I have been asked a few times recently on how I play the priest class, the talents I chose, the gear I pick, the gems and enchants I use. While there is no perfect answer there are a few simple rules that I use to help me be the 2nd greatest priest you know. Today I’m going to cover the first phase of making sure I end up 3rd on your list, that is your talent choices.
Right, you rolled a priest and got it to level 10, the UI is now shouting loudly at you that you must pick talents. This is your first real choice as a priest and one that we all know you’re hovering your cursor over on the far right side ready to click shadow, and sure that is a real good DPS spec for levelling, but you know that no one likes a shadow priest as much as they like a healing one so resist that urge, Shadow can come at level 30 when you get dual specs. You need to feel the joy of levelling as a healer and really the first 20 levels will be so fast and easy there is no excuse not to do the healer thing 1st.
So you now have to choose Holy or Discipline, for that true healer feeling Holy is the way to go but Discipline is still a very good choice and if you have never healed before I think it is the easier specialisation to ease you into a healing role simply because Power Word: Shield lives up to its name in early content 5 mans and gives you a chance to make the occasional mistake and get away with it.
But Holy is the traditional route and the one most people will take so this is where I will start. While the order I’m taking the talents is for someone levelling, the final spec is one I use in endgame as a raiding priest, so I’ll even save you the cost of respeccing at 85, so please send me that 1g if you’re feeling generous.
Tier 1 Talents: Improved Renew, Empowered Healing, Divine Fury
Your first 5 talents must be spent here but these are all really good talents so we will be spending our first 8 talents on this tier. The first 3 should be spent in Divine Fury to get the cast time down of you main spells Smite and Heal down by half a second. The order you pick up the 2 points in Improved Renew and Empowered Healing is irrelevant but I would take the Improved Renew first and to be honest the time spent levelling from 13 to 18 is pretty trivial now so just make sure you take all 8 from this tier. Your talent tree should now look like:
Tier 2 Talents: Desperate Prayer, Surge of Light, Inspiration
This tier is not so good as the first, although for the levelling priest a has 2 awesome talents. Desperate Prayer is your Oh S*!t button and will get you out of many sticky situations. While you’re smiting away on them murlocs praying for an eye to drop the mana free, instant cast of a Flash Heal a Surge of Light proc gives is also useful but its only a 3% chance per point and invariably it will come when you’re at full health or on the smite that killed the murloc anyway. However, a small chance is better none so spend 1 points on it as we need to get down to tier 3. The reason i say this is that Inspiration is pretty lacklustre at this level due to the lack of crit chance you have and the low level of damage incoming per hit (10% is likely to be only 2 HP if you’re lucky). Your talent tree should now look like:
Tier 3 Talents: Divine Touch, Holy Concentration, Lightwell, Tome of Light
Divine Touch is another great talent and you should place the full 2 points here to get 10% of your Renew as a heal at the time you cast your renew. Its not much but a small instant heal is something that can give you that extra second to get an almost dead player back to a stable condition while you focus on the tank our yourself.
The final 10 points are free to be spent anywhere but my recommendations would be:
3 points in Twin Disciplines from the Discipline tree as extra healing and damage is always good;
3 point in Mental Agility from the Discipline tree reducing the mana costs of your instants is always a winner;
2 point in Veiled Shadows from the Holy tree reducing the cooldown of your Mana Friend is godly in raids and also useful for when that hunter pulls the next pack when you are almost out of mana;
2 point in Darkness from the Holy tree rather than Improved Power Word:Shield simply because your mana is better spent on faster group heals than the high cost of your weak Power Word: Shield;
This leave you with a 6/31/4 talent build that looks like this:
To import this build into a level 85 character, copy and paste the text below:
/run t,p,a={2,12,23,33,41,52,62,72,82,91,102,111,121,142,151,161,183,201,211,1,23,33,3,12,32,}SetPreviewPrimaryTalentTree(t[1],GetActiveTalentGroup())for i=1,#t do a=t[i]if a<9 then p=a else AddPreviewTalentPoints(p,floor(a/10),a%10)end end
