#0 - March 21, 2007, 8:31 p.m.
You guys need to relax and think twice. Priests are just as good in PvP as paladins. Feel like your too squishy? That your too weak to PvP? Dont lose faith my friend, you just need to know how to prioritize your gear stats, have a decent spec, and a little bit skill helps ofc.
Heres how you can improve in the Arena.
1) Basic Equipment
Go to your auction house, Search: "Physician" in Cloth above level 65, and replace any green/crap-blues u have with those items (im not kidding, do it!). If there are none in there, come back another time. They might be green items, but these stats is exactly what you need in PvP. Items from honorpoints and arena points are also what you are looking for. Do _not_ go out and grab all the spirit/int/+healing equipment you can, cous what good does those stats if your dead and cant heal anyway?
I suggest you go arena when you have more than 9k hp with selfbuff, +550 healing or more, and around 8k mana.
2) Talents
Go to your Priest Trainer, and spec this: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=dxMGzhrzZfVthc0RVhN
There are ofc other builds that also are good. This is a spec that your PvE guild would accept (atleast i hope so) so you dont have to re-spec everytime you wanna do Arena.
If your in a PvP guild and dont give a crap about PvE, i think you should go with this spec instead: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=dxMGzbTxMZfVthcMoV0h
Be aware that this spec sacrifices some healing power and in return you get more survivability. Survivability is good but you dont wanna gimp urself too much, so i suggest you only spec this if you have around 800 healing, otherwise your heals will be quite weak.
3) What to do inside Arena
I assume you already have friends you can team up with in the arena (5vs5 - where the real arena points are at). Some teams have 3 healers and 2 dps'ers, others have 2 healers and 3 dps'ers.
Heres what you should do:
If 3 healers:
Let the other healers do main healing, your task is back-up heals (only if somebody is close to duying), keeping PoM up, but mainly Mana Burn their Paladin/Druid/Shaman (who ever is healing). Note that i dont mention priests, thats because these classes have lower mana than Priests so you get them oom allot faster. If the Druid suddenly begin regenerating mana very fast, its cous he used Innervate on himself. Innervate can be dispelled, so do that. Mana Burn is infact one of the most powerful spells a Priest have. Use it or reroll!
In Blades Edge Arena (not the circular one) its a good idea to use Mind Control if the opponents are not going for you at one point, maybe they are focusing on the "real" healers or whatever. At this point you Mind Control their Rogue/Warrior/Hunter/Paladin/Shamans off the ramp, so he have to run back up again. Do not Mind Control weaker classes such as Warlock/Mages/Priests, especially not Undead ones. Why dont you wanna MC these targets off? Because with those on the ramp, and their healers below, they will recieve zero heals and your rogues/warriors/hunters will basicly tear them apart.
If 2 healers:
You will have to heal now, use Greater Heal (talents reduce its casting time to 2.5 seconds). Do _not_ use Flash Heal because you will go oom in the blink of an eye. Ussualy you will end up as a punchbag for the opponent dps. Thats not gonna be a surprise to you, you are a cloth wearer and theres only 2 guys healing, so ofc they will grab whoever looks weakest!
When you get attacked (and you will!) keep Renew up on yourself at all times, and be aware on your healers whereabouts, being in his Line of Sight ussualy means life or death. Dont think you can just stand there healing urself while ur being beated, cous if theres a rogue and something else, instants are your only friend. When you have cast PW:shield, PoM and Renew, and there are no more instants to help yourself out, begin dispelling your party members if they have DoTs on them. Dont just stand there and take the beating, thats the worst thing u can do. Always do something!
The great thing is, the longer you are alive, the longer time does your teams dps have to kill the opponent healers, and even if you end up dead. It doesnt mean that much if the opponent team has lost 2 players in the meantime.
AND REMEMBER TO HEAL WHEN YOU DIE. Cous with my spec, you have Spirit of Redemption. Dont waste a second of it! Finish it off with PoM just before the timer ends.
Also, use Shadowfiend when your on 40% mana, not 0%.
Note: It is possible to ressurect your teammates inside the arena, even though its rare that you can pull it off since it requires you to be out of combat AND not touched for 10 seconds.
4) Trinkets
If your engineer, create the Gnomish Poultryzer Trinket (or the goblin one with same stats) that gives +45 stamina. Equip it even though you cannot active its use-effect inside the Arena. As other trinket, use Gnomish Net-o-Matic. This will help you get Warriors off you and keep urself up just a little bit longer.
If your not an engineer, use Insignia of the Alliance/horde, and the Arena Grand Master Trinket (you get that by winning the chest in Gurubashi Arena 10 times i believe).
5) Collect Resilience!
At this point it will take some time before you can improve. Next step is to improve your gear by getting lots of the Resilience stat. Resilience reduces your chance to get Critted, but also reduce the damage you take WHEN your opponents crit you. Resilience items are not common in instances though, you have to grind Battlegrounds to get them, and/or do Arena for Arena Points.
So how do u get started on getting this equipment? Where to begin?
Get 2 parts of the Honor Items set, i suggest the Robe and Shoulders. There are 3 sockets in the robe, fill those out with Solid Star of Elune (+12 stamina) in each socket. And drop 2 Solid Star of Elune in the Shoulders too. This 2-set-bonus rewards 35 Resiliece, and the items themselves gives 17 and 15. (the socket bonus from these items reward resilience, but dont drop crap gems in them just to get this resilience bonus, cous as i said above: Stamina > Resilience).
Sooner or later, you will get enough arena points to get the Gladiator Helm. Drop a Solid Star of Elune in it together with the Meta-gem: "Powerful Earthstorm Diamond". This metagem gives 18 stamina and a 5% chance to resist Stun. This is the best PvP meta-gem for an Arena Priest. The helm awards 26 resilience.
The next Arena Item you should buy is the gloves. These award 25 resilience.
The set-bonus of 2 gladiator items is 35 resilience.
To sum it up: With these 4 items, you will get 163 resilience and 240 stamina, not bad huh?
In order to get these items you need: 3.000 arena points, 39.150 honorpoints and 50 Arathi Basin marks.
Note: When Blessed Resilience procs, it renders you immunity to Crits for 6 seconds, it has 60% chance to proc everytime you get crittet. But there a nice thing about it: An attack that WOULD have critted, but didnt do it due to your high Resilience stat, will still be able to proc Blessed Resilience! So you get immune to crits without ever had recieved a real crit, wonderful! (this is _not: a bug, blizzard have made it this way to increase the usefullness of the Resilience stat for Holy Priests who wouldnt take it if it werent for this.)
Note: A high amount of Resilience can even result in attacks with a 100% chance to critical strike (for example a rogue using Cold Blood) to turn into a non-crit.
6) Stat Calculator **still in testing**
To figure out what item is the best choice, we use a stat calculator. Simply take the individual stats from the item, multiply that stat number with the number given below. Do that with all the different types of stats the item might have, and then add the numbers together for the final item value. If the result is higher than what you already were using, replace it with the new item.
-------------------------------------------
Resilience x 1,2
Stamina x 1,0
Intellect x 0,8
Dmg/Healing x 0,7
Healing x 0,6
Mana/5sec x 2,0
Spirit x 0.2
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Maybe this sound a bit strange, let me explain with an example:
Hierophant's Sash, +28 stamina, +19 intellect, +19 Resilience, +22 dmg/healing
Voidweave Cilice of the Physician, +34 Stamina, +23 Intellect, +50 Healing
What item should you use? Lets try the calculator:
Hierophant's Sash: 28 Stamina + 15,2 Intellect + 22,8 Resilience + 15,4 dmg/healing = 81,4 points
Voidweave Cilice of the Physician: 34 Stamina + 18,4 Intellect + 30 Healing = 82,4 points
The winner became the Voidweave Cilice of the Physician
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Note: Mana Burn, which will basicly be the only offensive spell you will use does NOT get ANY bonus to its Mana Drain Amount based on your +spell dmg. You can have +1210 Spell dmg, or +34, and it will still only drain 1021-1079 which is what the tooltip says for a Rank 7 Mana Burn spell.
This is the reason why +Spelldmg is not prioritized higher than it is, simply because we rarely use it. However +43 Spell dmg/healing is still better than +47 Healing.
Situations can happen where a Shadow Word: Death is that last burst needed to finish off a player before he gets his heal. Even though ur not designed to do damage, you are more useful when doing so in some situations, dont forget that!
Spirit Stat is for me an almost useless stat in Arena PvP. You only get full effect of Spirit when your out of combat, and its VERY rare that you get out of combat for a longer duration inside the Arena, instead go for Mana/5sec
