Smite is awesome.Follow

That's a good Idea. I don't see me using shadow any time soon. I actually was asked to go shadow last night and pouted the whole time (should have just smited, pew, pew), so holy off-spec it is.

Dammit.

It is fun.

I have a problem though. I can't seem to connect Holy Word: Chastise to Clique or a macro in any way that will cast it in its other incarnations. IOW, if I have Chakra: Renew on and try to cast HW:C on a friendly target, it tells me invalid target, because it's trying to Chastise when really it should be doing Aspire. Surely I don't have to have four buttons on my toolbars for this spell??

Sanctuary might be hard but the other two should behave like any mouseover. If I mouse over a friendly target but I'm not in the appropriate state for a friendly spell it should just ignore it.

I'm hoping they work something out for it (or some genius figures out a macro) because as of right now I've just got it on my toolbar as is and having to take the extra step to target kind of takes some of the point away from an instant spell.

Although for PVP at least I'd entertain the idea of not taking Revelations at all so I could have the 3 sec disorient available at all times regardless of state. Emmit, what are you doing with that?

But dang, Holy is fun for PVP right now. I forgot what a blast B&S can be in WSG. :D I'm not good at using Chakra yet after an hour of practice, but I found myself using the Renew state a lot in the battlegrounds I did, if for no other reason than it's the only one I can get into without stopping to cast something. At least Renew is useful in that context, but I have a feeling working with Chakra would take me a while to get good at.

And then I remembered that at 85 you could have a Holy build that has both Evangelism and Archangel, and I gotta say, if they don't make Atonement more impressive pretty soon it's not going to take me long to lose my bet with Moz. I'm too old to use a less fun spec just because it makes me different and therefore cooler. The ship on "cool" sailed away from me long ago. ;)

It IS a new and interesting mechanic and I'm very keen to see it working well, because I have been really, really looking forward to it.

But atonement was "working" for a while last night, and I'm hoping it was still bugged because it really wasn't that impressive. Old Disc was: "You have time for a couple of smites before you have to worry about healing, because yourself/target is shielded." With the apparent intent to have us shielding less, New Disc should be: "You have time for a couple of smites before you have to worry about healing, because the smites themselves will take care of enough of the incoming damage." Except Atonement really isn't enough to give me that breathing room right now. Meanwhile, over here there is New Holy, and it's: "You have time for a couple of smites before you have to worry about healing, because your renew/HoT capability in the chakra state is so danged powerful that having it ticking away is essentially the same as shield was."

As a result, New Holy feels more like Old Disc to me than New Disc does right now. It's not using absorbtion to do it, but then neither is Disc really anymore.

Is that because the healing component isn't enough? Smite usually hits for 4-5k, with 7-8k crits, so the healing should be the same, right? That sounds, in theory, as tough it should be enough to give breathing room. I'll have to try it tonight.



Well, the problem with this is that Smiting with a holy spec would lead to a lot of resists, since we're nowhere near being hit capped without the glyph, right? So, smiting with that spec would seem as a bit of a waste, and would certainly not be viable at 85 because of the mana waste this would entail.

I was on reading up EJ last night, and they were saying that the really neat trick of the new Smite/Evangelism is basically about mana regen. That's not a problem at 80, but will apparently be at 85, which is where the mechanics of the new Disc through the Smite/Evangelism should really shine.

Ah, I see, it makes sense now. I was talking about raid healing really, not soloing or PvP. But I can see totally see how Holy would more fun for either of those. I use shadow for soloing and PvP; so I'm gonna stick with trying the new Disc spec for raiding and see how that goes.

Yeah, this will definitely become a viable option at 85, and might already be one. I'm just not sure to what extend it'll be good, as I literally haven't a clue what Cata PvP healing is going to be like. I think I can safely say you won't be hanging in PoH Chakra, but then - Renew's Holy Word: Aspire is pretty damn good for PvP. We might get to hang in Heal Chakra too, though I somewhat doubt that, I don't think PvP will slow down *that* much. Either way, I can imagine the real pros will start to look into "/cancelaura Chakra: Renew, /cast Holy Word: Chastise" macros.


To be fair, yeah, right now a healing priests' only option is to use instants and never stop moving. I reckon it might be less worse with the resilience buff coming up, though - we still won't be using Heal and holy will probably still stick to Renew Chakra, but we'll get a little bit of a breather, and disc priests will probably function again as well.


This isn't... completely how I've found it to be, though it definitely works to an extend. Our resident holy paladin pro was whining about him being nerfed yesterday, but to be fair, holydins did get a pretty harsh nerfbat in their face - basically everything they have got nerfed, and what didn't get nerfed isn't completely working correctly. At least in AoE situations, their healing will sink down to dispicable levels. Some of my better healers already finding their way out of it though, even though I think Cata will be a bit of a backlash to them too.



To be honest, I don't know. There's a lot to say for Archangel, though I do literally feel completely on the edge of grabbing it as holy atm - I think spec both with and without Archangel could both literally be viable in pretty much every situation. I don't think the min/maxers will completely discard Smite, to be fair, especially not if it can give them mana back. Also keep in mind that glyphs can be changed on the fly now (I went quick Mass Dispel instead of Imp. Holy Nova yesterday so I could keep my holy spec for Blood Princes). On another note, I personally ended up grabbing that glyph of Smite as well - I'm not sure about Cata, but right now it's too much damage to pass up on, and I honestly feel it's just about as good a glyph as all our other choices (with the possible exception of CoH, which is a must, period).

On a last note - I suspect Holy will be nerfed. To what extend, I'm not sure. I can definitely see them fixing the PoH-giving-you-20-seconds-of-Chakra bug, at the least, but I'm also curious about whether they'll simplify the tree right now. Really, I like holy's versatility, but... get this: we have 14 regularly used different healing spells, 4 cooldowns (and an additional 2 mana regeneration cooldown), 4 different attack spells of which 2 have synergy with our healing spells, 3 types of dispels/cleanse (of which one serves two functions) and then 3 utility spells - 4 in Cataclysm. We actively use ALL OF THOSE 27 spells (I'm counting PW:S twice, as heal and as B&S utility) basically on any given fight.

Lets take a freaking Mutilate rogue to put next to that - they use Mutilate, Stealth, Vanish, Garrote, Sprint, Feint, Envenom, Slice & Dice, Rupture, Fan of Knives, Kick, Cloak of Shadows and possibly Recuperate. That's 13 abillities TOPS, and that's including all their cooldowns, utility and all that fancy stuff. Rogues have less abilities they use in combat than we have even just heals, excluding cooldowns, dispels and utility spells.

And then I haven't even begun talking about triage, which plays and will play a HUGE role in what ability you use - a Rogue can react to his environment, use Sprint when he needs to get out of fire, that's it. We can use CoH when there's-global-raid-damage (as part of a CoH-PoH-ProM-HW:Sanc-Renew rotation), or when we quickly-need-to-put-instant-healing-on-someone-who's-near-dead-while-not-in-Heal-Chakra-If-Renew-Chakra's-Aspire-won't-be-enough, or when we just-want-to-top-off-a-group-but-don't-want-to-use-PoH-due-to-mana, or if-we're-out-of-mana-and-need-to-do-the-most-efficient-heal-with-the-1K-mana-we-have, etc. There's literally about eight different situations for every healing spell we have. As it is now, holy priests are probably the most complicated class/spec to ever have existed in the game, really.

@RedPhoenixxx: Streetlight Manifesto? On Allakhazam? Hoozah, have a cookie my friend!

It’s a neat little interrupt for anyone foolish enough to cast anything but instants. It’s a good filler in your rogue partner’s stunlock rotation or in a CC chain. It’s good cover when you need to get off a cast time spell of your own. I’ve found Chastise --> Mind Control to be very effective against melee, and also useful to run enemy healers out of LoS of their teammates.

Mind Control is far less prone to break with range, by the way. I’ve had much success in WSG from controlling the healer in a flag-running pack and marching them the opposite direction while their flag carrier blithely runs into the midfield meatgrinder.

Note that Chastise does have a facing requirement, so you really must hotkey it so you can mouseturn to nail that rogue behind you.

I haven’t been using any Chakra but Smite in PVP, which is great for helping focus people down. Chakra+trinket+Smite macro --> Mind Blast --> Shadow Word: Pain does a lot of damage in very little time, and then you have twenty more seconds of extra-powerful DPS.

The battlegrounds are still stupidly easy due to folks focusing on new abilities instead of objectives, but I’ve seen enough to be pleased with the outlook. After playing Shadow for a while, I tell myself, “I guess I should go play Holy now, awwww.” Then, after playing Holy a while, I tell myself “I guess I should go play Shadow now, awwwww.” I’m loving the new Priest PVP.

Remembering that I am heals, and since smite can heal, I dropped glyph of smite for glyph of holy nova. I can get in an extra 4 holy nova in 15 sec with it. It's situational, but combined with power infusion in a macro, very fun.

I also found that without taking time to use archangel, you can still deplete your mana, so for fun I took Veiled Shadows to decrease my shadowfiend cooldown by 2 minutes and maxed Mental Agility.

I'm having fun experimenting.

Healing heroic PoS was difficult last night. Perhaps it was that everybody else was on alts, doing sub 2k dps, or maybe it's me.

What worked good in Ahn'kahet: The Old Kingdom, was to have a relatively new healing druid main heal and I did dps smiting, contributing to the healing. It was interesting at the end, where I was saying on vent that I was having a hard time killing his healer, and he was having a hard time killing me.

I have to believe that going forward, running randoms isn't going to be quite the cakewalk it once was. I will be giving my holy offspec a try to see how that goes.

The only problem with Holy, really, is mana regen. I find myself running out of mana in some raid fights. There are ways around it at 80, like reducing the SF cooldown, using SPI, etc, but it's still a bit tight. If we get Archangel at 85, then i guess that would mitigate the problem somewhat. Moz?

I also find myself constantly casting a shield on myself, simply for the speed boost. I log on to wow, I cast a shield. I run around until sprint wears off, and then cast another shield. Then decide what I'm gonna do. And then I cast another shield.

You are not alone.