip: You can put your damage-only spells into macros that will cast them at your target if it is an enemy(same as without a macro) BUT will cast them at your "target's target" if your target is friendly, but his target is an enemy.Flash Heal: Your main heal.
Power Word: Shield:
Your other heal. This has no cooldown to cast, but has a 12 second cooldown for being placed on each character. The cooldown per character puts a debuff on the character called "weakened soul"(I think). Get in the habit of keeping track of that debuff on everybody so you can re-new PW:S as soon as possible. Generally, try to keep PW:S on everybody all the time.
Penance: Emergency heal. Use this spell to deal damage, never for healing, unless it is an emergency.
Holly Nova: Use this to try to find enemies who are stealthed, like rogues and druids, before they can use their stealth abilities on you.
Spells(Attack!!):
Shadow Word: Pain(SWP): This is your most efficient damage spell. It's a DoT, so it does it's damage slowly over time, not in a burst. However it is the highest damage per cast time(1.5 second global cooldown) by far. Keep SWP on as many enemy targets as possible all the time.
Note: Very important: When rogues or druids re-stealth, the first tick of damage they take, including from DoTs like SWP will pull them back out of stealth. Thus it is one of your highest priorities as a priest to keep SWP on all rogues and druids. (Sorry rogues/druids, I know you hate that.)
Holy Fire: Use it as often as you can.
Penance: Use it as often as you can to deal damage. Can be used for healing instead in an emergency.
Smite: Not often worth using, but sometimes. Use it to add some extra damage when SWP is already on everything, Penance, and Holy fire are on cooldown, All allies are healed up to safe health levels, and you don't need to move to a more preferable position. Only when all of those conditions are met.
Note: if all of those conditions are met except the last one, spam SWP on an enemy while adjusting your position, instead of using smite.
This means, for example, in a 2v2 arena match, you can keep your partner targeted, and just hit SWP, Holy Fire, Smite to add damage to his target without your having to switch targets. (You'll still have to switch to use penance offensively or it will just heal your partner.)
Tip: Math-y stuff: In a pvp game with significant healing (like wow) what matters in trying to secure a kill is not so much your damage vs the enemy's health pool. Rather its is about your damage to a target vs the healing received by the target. You can try to "burst" the target down by doing all of his health in damage during a time in which he doesn't receive any healing. Or you can try to do more damage over time than he can receive healing over time. At lvl 20 WoW, the healing is so strong relative to the damage that the second option is difficult to achieve until the Fatigue mechanic sets in within the arena, or without focusing the healer in a battleground.
One effect of this dynamic, as pertains to Disc Priests, is as follows: People often think feral druids, for example are overpowered, because they can kill a player from full health with one ability. But in truth, their damage is balanced closely enough with player health such that they can BARELY do that. This means that a little extra stamina or versatility will very often make the difference between death and surviving with 1-5% health. As a priest, because the healing is so high relative to damage, surviving a ferocious bite or Fists of Fury or Hammer of Justice with 1-5% health left usually means surviving to heal back to full health. Thus, although reduction to damage taken from enchanting versatility on your gear is only about 5%, it could potentially make you survive a huge percentage of burst attempts upon you, because: the MARGIN of enemy burst vs your health is often only about 5% if you keep yourself topped off. Extra stamina, like versatility, accomplishes the same effect.
(As a Disc priest, to beat a skilled Retribution paladin(like my friend Wayze) in a duel, for example, you will need to survive 3-6 Hammers of Justice without using your trinket before you can make the paladin run out of mana. That may not be possible with a smaller effective health pool.)
Tip: Don't use your trinket to get out of CC unless you need to. Otherwise it will be on cooldown when you really need it. For example: When a feral druid opens on me with Rake, I wait a couple of seconds to see how much damage he is doing and if he uses Tiger's Fury. If he takes 2 seconds to break through my PW:Shield, then I know he is just building combo points for later and I don't trinket the rake, because I'll be able to (Spectral Guise if I need to, and) heal back to full. It's a gamble. Occasionally I do die trying to save my trinket. But occasionally, having saved my trinket saves me from certain death. Judging when to use it vs when to save it is a skill that takes time and experience to improve.
Partners for 2v2:
Because Disc Priests are so overpowered, and do both damage and healing, they can work well with almost any partner. Some of the best are:
Priest/warrior: Extreme pressure comp. There's not a really great bust kill potential, but you beat everything over time if you can survive long enough. Priest damage on top of the warrior's damage and Grievous Wounds debuff grinds enemy teams down pretty brutally.
Priest/Wind Walker: This is a frequent burst kill comp. It's not so much about constant pressure as it is about lining up the priest's burst with the wind walker's Fists of Fury stun burst to get a kill. You can do it every 25 seconds, and pvp trinkets have a 2 minute cooldown. The currently #1 ranked US player is a wind walker monk who, I was told, was queuing with a priest.
Priest/Ret paladin: I used to do this. It is a hyprid comp somewhere between the warrior/wind walker. You get a HoJ stun ever 1 minute to focus kill somebody(as opposed to the wind walker's 25 seconds). You don't get nearly the pressure of a warrior. BUT, you get great off-heals which makes your team very hard to kill. So it's about keeping pressure up and bursting during the HoJ.
Priest/Rogue: I mention this only because I think BoP and Original were running this. Kudos to them, because I don't think it's all that strong a comp, but they made it work somehow. Rogues at lvl 20 just don't have that much to offer. It's about lining up the priest's burst with the rogue's kick, and rogue peeling with crippling poison and saps, which is tricky.
Priest/BM: This is also a defensive pressure comp. It's like priest/warrior, but not as good because the monk doesn't have Grievous Wounds. Monk can peel with slows, like the warrior, and does good dmg like the warrior, has great mobility like the warrior; but his weak off-healing doesn't make up for the loss of Grievous wounds.
Priest/Priest: I know. People think this is lame, and considering how OP priests are, I understand. But I think it definitely loses against priest/warrior, at least, for example. I highly doubt Dre and I could lose to a Disc/Disc team. Still it is a strong, very defensive comp. Similar to Priest/Warrior, in that it is about winning over time with pressure, less pressure, but much safer. I have tried it, and I believe it is a top comp with good communication, and it's fucking fun and hilarious.
Communication is particularly vital for this comp, because it's all about efficiency. And to maximize efficiency without dying, you have to know who is healing and who is casting damage, at each moment. If you both spam heals to counter enemy pressure, you'll over-heal a lot and lose your own pressure. If you both to dmg at the same time thinking the other one is covering the heals, you die. You also have to work out who uses PW:S in which situation, etc, etc. I'd love to try this competitively.
I also mention it because I notice that 3 out of 4 of the top European lvl 20s are Priests, which suggest they likely either got there by queuing with 29s or as Priest/Priest, though those are not the only possibilities.
Priest/Mage: I hate this comp, because I can't put SWP on everything as I'm used to. But it is a top comp, and others are good at it. It's quite different from the others in that the priest does most of the damage. The mage is just there to CC.
I faced this comp once in a tournament. I was with a ret paladin. Every time he tried to attack, I'd get CC'd and they'd try to kill my partner. But we were ablle to counter it by having the ret pally sit back by a pillar and be my healer while I ran out and did all the damage. That way, if they cc me, he can hide behind the pillar, and if they cc him, they can't kill me cuz I'm a priest. This only works with an off-healer though, like a ret pally or shaman.
I have not found a way to reliably avoid the CC of a good mage, so your partner has to have some defensive abilities to survive the cc chain or interrupts to interrupt the cc chain. And most of the match is one long cc chain, so it's a pain in the ass.
Dear Reader:
Say lots of nice things about me in the comments. Don't say anything mean. That would hurt my feelings, for I am only a little elf girl, with bunny ears and large eyes. I'm very sensitive. Also, if you see me in the arena, please throw the match so I can have a high rating. Ty, Ty so much. Ty so much.
