Spec vs Gear vs Comp vs Metagame: PvP Healing Priests

For many classes, there is no correlation between gear and spec in the Arenas. If you're a Warrior, you're looking at a Bladestorm spec or Titan's Grip. If you're a Mage, you're primary two spec choices are likely Deep Arcane Barrage or Deep Freeze Frost. However, for Priests, the spec used is often directly related to the level of gear they have. In addition, bracket and team comp can also add consideration when deciding on spec.

What a headache, right?

No kidding!

Before I get into the detailed explanation, if you are looking for the TL;DR version, here you go:

• Those that have very little personal survivability and don't expect their teammates to take much damage should spec Focused Will/Blessed Resilience.
• Those that have issues surviving but expect that their teammates may share in the damage fest should spec either Pain Suppression/Spirit of Redemption or Guardian Angel/Spirit of Redemption.
• Those that don't expect to take that much damage should look into Penance.

For those who have the iron stomachs to read further, here we go! (Warning! This isht be looooooong)

To elaborate on the TL;DR version, lets look at the 3 different factors and their effects to determine wether the Priest has no chance of survival, a poor chance of survival or a decent of survival. Notice, there's no good or excellent chance. That's because Priests have never had that luxury. Yes, I'm bitter like that. The 3 factors that affect survival are are Gear, Comp and Metagame.

Use the super-complicated-yet-accurate-to-the-nanometer analytical scale below as you analyze the 3 factors.

No Chance <--> Poor <--> Decent

Gear
The simplest indicator of survivability is gear. The fact remains that if you're wearing all PvE gear or you're in leveling gear (aka: BAD PvE gear), your survivability will be non existant. With that said, we'll assume that the minimum attainable gear will be the full Frostsavage Set. If you need help figuring out how to gear up, check out my previous post. The survivability benchmark that has been thrown about has been somewhere in the 750-800 resilience range. At that level, you should be able to endure the initial CS > KS from a rogue with a Bubble up.

Rate yourself:

• If you have the minimum attainable PvP gear set, you pretty much still have no chance for survival, but the marginal resilience will help you against splash damage if you can get peels. Mark yourself on the left side of the scale.
• If you have more gear than the minimum set, but are under 750-800 resilience, your survivability is poor, but you should be able to take a couple of hits. Mark yourself in the middle of the scale.
• If you are over 800 resilience, you've got decent survivability. Mark yourself on the right side of the scale.

Comp
Comp or Composition, refers to your team and in correlation, your bracket. However, in this section, we're looking at our team, not our opponents. What we're specifically looking for is your teammate's survivability and survival skills. There's a huge difference when playing with a tunnel visioning Rogue wearing no resilience and a Death Knight who knows how and when to use LOS.

Rate your teammates:

• If you are playing with classes that have been branded as 'hard to kill' (Death Knights, Warriors who know how to LOS/reflect, etc) or teammates who are wearing a lot of PvP gear (800+ resilience) and/or classes that have personal immunity type effects, your teammates get a decent survivability rating. Unfortunately, that makes you a much juicier target, lowering your survivability. Move your rating to the left or keep your rating the same if you feel that you won't always be the primary target.
• If you are playing with easy to kill teammates (Warlocks, Shamans, another Priest) or teammates wearing very little PvP gear or don't have immunity type effects, your teammates get a poor survivability rating, which will increase your survivability... sometimes. Keep your rating the same or move it to the right if you feel very confident about your kiting and peeling skills.
• If you are playing with a Paladin who knows how to apply Blessing of Protection, your survivability increases. Move your rating to the right.

Metagame
Metagame refers to the types of teams you're expecting to face. Back in S3 and S4, playing in the upper brackets, one could expect many many Warrior/Druid teams and as such, Priest/Mage teams did well, if they could get to that bracket. In today's environment, there are many many comps out there as the top tier comps have yet to be defined (exception: DK/Paladin).

Rate your expected opponents (the metagame):

• You expect a lot of Rogue teams and your teammate does not have have a physical peel a la Kidney, Hamstring, Scattershot, Blessing of Protection, etc and/or you expect a lot of all DPS/high burst/multiple melee teams. This lowers your survivability as Rogues are often your bane. Pure magic peels aren't as reliable in that first 30 seconds of a match due to Cloak of Shadows, Vanish, Prep, and the possibility of a teammate dispel. Move your rating to the left
• You expect a lot of Rogue teams and your teammate has a physical peel and/or you expect a lot of drain teams. This will likely increase your survivability as your teammate can peel for you and the incoming damage is less bursty. Move your rating to the right.

So how did you do? Ignoring gear for a moment, common compositions in this current environment such as Rogue/Priest, Ret Paladin/Priest, and Rogue/Mage/Priest often place the Priest on the far right of the scale, whereas teams such as Warlock/Priest and 4DPS/Priest often shift the Priest to the far left or middle of the scale. Using those comps as guidelines and understanding your Battlegroup's environment, your placement on the scale should be fairly accurate. How does this translate into spec?

Well, currently, there are 3 popular specs out there which, lo and behold, somewhat translate into the various degree of life expectancy.

Focused Will/Blessed Resilience/Lightwell/Spirit of Redemption: This build focuses on personal survivability at the cost everything else. Blessed Resilience and Focused Will help you stay afloat and combined with Lightwell (which you can used while stunned), one can generally stay alive with some reasonable peels and LOS. The downside to this build is that it has no uber 'save me!' abilities such as Pain Suppression or Guardian Angel, heals are anemic and the mana efficiency of this build is in the gutter. You won't have the longevity to win out long drawn out drain style matches, but against high dps teams, where you don't have to worry about your teammate getting bursted, this is a winner. Spirit of Redemption can offer some late heals (which, with the soon to be fixed glyph, can lead to 45 second+ Angel heals) if and when you get brought down. This build is pretty must restricted to 37/34/0.

Pain Suppression/Spirit of Redemption or Guardian Angel/Spirit of Redemption: These specs are largely interchangeable in my view as they offer increased healing output/damage prevention output while giving up either Focused Will or Blessed Resilience. The Pain Suppression build is more mana efficient whereas the Guardian Angel build has more healing output at the cost of mana efficiency. With the uber 'save me!' abilities, these specs are generally used if the Priest wants the post death healing of Spirit of Redemption in conjunction with increased healing/damage prevention as teammates are expected to take some serious damage. Common builds are 50/21/0 and 14/57.

Penance: This deep Discipline spec utilizes Penance and gives up the option to get Spirit of Redemption. This spec is very mana efficient as Penance has a very high healing per mana ratio, especially if the Priest takes Rapture. In addition, Penance offers huge burst healing, even if it is only allowed to tick twice before cancelling, to avoid interruption. Unfortunately, self heals for this spec are fairly weak, and the Priest using this spec generally utilizes either superior pressure, team peels, and/or superior gear to avoid or withstand incoming damage. This spec still have a 'save me!' ability in the form of Pain Suppression and typically, with high resilience Priests, Pain Suppression offers more bang for the buck than Blessed Resilience as non-crit damage becomes a greater issue. Common builds are 60/11/0 or the myriad of 5x/y/0 where y does not exceed 20. (Oh noes! Algebra!)

Summary:
So, looking at the various characteristics of the builds, it becomes clear that the builds can correlate reasonably well to the three positions on the scale.

• Those that have very little personal survivability and don't expect their teammates to take much damage should spec Focused Will/Blessed Resilience. This correlates to people who found themselves on the far left of the scale.
• Those that have issues surviving but expect that their teammates may share in the damage fest should spec either Pain Suppression/Spirit of Redemption or Guardian Angel/Spirit of Redemption. This correlates to people who found themselves in the middle of the scale.
• Those that don't expect to take that much damage should look into Penance. This is for those people who found themselves on the right side of the scale.

Hopefully this little analysis has helped determine where you stand with your spec. It's not 100% accurate, but it should give some insight as to the various factors that go into deciding a spec. Keep in mind that top players will likely not find this of much use as their coordination and communication can often supercede comp mismatches or gear inadequacies, thus allowing them to utilize a spec that would get mid level or beginner players killed.

As always, try stuff out and see what works for you.

Gone Hoggin...

For a mere 15k gold (average price, give or take some depending on server pricing), you can own your very own eHarley: the Mechano-Hog or a Mekgineer's Chopper. By the numbers, these fantasy world cycles are essentially Engineering specific ground mounts, and they're BoE so anyone can have one. Another mount. Big deal, right?

Ah, but it's oh so much more than that.

See, unless Blizz changes these cycles, they're actually vehicles. Not a mounts.

Vehicles =/= Mounts.

The difference?

For one thing, a vehicle has Hit Points. So when you jump off a cliff or fall off Dalaran (who would do such a thing?!) the vehicle takes damage, not you. If you've ever jumped off a cliff while riding your mount, you'll notice that your faithful steed disappears upon impact if you've fallen a great distance. You'll also notice that you're probably dead and running back in spirit form.

Secondly, its nearly impossible to target the player driving the vehicle.

Thirdly, the vehicle is immune to almost all cc's and snares. Frost Nova, Sap, Crippling Poison, Hamstring all fail on this amazing piece of equipment.

Lastly, it can be used in the Arena.

By now, the little gears in your head should probably be whirring faster and faster, with the thought process going something like this:

"So basically, its a mount that I can use in the arena, will protect me from many forms of cc/snares, will protect me from damage until it's HP is reduced to zero, and it lets me kite people until I choose to get off and fight?"

Yeah, basically.

In one of our matches this weekend on the RoL map, the combat went like this:

I started this match on my Hawg and waited in the starting cubby for the go ahead to come out. As we only saw a Priest, we assumed Rogue/Priest and shortly after mounting up, I got Sapped. In response, I simply drove off. Mr. Rogue then tried to Cheap Shot me (still driving), Sprint to catch up (driving in circles around the Tomb at this point), Vanish and Cheap Shot again, (still driving). At this point, I got feared by the Priest and the Rogue was trying to get to me while being Chains of Ice'd by my DK buddy. Fear wore off and I drove all the way back to my starting cubby. The rogue, at this point, burned Prep to Vanish once again, to peel my DK buddy off his Priest, which in turn got me to come out to start healing. The opposing Priest was able to get a bit of distance from the DK as I couldn't dispel Crippling while he could dispel Chains of Ice and the Rogue turned to try to pressure me. Instead of using Sprint again, he popped Nitro Boosts... which saw me popping Nitro Boosts as well. I think I did 2 laps around the Tomb before he Stealthed and caught me (I should have used SW:Pain to tag him, but by then, his Priest was dead and he was quickly Death Gripped into a couple of RNG Death and Decay glyph fears.

The MVP for our run to Deadly boots?

Hog.

IIIII'm Fifty!

Molly Shannon used to do this skit on SNL where she played a middle aged woman who would proclaim at various intervals "IIIII'm fifty!" while jumping around, doing splits, lunges and showing a lot of moose knuckle. Yeah, you probably tuned out that crazy amount of knuckle-age as did I, but a recent viewing of a Youtube clip made me do a deja vu shudder.

/Shudder

Anyways, this is post number fifty since I started the blog, and while fifty posts may not be anything phenomenal, seeing as though we have some hyper prolific writers out there with more posts in a single day than I'll generate in a week, to me, it seems like somewhat of a milestone. If only Blizzard gave out Proto Drakes for this literary Achievement...

I'd like to thank our readers for commenting on our posts, as they often give us more inspiration and insight to the various topics I post about. I've tried to keep the quality of writing up, and at the same time, tried to add a little bit of humor here and there. Hopefully, it's working, because I've enjoyed the challenge.

There have been some thoughts about trying harder to become a WoW blog for the masses, a la BRK or World of Matticus, and for a while I did try to get on people's blogrolls via commenting and such. At the same time there were also some thoughts about getting a co/guest writer to help broaden the scope of what I like to post about. However, I truly think that our style of writing is a bit different from the other mainstream WoW blogs out and that many of the people reading and posting commentary on those blogs wouldn't enjoy our content. I also like being in control of what's posted under our header, so for the forseeable future, its just you, me and my sultry words of bromance.

All that being said, thanks, again, for swinging by!

Chu has earned the Achievement [50 Posts]!

Fun PvP moment in AV

Everyone has those days in a BG or a raid/heroic where someone does something amazingly smart, silly, stupid or just plain awesome and that action evokes a response; a laugh, a chuckle, or tirades over vent about why only bad players run to the wrong polarity on Thaddius. Every now and then, there's a scene that combines all four that just makes you stop and reflect on what just happened. This is one such event, and while I can't do it justice with my storytelling, I'll certainly try my best.

Location: Alterac Valley
Alterac Valley (AV) for Horde is often a fruitless endeavor that rarely ever succeeds without some strong defense at Frostwolf Relief Hut due to the layout of the stronghold and the lack of a Bridge of Death or other similar defensible passages. One such passage where the Alliance often has their last stand, is the deep channel pathway right before Stormpike Graveyard that the Horde, in their collective mental retardation, love to pile into, only to get stymied long enough for the Alliance Offense to casually take all 4 Horde towers and kill Drek'thar.

One of the more interesting terrain points is found while running up the slope to Stormpike. One can veer left and find themselves standing on a cliff overlooking Stormpike Graveyard (SP GY). The cool thing about this place is that there's no easy way for the Alliance to get into melee range, if you are standing up there and they're standing by the GY flag. If you're a ranged dps class or healer, you can essentially free cast, drink, and free cast again. ad infinitum.

At least until someone figures out what you're up to and decides to try to stop you.

In this particular AV, the Horde were, once again, completely jock-blocked at SP. I was up on the cliff overlooking SP, working my way towards 1 million healing done in a BG when I spot a Warlock also on the cliff stacking dots on anything that got into range. The thing about where he was positioning himself was that he wasn't standing far back and hiding behind the terrain, but he was right up against the edge of the cliff aggressively dotting. This was helpful against Warriors as they would Charge/Intercept him and then fall off the cliff since he was right up to the edge. I think he was Haunt specced and he managed to keep himself alive pretty well, primarily though the various HP restoring spells and his use of Demonic Circle, which was placed away from the action. Several times, he would jump down, pop an instant Howl and then 'port back up.

Cool.

I like playing with someone who understands using the terrain to their advantage.

I started focusing heals into this Lock and the Alliance began to notice that this particular agent of slow nasty death was burning through their defenses and not dying. Several Warriors and Rogues managed to get up to the cliff, where they were subsequently and unceremoniously Mind Controlled back down to ground level.

Then it happened. A little Gnome Frost Mage managed to get up on to the cliff and started working us over with snares and Shatters while an Arcane Mage pelted us with Barrages at the bottom of the cliff. After barely surviving back to back Improved Counterspells, I resolved to throw the offending midget off the cliff and into the ravenous masses of Horde. The moment my Mind Control hit, the Mind Controlled Gnome got Death Gripped by an Alliance Death Knight from max distance, creating this nice pretty flying Gnome effect. At the apex of his flight, fireworks appeared from the base of the cliff... in the form of Barrage + PoM Pyro, slamming into the flying Mage. Yep. The Alliance Arcane Mage that was working us over with mindless Barrage Spam, 2 shotted our little Frost assailant.

We /cheer'd him and he /cheer'd us, and naturally, as it usually goes with Horde, we went on to lose AV.

Gearing Up - a Pseudo Guide for new PvP Priests

For the release of LK, the only real sources for post leveling PvE gear were Heroics and Raids. For raiders and non PvPers, this was an ideal situation, as badge gear was readily attainable and the gear requirements for the entry raids were not prohibitive. As mentioned in a prior post, if you make it easy enough, people will consume the content, en masse.

Unfortunately, for PvPers, the PvE-speed-badge/easy-raid-grind PvP equivalent, aka “Welfare (PvP) Epic Honor Grind” didn’t happen. What was the Welfare Epic grind that was so prevalent in Season 3 and 4 of Burning Crusade? That grind was when new 70’s would dive into a weekly Kara for badges for their cloak and trinket and PvP like mad for S2 gear and still be fairly well off in terms of PvP viability.

So why didn’t it happen? Well, due to various factors, it wasn’t quite repeatable here at the start of LK. Sure, one could sit in BG’s for days grinding honor for the buyable honor gear set (Savage Gladiator), but people for the most part didn’t. Why? It sucks. Which part? All of it. Becaaaauuusseee:

1) The honor based PvP gear is both exceedingly expensive as an honor purchase and still semi equivalent to the (cheap) crafted PvP set.
2) The honor gear, for some classes, is terrible for starter PvP. Equivalent Heroic instance and raid drops are often better until acquisition of top end PvP gear is possible. Sometimes even Deadly gear is eschewed for high end raid gear.
3) The current honor cap is 75k. This means you can usually only buy 1 piece of gear at a time, because each piece now costs over 35k honor/piece.
3a) The off set pieces (neck, back, bracer, belt, boot, ring) for both the Hateful and Deadly PvP sets all require a great deal of Honor, and one doesn’t want to be caught in the situation where they have just purchased a piece of Savage gear only to be forced to grind honor for a few days when the reach a milestone rating and get the privilege to buy a piece of Deadly gear.

Those reasons were enough for many people to not grind for PvP gear. To reiterate point 2, for some of the classes out there, the attainable PvP gear out there is a strict downgrade as their survivability and arena function doesn’t change whether or not they have 200 or 400 resilience, due to the resilience cap being upwards of 1200.

However, the flip side of this is that for other classes, Resilience and Stamina is everything to their survival and function in the arena. Sadly, the Priest is one of those classes and just looking at the possible avenues to getting gearing up for PvP, one can definitely start feeling overwhelmed very quickly.

To that end, this is somewhat of a guide for those who want to gear up quickly for PvP and are playing a class that has limited survivability such as a Priest. Each point, while listed by number is equally important. Just following a couple points of the list, while ignoring other points will not get you very far. Let’s reiterate the key point: This is for classes that have limited survivability. Classes with outs such as Iceblock, Vanish, Divine Shield, should move along.

1. Honor grind. Recognize that some pieces of PvP gear will require you to spend massive amounts of honor to obtain them. These are the Hateful and Deadly offset pieces (neck, back, bracer, belt, boot, ring). If you know you can hit the rating requirements for Deadly, don’t buy the Hateful gear. Hateful would only be a waste of your time. The only caveat is the scenario where you need some Hateful gear to be able to reach the Deadly ratings. This is more likely to occur towards the end of the season. If you plan on wearing 2 resilience rings, grab the Hateful ring first.

2. Craft. Craft as much PvP gear as possible. While Brutal Gladiator gear is reasonable for pieces that aren’t craftable, it will often have less Stamina and less Resilience than the new craftables, not to mention the new stuff will likely have more spellpower/strength/agility, etc. More resilience will allow you to use a playstyle more coherent with your final gear later down the road.

3. Wintergrasp. Wintergrasp is not only a huge source of easy honor, (I think I’ve only ever seen 1 successful defense, so it’s guaranteed honor if you’re on Offense) but it’s also a good source of PvP gear. Besides the fact that Wintergrasp Marks will soon be able to be used for some reasonable helms and boots, control of the zone allows you access to another raid instance: the Vault of Archavon. Vault (as it’s known) is basically 4 trash pulls and then an absurdly easy boss. The boss has a chance to drop both PvE and PvP gear, of Glove, Leg and Chest variety; Vault 10 drops Hateful/Heroic gear, Vault 25 drops Deadly/Valorous gear. You definitely want to run both every week. No question about it. However, many people run it incorrectly and in turn, screw themselves out of gear.

To run it optimally, make a 10 man raid (grab friends if you can) that contain 1 of each class, regardless of spec. To fill the spots, just spam /2 chat in a major city with something that reads like this “LFM 10 man Vault 1 of each class” and I guarantee that you will have people whispering you for spots. Why? Because people are greedy… And because the boss doesn’t drop tokens for gear like every other raid. It drops the actual piece of gear that’s restricted to a specific class. For example, on one raid, the Heroic Mooncloth Gloves of Faith (Priest T7.10) may drop and if you don’t have a Priest on hand, you’ve just wasted a piece of gear. Conversely, since you’re also as greedy as the next guy and you’ve constructed the raid with just one of each class, if any of your class’ gear drops, its all you, baybee. Just remember: 1 MT, 1 OT (often a melee plate DPS, not necessarily tank specced), 2 healers and 6 DPS.

This raid composition strategy is possible for 25 mans, but a little less so due to the number of available people at any given point.

4. PvE. Bwuh? Yep. To PvP, you’ve GOT to PvE. This is probably one of the biggest gripes I have with the current environment, but easily accessible raid instances have some of the best weapons out there. Titansteel Guardian/Prison Manifest have nothing on the Staff of Restraint from OS 25. Yet, many of these raids take minutes to run. Minutes. Not hours. In addition, just by PvEing, you can load up on badges, Badges of Heroism (Heroic/10 man badges) and Badges of Valor (25 man). For the Beginner, Naxx 10 gives 6 badges for the two easy wings, OS 10 gives 4 badges per clear, Vault 10 gives 1 and the daily Heroic dungeon is at minimum 5 badges. The same is true for the 25 man badges, sans the daily Heroic dungeon. At the least you should be getting 11 badges a week of both types. The kicker is that these badges aren’t just to buy PvE gear. For 30 Badges of Heroism you can buy the Savage Gladiator shoulders or gloves. For 45 badges, you’re looking at the Helm, Chest or Legs. The same applies to Badges of Valor and Hateful Gladiator gear. However, consider weekly Vault drops prior to gear purchases.

There you go, that's how I've gotten to around 800 Resilience in a few weeks. It could have been faster, but, I imagine S5 will be long enough, so it shouldn't matter at all... Unless, of course, you're damn impatient, like me.