Duct Tape and a Prayer » Priest Talents II: WotLK Edition

February 8, 2009
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Originally posted here on 9/15/08.

Since priest talents are changing significantly in Wrath of the Lich King – as was pointed out on WOW Insider – I figured I’d rework my talent recommendations to take the LK talent spreads into account.

NB: I’m not in the beta. Some of these talents may have play implications that I’m not familiar with.

Spirit Tap 1/3 (Shadow). This is an unbeatable leveling talent; it gives you +100% Spirit and +50% mana regeneration during casting for 15 seconds after you get the killing blow on a target that gives you XP or honor. The more mana you regenerate, the less downtime you’ll have. When you’re healing, though, this talent is next to useless, since you’ll almost never be getting the killing blow.
Spirit Tap 2/3.
Spirit Tap 3/3.
Twin Disciplines 1/5 (Discipline). This replaces Wand Specialization in the Discipline Tree. It grants +1% spell damage and healing per talent point to all of the instant-cast spells in your repertoire. I’m not sure if this includes spells whose durations are reduced to instant.
Twin Disciplines 2/5.
Twin Disciplines 3/5.
Twin Disciplines 4/5.
Twin Disciplines 5/5.
Healing Focus 1/2 (Holy). Healing Focus prevents spell pushback, giving you a 35% chance per point to resist pushback from damage while you cast any healing spell. Great for soloing (since you can get that heal off while the mob’s hitting you) and essential for grouping (since you can cast through AOE and the occasional accidental add).
Healing Focus 2/2.
Improved Power Word: Fortitude 1/2 (Discipline). Increases the Stamina bonus from PW:F by 30% per talent point. PW:F is the buff you’ll cast most often, and improving it can only help matters.
Improved PW:F 2/2.
Improved Renew 1/3 (Holy). Increases the amount healed by your Renew spell by 5% per point. Renew is probably the spell you’ll cast most as a priest; between this and Twin Disciplines, your Renew will heal for 25% more than its tooltip value, making it invaluable as a Band-Aid spell.
Improved Renew 2/3.
Improved Renew 3/3.
Silent Resolve 1/3 (Discipline). Each point in this talent reduces the threat that your Holy and Discipline spells generate by 7% (up to 20% at 3 points) and reduces the chance your spells will be dispelled by 10%. This is pretty much a grouping and PVP talent, but it’s still handy to have.
Silent Resolve 2/3.
Silent Resolve 3/3.
Meditation 1/3 (Discipline). Allows 10% per point of your mana regeneration to continue while you cast. Normally, when you successfully cast a spell – that is, when you pay the mana cost of the spell, even if it’s reduced to 0 – your mana regeneration stops entirely for five seconds; this is the much-referenced Five Second Rule, or 5SR. With this talent, you can get up to 30% of your mana regeneration to continue while the 5SR is in effect – or up to 80% while Spirit Tap is active. As above, the more mana you regenerate in combat, the less downtime you’ll have, and the better the chance that you’ll survive the combat.
Meditation 2/3.
Meditation 3/3.
Spell Warding 1/5 (Holy). Reduces the spell damage you take by 2% per point. This is a straight-up survival talent; it’s not worth much against melee opponents, but casters will have that much more trouble taking you down – and in later instances, this will be invaluable in surviving AOE or multiple-target attacks.
Spell Warding 2/5.
Spell Warding 3/5.
Spell Warding 4/5.
Spell Warding 5/5.
Improved Power Word: Shield 1/3 (Discipline). I’m not a big fan of Power Word: Shield; it’s essentially my “oh crap” button, and its job is to keep the target alive until I can get a heal off. It has its proponents in solo play, but to me it’s just another way to spend mana, and when I’m soloing I want to conserve mana as much as possible. (Besides, ideally I’ll be wanding by the time the mob gets to me, and Renew will heal more damage than PW:S can prevent for less mana.) However, we need to put two talent points somewhere, and one of the noted flaws of PW:S is that it gets markedly less effective in the levels leading up to the next rank of the spell, so we’ll put two points here and increase PW:S’s damage absorption by 5% per point.
Improved PW:S 2/3.
Mental Agility 1/5 (Discipline). This talent reduces the mana cost of your instant spells by 2% per point. As I’m sure you can tell, I’m a big proponent of Renew, and reducing its mana cost just makes it that much more efficient. At this point you have +25% to Renew’s healing and -10% to its mana cost; in other words, according to the tooltip, the spell heals 400 health and costs 19% of base mana, but for you, it heals 500 health and costs 17.1% of base mana.
Mental Agility 2/5.
Mental Agility 3/5.
Mental Agility 4/5.
Mental Agility 5/5.
Divine Spirit 1/1 (Discipline). This is the zenith of the Discipline tree, as far as this build is concerned. Divine Spirit is a buff spell like Power Word: Fortitude; it grants a bonus to Spirit. At the moment, Spirit just increases your mana regeneration, but stick around for the next few talents; it’s about to get a lot more powerful.
Improved Divine Spirit 1/2 (Discipline). This talent adds to the buff that Divine Spirit provides. In addition to the Spirit boost, your Divine Spirit will now increase the recipient’s spell damage and healing by 3% of their total Spirit for each point you take in the talent.
Improved Divine Spirit 2/2.

This is as far as we’re going to go in the Discipline tree. From here on out, it’s all Holy.

Holy Nova 1/1. This is the Holy priest’s only AOE spell. It damages all enemies within 10 yards, and heals all party members within the same radius. It doesn’t have great damage or healing per mana, and it takes a lot of mana, but it’s instant-cast, it’ll hit as many enemies as you can pack in a circle with a 10-yard radius, and it doesn’t generate any threat. To be honest, the best uses I’ve found for Holy Nova is to kill a lot of small enemies at once (the parasites in the treants in the Bone Wastes of Terokkar are a good example) and to run lower-level instances quickly.
Inspiration 1/3. This is the talent that will make tanks fall in love with you all over again. Inspiration grants +8% armor per talent point to your target every time one of your major heals crits, up to 25% at 3 points. Tanks love healing; tanks love armor. It’s a match made in heaven.
Inspiration 2/3.
Inspiration 3/3.
Holy Specialization 1/5. Increases the crit chance of your Holy spells by 1% per point. Paired with Inspiration, this will make tanks love you even more. (Unfortunately, people love to yell at priests for overhealing, and the more crits you get, the higher your overhealing will be. So be prepared to get yelled at.)
Holy Specialization 2/5.
Holy Specialization 3/5.
Improved Healing 1/3. Reduces the mana cost of your Lesser Heal, Heal, and Greater Heal spells by 5% per talent point. (Penance, too, but you won’t have that.) Naturally, the less mana you spend, the more you’ll have left over.
Improved Healing 2/3.
Improved Healing 3/3.
Spirit of Redemption. This talent has two features. First, it increases your total Spirit by 5% – and my tests indicate that this is calculated last, so that it includes buffs like Divine Spirit. Second, this talent keeps you up for 15 seconds when you die; while you’re in this state (and look like a Spirit Healer, which is cool by itself), you can cast any heal in your repertoire at no mana cost, and you can’t be targeted by attacks, spells, or effects. This talent alone can turn a wipe into a one-death fight, and the point you’ve spent will be worth it the second you’re the only one who has to run back (or, better yet, another rezzer brings you back up.
Spiritual Guidance 1/5. Here’s the other talent that buffs Spirit beyond the realm of mortal man. For every point you put into this talent, you get 5% of your Spirit added to your spell power (which is Lich King’s replacement for “damage and healing”). The higher your Spirit, the better you heal. That’s all there is to it.
Spiritual Guidance 2/5.
Spiritual Guidance 3/5.
Spiritual Guidance 4/5.
Spiritual Guidance 5/5.
Spiritual Healing 1/5. This is a straight-up healing boost: your healing spells heal 2% more per point in this talent.
Spiritual Healing 2/5.
Spiritual Healing 3/5.
Spiritual Healing 4/5.
Spiritual Healing 5/5.
Lightwell 1/1. This spell has been buffed from its Burning Crusade incarnation. It still creates a Lightwell, which individual party members can click to give themselves a heal-over-time. However, instead of disappearing on any damage, the buff is only cancelled when the character takes damage equal to 30% of his total health. That change alone turns Lightwell from a borderline case into a great set-and-forget healing spell.
Healing Prayers 1/2. Reduces the mana cost of your Prayer of Healing and Prayer of Mending by 10% per point. Like Improved Healing for the Heal spells, this spell means that you don’t have to worry as much about the mana cost of Prayer of Healing, and you can practically throw your Healing Frisbee with impunity.
Healing Prayers 2/2.
Holy Specialization 4/5. It seems odd to be going back to a first-tier talent, but we need to hit 35 points in Holy and none of the untaken talents are really as good as +1% Holy spell crit.
Empowered Healing 1/5. For every point you put into this spell, Greater Heal gets an additional 8% of your bonus healing and Flash Heal and Binding Heal get an additional 4%. Again, this will trend toward overhealing, but it’s worth it to have the additional healing.
Empowered Healing 2/5.
Empowered Healing 3/5.
Empowered Healing 4/5.
Empowered Healing 5/5.
Test of Faith 1/3. If someone healed by you is at or below 50% health, they get an additional 2% healing on that heal, and that heal has an additional 2% crit chance, both of those per point in the talent. It would be nice if this talent scaled depending on how low the target’s health was, but we can’t have everything!
Test of Faith 2/3.
Test of Faith 3/3.
Serendipity 1/3. You’re refunded 8% per point of the mana cost of a Greater Heal or Flash Heal that overheals. This counterbalances the talents that give you a larger chance to overheal your target.
Serendipity 2/3.
There you have it: a 23/45/3 Holy talent spec that’ll work equally well for solo play and healing in a group. If you decide that all you’re going to be doing is grouping, get rid of Spirit Tap. Of the three points you’ve freed up, put one in Serendipity 3/3, and put the other two in Mental Strength 2/5 (Discipline), which increases your total mana by 3% per point, yielding this spec. If you’re feeling saucy, take the points out of Serendipity altogether; put one more in Mental Strength 3/5 and the other two in Focused Power 2/2 (Discipline), which increases your total spell damage and healing by 2% per point, and reduces the cast time of Mass Dispel by half a second per point. This is your final “saucy” grouping spec, at 28/45/0.