Goodkin
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Building a party healer - 2005/07/16 02:59
First off thanks for the great site.
Intro
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I play WoW during closed beta but haven't played since them. I decided to get back into it with a group of 4 other friends. Because of time constraints we will only play a few hours a week and only when we can all play together. One of the annoying things we found about WoW was that it wasn't much fun to play with chars of different levels so we plan to keep close this time. We are not racing to 60, in fact I don't know if we will ever make it. We are in it for the fun not to level.
Question
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We spec'ed out the party to be always played together. The team will be Warrior, Mage, Priest, Pally, Druid. I have chosen to play a Dwarf Priest. I've read a lot about spec'ing a priest to solo and for how to handle Core when your 60 but not much about playing in a dedicated team and how to choose talents and play style on the way up.
Any advice would be much appreciated.
Thanks,
Goodkin
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Lodrazon
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Re:Building a party healer - 2005/07/16 06:33
Goodkin:
(Sorry for being sorta AWOL there, guys! :S)
There's a couple of things you want to keep in mind here. The first and foremost is, you have a guaranteed party. You aren't going to need to worry about versatility in hopping from combat to healing and back nearly as much. That doesn't mean it shouldn't be a consideration, though.
You want to set yourself up to compliment your party members, and to highlight your class strengths. Your biggest assets as a priest are obviously your heals and your crowd control abilities (Psychic Scream, Mind Control, Mind Soothe, Shackle Undead), as well as your buffs and your ability to remove debuffs (Dispel Magic!).
In a situation like yours, I would suggest focusing strongly on the Holy tree early in the game. You'll benefit from the Holy tree up until about level 26, at which point you can have maxed Improved Flash Heal. At this point, you have to decide how you prefer to play.
When I tried speccing myself out to be a really well-rounded party priest, I split myself between heavy Discipline and some Holy. My goal was to get the basic healing improvement (+10%), and then to really build up my utility. I ended up going all the way down the Discipline tree, including picking up Force of Will, then dropped points into Improved Smite and Holy Specialization. People thought I was insane... 
What you end up getting, though, is huge options. You obviously have improved heals, which is a bonus. You have Divine Spirit, which all casters will figure out is a welcome addition. You have Focused Casting and Inner Focus, two abilities I consider invaluable (the former moreso than the latter, but they each have their place...). Then, when you have a group situation in which you can deal damage, you can chain Smite (no cooldown), and you have - and I love this part - a 15% base critical rate.
Your natural critical chance in almost every RPG in existence is 1/20, or 5%. That holds true in WoW. You then get 5% from Force of Will, and 5% from Holy Specialization. With a couple of pieces of spell crit gear, several of which you will adore when you find them, you can end up running around as a thoroughly effective healer with welcome buffs, and this crazy ability to chain off Smite after Smite (which gives off almost no threat, and there is NO Holy resist!) with a high chance for it to kick some mob butt.
The downside to this build, having played it, is that you can't PvP to save your soul (at least, not in anything except maybe a 1v1 situation). You don't have the range, and your cast times are too long (2.5s hurts in PvP...). That being said, you are a powerhouse in PvE and group anything. When I first took this build for a test drive, my UBRS group nearly wiped - all of our Mages and Rogues got killed. I drank a mana potion, switched to DPS, and brought Drak down from about 25% while a Paladin tried to hold aggro for me. One of my friends was on Ventrilo, and literally asked me, "How the HELL did you do that?!"
I enjoy when that happens.
Let me know if you want build specifics, or other suggestions!
The world will sing
When I am king
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Goodkin
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Re:Building a party healer - 2005/07/17 14:45
Thanks for the advice. Being a newbie priest I didn't take it all in at once. I will have to look some of those spells up. Of course the great thing about having this board here is that I can check it later and ask questions when they come up. I've looked over the UI mods offered and I think the first one I will get working is GroupButtons. That looks very handy.
Thanks again,
Goodkin
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Gnarkill
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Re:Building a party healer - 2005/07/18 04:16
Damn, that sounds like a nice build Foxx. I kinda forgot about smite since I considered it useless when i was shadow/disc. Wish I had seen this before I switched to heavy disc and holy for MC/Onyx. Guess I'll pay to rearrange my talents again and stop passing on crit gear.
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Lodrazon
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Re:Building a party healer - 2005/07/18 08:43
Gnarkill, it totally eluded me too. The reason I ended up trying it was I was finding myself in a lot of PvE situations where my healing, while good, should have been second priority to just knocking the damn thing down. Additionally, we've all been in those groups where you're flying through an instance without ever needing to do more than drop a Renew on a tank, or maybe shield a Mage. Goodness knows there's got to be a use for my 8k mana beyond that...
The reason I really liked this build was that it generated such low threat. Smite, at level 60, with Improved Smite and a little +damage, does about 500 damage. There's no resist for that, so no matter what you're hitting, they're taking all of that. You're hitting them for that once every 2.5 seconds (2, if you want to sacrifice the 5% damage and 5% crit from Force of Will). With basic, basic crit gear built around your Devout, you have a 20% chance to crit with Smite - and that's the only time the mob will even realize you exist. Outside of that, Smite is so low-threat, you could be in first place on the damage meter, and never have a single mob target you.
I'll try and post a build and a better explanation later.
The world will sing
When I am king
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Paladeus
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Re:Building a party healer - 2005/07/19 02:31
Foxx
try adding in force of will in a holy disc spec with smite powered up. I have another post on here that I talked with xzombie about it too, its an interesting build and a ton of fun
Paladeus - Skullcrusher PvP - Immortality (Alliance)
www.immortalityguild.com
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Lodrazon
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Re:Building a party healer - 2005/07/19 03:11
Paladeus wrote:
Foxx
try adding in force of will in a holy disc spec with smite powered up. I have another post on here that I talked with xzombie about it too, its an interesting build and a ton of fun
I did that... already made a post about it somewhere else. 
Holy Specialization, Improved Smite, Force of Will... +15% damage, +10% chance to crit... that's a base crit chance, before gear or+ Int, of 15%! And low threat... *drools*
The world will sing
When I am king
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Paladeus
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Re:Building a party healer - 2005/07/20 05:40
foxx
refer to the post here titled (+healing gear ftw) or something i made
you get more dps splitting between holy disc and getting that "divine fury talent"
you CANt get 5 pts in divine fury and force of will...but i believe putting 2 or 3 in each (as was figured out by someone else) maximizes dps. i tired it...and its fun
EDIT
here it is....xzombie did some math crunching on it.
To me, personally, I don't think the 0.3 reduction in cast time would be worth the extra talent points. Let's take a quick look:
Using Smite (Rank 8): Smite an enemy for 371 to 415 Holy damage. 2.5 second cast.
Using the 5% Force of will build:
371 x 1.1 x 1.05 = 428.505 we'll round to 429
415 x 1.1 x 1.05 = 479.325 we'll round to 479
429 + 479 = 908 / 2 = 454 damage average
454 / 2.5 = 181.6 dps
Using the 3% / 0.3 second reduction build:
370 x 1.1 x 1.03 = 419.21 we'll round to 419
415 x 1.1 x 1.03 = 470.195 we'll round to 470
419 + 470 = 889 / 2 = 444.5 damage average
444.5 / 2.2 = 202.04 dps
Looking at the numbers, it looks like you'd actually get a higher dps with the 3% 0.3 second reduction build. You'd also lose out on a few other skills like Improved Inner Fire, the Divine Spirit buff ability and slightly less mana regen through Meditation, but your Renew spell would be more effective and you'd get more dps. And actually, I'd probably take one point out of Improved Renew and put it into Spiritual Healing, so all of your healing spells get the bonus instead of just one.
What do you guys think? .
Post edited by: paladeus, at: 2005/07/20 05:43
Paladeus - Skullcrusher PvP - Immortality (Alliance)
www.immortalityguild.com
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KALPOTHYZ
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Re:Building a party healer - 2006/03/29 16:43
I love the fact that the new update has a cast time of 2.5secs (with talents) but the amount healed sux. after healing over half the health of a warrior to only just healing a third health it feels like they have gimped GH!! 
Is this just me?
When it comes to party healing i would go 26/25 as having more mana is more important than the 10% extra heal from 21/30. (I roled 21/30 thinking that i could not live without the 10% healing but i have changed my mind with my seriously smaller mana pot.)
Let me put it this way.. if you chain heal then you will heal more with the extra GH that you get from a 26/25 build than if you do a 21/30 build as you would need to be able to do 10 GH for the amount of healing done to be equal and you can't manage that with out a large mana pool.
However i also am thinking to do a crit smite build, 20% is easily viable and you can make that 45% crit chance every 3 mins 
Kalpothyz
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zooski
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Re:Building a party healer - 2006/05/25 04:40
Lodrazon, if you're still monitoring this thread, could you post the talent build you talked about? I'd like to see it. Also, you posted about a year ago, would you change anything based on more recent patches? Thanks in advance...
John T.
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