Priest buildsedit

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Contents

Disclaimer

As with all examples of talent builds or point distributions, the optimum build depends largely on your playstyle (PvP, soloing, raiding, etc., or a specific combination of spells you like to use) as well as gear, party members, and other factors. The builds listed below are not for everyone, nor are they always the best. They are at worst, opinions, and are usually subjective.

Leveling builds

If you intend to level your priest mainly through solo questing, a shadow build produces high damage, good survivability and has the least amount of down time between 'kills'. If you intend to level your priest through instances, a holy or discipline build is the way to go (you should then read Leveling a Holy Priest). Levelling as discipline can give you good survivability with strong shields, and increased stamina, intellect, haste and healing through talents. Each build has its advantages, although Holy and Shadow priests 'dip in' to Discipline for the Meditation talent.

It should be noted that some players have found healing as Shadow possible at lower levels, but the healing capabilities are compromised with no talents to improve healing.

Every spec has a few 'essential talents' in every tree. Here is a quick list of some:

Example Shadow Levelling Spec

A recommendation for how the talents might be placed as you level up:

This spec utilizes a dominantly shadow spec with a few points in disc to gain the advantage of Improved Inner Fire, and Meditation. It's advisable to put most of your points in the Shadow tree first, then flesh out the Discipline tree. A strong spell rotation for single targets using this spec: Vampiric Touch, Shadow Word: Pain, Vampiric Embrace, Mind Blast, and Mind Flay. Psychic Scream, Power Word: Shield, and Dispersion are used periodically to reduce the amount of incoming damage.

Example Hybrid Levelling Spec

A recommendation for how the talents might be placed as you level up:

A hybrid spec, going into the shadow tree for Spirit Tap and Mind Flay, then further upgrades in the disc/holy trees as far as Surge of Light or Power Infusion, whichever tree the player decides to flesh out first. This build will give decent damage, regen and survivability. The fact that it's mainly holy/disc makes it a viable healing spec too.

PvE

A breakdown of each tree:

  • Discipline: Discipline priests are healers and damage mitigators. They are not built to be adept as the main raid healer due to lack of AoE heal spells, but fantastic tank healers. A good Disc healer will never top the healing charts - because if they time their moves and mitigate damage correctly, they'll never need to.
  • Holy: Holy priests have strong AoE healing spells and high heal output, and make ideal raid healers as well as having talents for tank healing. Holy priests are the all-rounders of healing classes and can easily adapt to different situations.
  • Shadow: Shadow Priests are the damage dealers of the priest class, and can take on a shadow form to improve their shadow damage even further at the sacrifice of holy (healing) spells. They have powerful DoTs and an array of buffs they can provide for a group or raid.

Image:Disc_Spec_RoundIcon.png Discipline builds

Tips on playing Discipline
You should prioritise your stats when making gear choices as follows-
  • SP > Crit > Int > Mp5/Spirit
Once you reach 25-30% holy crit unbuffed, your stat priorities will change to haste instead of crit. Disc priests will be hard pressed to run out of mana with all their damage mitigation, so spirit and MP5 are low priority.
Rotations:
While there isn't a set-in-stone "rotation", using spells in a certain order does benefit the disc healer.
Grace will proc whenever you use Penance or 3x Flash Heals on a target for a 9% increased healing effectiveness. Possibility to proc Divine Aegis (damage absorber) on each blast from Penance or Flash heal.
Prayer of Mending has a chance to proc Divine Aegis on any party member it jumps to if it gives them a critical heal.
Borrowed Time allows you pull out a very fast Greater Heal or Prayer of Healing to help a tank or raid recover from heavy damage.
Suggested Major Glyphs:
3.1 Disc Raid Healing Build (56/15/0) [Current as of 3.2.0]
This spec is built to get the most out of healing as Discipline. In the Disc tree, all talents that improve buffs and increase healing and crit chance are taken, as well as mana regeneration. Improved Renew gives a stronger instant-cast, non-channelled heal. Opting to take Divine Fury over Healing Focus grants a fast, huge emergency heal with Greater Heal + PW:S with Borrowed Time on the offchance that Penance is down. Inspiration is taken given the likelihood that you will crit on a heal and thus grant even more damage mitigation.
Raid Healer Build (57/14/0) [Current as of 3.2.0]
This is a standard Discipline healer build with the inclusion of Desperate Prayer. Although Divine Fury is not talented, don't leave Greater Heal out completely, as Borrowed Time will cut the casting time down.
Smite Build/Holy DPS build (43/28/0) [Current as of 3.3.0]
This is an alternative to Shadow's style of DPS. The idea is to keep the Holy Fire debuff up for Glyph of Smite. Alternatively you could also keep your Shadow Word: Pain up with Glyph of Shadow Word: Pain as well for additonal mana. Smite build can use Holy Nova more effectively in AoE situations than Shadow as well and can abuse it for Surge of Light procs.

Image:PrHoly Spec RoundIcon.png Holy builds

Suggested Major Glyphs:
Cookie-Cutter Guardian Spirit/Circle of Healing Build (14/57/0) [Current as of 3.2.0]
A build commonly referred to as the standard for Guardian Spirit/Circle of Healing builds, it specializes in healing up raid-wide damage while also having adequate tools to deal with incoming personnel or tank burst. This build is great for fights with a lot of AoE damage, and most holy builds vary little from this mainframe.
Utility Guardian Spirit/Circle of Healing Build (14/57/0) [Current as of 3.2.0]
Similar to the cookie-cutter build, with alternative talents Body and Soul and Lightwell for situational utility.
Ulduar AoE holy build (13/58/0) [Current as of 3.2.0]
Similar to the cookie cutter build, but most notably drops 2 points from Empowered renew and 1 from inner focus to pick up test of faith. Leaving one point in empowered renew will still allow it to have a first tick that can crit to proc holy con. and surge of light, with only a very small loss of healing on renew. The build will more than make up for that small loss with test of faith for the heavy AoE damage that is Ulduar.
Ulduar raid healer build (13/58/0) [Current as of 3.2.0]
This build takes raid healing to the next level while dropping talents that benefit your flash heal and picking up all the talents to increase survivability and AoE healing output. This build is very gear dependent and requires a 10% haste and 25% critical strike rating(s) and about 2500 spell power self-buffed. Glyphs: [Glyph of Prayer of Healing] , [Glyph of Circle of Healing] , [Glyph of Renew] . The play style involves spot healing with flash heal and renew and removing greater heal from your spell rotation. You will primarily cast Circle of Healing and Prayer of Healing while spot healing with Renew because your Empowered renew should have an initial heal of ~2k and tick for ~2300. Since the spec does not take Empowered Healing, your flash heal is not your strength, thus we skip Divine Fury, since this only really benefits your Greater heal. You will cast flash heal when surge of light procs and always keep Serendipity procced to assure a hasted Prayer of Healing when needed. Finally 5 points are entered into Spell Warding and 3 points are entered into Blessed Resilience. These two talents are chosen because as a raid healer you will most likely not be in range of melee attacking mobs, but you are likely to pull agro on ranged attacking mobs. This build is also viable for 10/25 man ToC and ToGC.
Hybrid Healing Disc/Holy Spirit-Crit Build (37/34/0) [Current as of 3.2.0]
This build is based around high amounts of Spirit and Crit. This can be difficult to achieve as you commonly will not find Spirit and Crit together on the same item. However if you can manage your 5 second out of casting time and synch it with procs of Holy Concentration, Surge of Light, and proper use of Inner Focus you can easily keep your mana high for when things get rough. Another thing about this build is that it is very flexible. You can easily move many talent points around and still achieve a very powerful raiding build.
Hybrid Healing Disc/Holy - Mental Strength/Circle of Healing (25/46/0) [Current as of 3.2.0]
High Crit and Infight-Manareg but still good Healingpower. Optionally you can switch the point from Lightwell to another Empowered Healing, as Lightwell only can be used with tactically advanced groups. Missing Guardian Spirit makes you less likely to be chosen as Main-Tank-Healer, but in total you have high potential to be on top of the effective healing list, as for the high average-healingpower, mana and manareg.

Image:Shad Spec RoundIcon.png Shadow builds

Suggested Major Glyphs:
Basic Shadow Raiding Build (14/0/57) [Current as of 3.2.0]

Number crunching has showed that the increased spirit effect from Improved Spirit Tap will improve your average spell power by some arbitrary number close to 6, and is therefore not worth the 5 talent points spent in it. This build takes all the necessary talents to improve DPS, as well as raid survival skills such as Improved Vampiric Embrace, and Focused Mind to improve mana efficiency. It's a solid raiding build.

Another Shadow Raiding Build (14/0/57) [Current as of 3.2.0]

This build contains all talents that improve DPS as well as Spirit Tap/Improved Spirit Tap, if that tickles your fancy. If VE healing is not seeming useful the two points can be moved into Focused Mind for slightly better mana efficiency.

Focused Mind Raiding Shadow Spec (14/0/57) [Current as of 3.2.0]

This build is every similar to the one above, but it sacrifices 10% range from Shadow Reach and 2/2 Improved Vampiric Embrace in order to gain mana efficiency from 3/3 Focused Mind (priest talent).

Shadow Solo PVE Build (14/0/57) [Current as of 3.2.0]

Excellent build for solo play. This build has maximum DPS with mana efficiency. Also Psychic Horror will help immensely against weapon classes.

PvP builds

Cookie-Cutter Disc PvP/Arena Build (57/14/0) [Current as of 3.2.0]
This build is based on high Survivability, with great mana regeneration. Great for PvP and Arena.
Alternate Disc PvP Build (54/17/0) [Current as of 3.3.0]
This build is decent, as it allows faster casting and mitigating talents, including Inspiration. Glyphs include Glyph of Penance, Glyph of Pain Suppression, and Glyph of Power Word: Shield.
Shadow/Disc Hybrid Build (PvP) (38/0/33) [Current as of 3.2.0]
Defensive DPS spec, the priest can mitigate incoming damage with Shadowform as well as being able to protect themself and others with powerful Shields.
Shadow Cookie-Cutter PvP Build (17/0/54) [Current as of 3.2.0]
Typical talents taken for a shadow damage PvP priest, going into discipline as far as Improved Mana Burn.
Survivability Spec for priest/meelee (58/13/0) Gives max survivability at the cost of mana regen and maximum mana. Very deep disc, with holy down to Desperate Prayer. Good for arena with DK, ret pala or warrior

External links

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