This is part of a series on the healing talent changes coming / proposed in MoP expansion coming to World of Warcraft. I started this series with my slight rant on the limited tree options here, but I also went into more detail on the Holy Paladin tree. But, I will also be diving into each healing class thanks to my dear friends and healbots!

To get kicked off, here’s the Priest edition!

Introducing Our Guest – Nicci

This article’s guest writer is a dear guildie, Nicci. He’s a super talented holy priest and no stranger to the game. He’s been playing and healing since vanilla! That’s longer than me boooo! He’s one of the best holy priests I’ve seen lately, and I was impressed with his high throughput before even getting one piece of firelands gear. I asked him for his feedback on the proposed MoP Priest Talents because, well, I suck at holy I’ve always been and will be disc

Now he’s happily battling to whop my disc priest’s butt in our social / alt Firelands raid… and he Lifegrip chains other raiders with me <3<3<3

With the new talent system coming in MoP, every spec will see the same tree. The Priest tree looks like this (currently):

Tier 1 (level 15): Control

This tier is about control. This is all about giving priests choices in how they control enemies. The Abilities:  Void Tendrils, Psyfiend, and Psychic Scream.

This is tier is for controlling adds. I prefer Void Tendrils because it will hold the adds together in one place as with the other two options, the adds will scatter around and likely be a pain for the tanks to pick them up again. Granted Psychic Scream can be glyphed to not make any adds run away, but it will still break on any damage effect. I will be experimenting with all three non-the less to see how they perform. 

Tier 2 (level 30): Movement

This tier is all about movement. The Abilities: Body and Soul, Path of the Devout, and Phantasm

This one is a no brainer for me. I’ll be going Body and Soul. I’m already specced into it in Cataclysm and is sealed into my play style. Path of the devout seems rather odd to me because you will take damage at some point in an encounter which will break the Levitate. Phantasm is purely a pvp talent (to me) unless MoP has some boss encounters were we will need this specific talent.

Tier 3 (level 45): Buffed Output

This tier is all about butting your healing output, some are single target and some are aoe. This also gives a chance to reach some typical disc’only spells.  The Abilities: From Darkness, Comes Light (free, instant goodness), Divine Star (aoe!), and Archangel (previously disc only).

I’m still not sure which talents to pick in this tier. All three of these talents are relatively good. I will try out Divine Star at first just to see how this new spell will work. Archangel, if this is still activated by Smite/Holy Fire spam then I won’t be taking this one. If the mechanic of Archangel do change in MoP then I will definitely consider Archangel. Moving on to From Darkness, Comes Light. Currently the way holy works this is really appealing to me with the Cataclysm equivalent of From Darkness, Comes Light (Surge of Light). In combination with Serendipity in a later tier, it has strong AoE healing capabilities and I will chose it for raid healing.  And a free flash heal is never a bad thing.

Tier 4: Self Healing and Defense

This tier is all about self mitigation or healing. The Abilities: Desperate Prayer, Angelic Bulwark, Final Prayer.

Really simple. I will go for Desperate Prayer. I came to love this spell and will not trade it in for Final Prayer or Angelic Bulwark. Why? I prefer to not rely on passives. And Angelic Bulwark? Well I’m not disc, I don’t shield myself for the absorb. Just for the Body and Soul effect.

Tier 5 (level 75): Throughput

This tier is all about throuput. The Abilities: Twist of Fate, Power Infusion, and Serendipity

Because I’ll probably go for From Darkness, Comes Light (T3) I’ll choose for Serendipity here. As explained in the tier 3 bit, the way these two talents work together creates a play style I’ve been playing for a long time. Power Infusion, I will pick this talent when I need to tank heal. Twist of Fate, from a healing perspective I don’t like to see people under 25% health. If it is up to me it will not happen, so I wouldn’t pick this one up. 

Tier 6: Empowering 

The final tier! The Abilities: Vow of Unity, Void Shift, Vampiric Dominance. 

I’m going for raid healing first. I’ll start with picking Vampiric Dominance. I need to test this one out to see how much of a difference this actually makes in a raid environment. If it does turn out to be a pooper I will definitely pick Vow of Unity. This is also my talent of choice for when I’m assigned to tank healing. Void Shift, Still a bit vague to me. I have to see this one in game to give an opinion
about it.

Holy Spec of Choice

As it stands right now, this is my preferred healing spec (mostly for raid healing). 

I can’t stress this enough, MoP isn’t even in Alpha yet so anything said in this post can change and most likely will change as all talents are not final yet.

 

*Thanks Nicci! Next up is my Disc edition!*