Priest armor experiment

[Ymir]

Wow mainly we talk about effective HP with mail wearers but this is very intresting. Pious legwraps are probably a must

here is a link to an effective HP calculator, kinda fun to play around with if your into armor.



World of Warcraft Effective Health Calculator



In general stamina is better than armor due to magic damage taken but if you can't stack stamina any higher try stacking some armor on top of it.

10-19 is an especially interesting case for it though, as magic damage is a long way from the major cause of death. Warlocks are pretty devastating in terms of pressure, but the physical damage dealers have better burst and single target dps, making physical mitigation very effective.



I just typed in level 19 - 800 armor - 1000 health and got 28.15 AC per stam btw, so I guess my math was correct at least when it comes to the value of 150 armor in terms of stamina. It just doesn't include the gains in mana efficiency.



Actually reminds me when I first started playing, before I ever got to 60, I was a huge proponent of mitigation tanking, due to the mana efficiency gains. Having only ever run 5mans with a spirit stacking resto druid friend, we never ran into mana problems, and vanilla 5mans never gave anyone a scare in terms of burst.

 

[Visindyr]

Is this actually worth missing out on .5 sec faster cast time on heal and smite? You will also have to lose either the 30 percent less chance for your spells to be dispelled, or lose 70 percent reduction to spell pushback.



You would gain more survivability by investing in either of those talents than 150 armor. It may sound good in theory, but the other talents are just too good to pass up over this.

 

[Grunge]

Is this actually worth missing out on .5 sec faster cast time on heal and smite? You will also have to lose either the 30 percent less chance for your spells to be dispelled, or lose 70 percent reduction to spell pushback.



You would gain more survivability by investing in either of those talents than 150 armor. It may sound good in theory, but the other talents are just too good to pass up over this.

These are good points. However, i might not have made myself very clear with the intent of this spec, its made for a more offensive, wand-heavy/dispel playstyle. Since priests are forced to sit in one area to wand or cast for any amount of time, the reduced damage taken will allow for longer periods of wanding before needing to heal. Also, when chasing an fc and keeping your friends up, you will not be casting big heals, so you need to:



1. put power behind all your instant cast spells

2. Increase dmg taking abilities (usually done through stacking stam, now can be done through armor as well)



Tho i have usually run in a full holy spec, i have always felt i was too vulnerable to physical damage and died too quickly under pressure of 2 or more dps classes.



Now dont get me wrong, the talents available in holy tree make you a very powerful healer, but your best strength as a priest lie in your instant casts, not your nuke. More often than not most people will find themselves queing alone, and playing alone. When survival is key, this sort of spec works greatly in your favor.

 

[Visindyr]

From my experience in premades as a priest, I have had to worry much more about getting cc'd than being focused on by melee. I see what you're saying, but you must be playing much different setups than I am. If a defensive setup has any melee classes, it's usually one warrior at most.

 

[Maerduk]

lol well I haven't had a chance to test this spec, I've always been full holy on my priest and I've even had an instance when 2 semi twinked lvl 29s decided to attack me over near the silverwing grove in ashenvale. It took me awhile and a ton of bubble/fear/SWP/renew/mana pot/wanding but I was able to kill them both and that was due to my high survivability from healing. This spec seems like it could do essentially the same thing, but I'd be a little worried about the lack of pushback reduction and imp cast time on heals...