I found an article that really has my interest because of my newfound obsession with talent builds. Talent builds used to bore the crap out of me when I was a warrior. I didn’t want to go Protection because I wasn’t interested in competing with our GM for main tank duty. His gear was better and I wasn’t going to catch up any time soon. If it had STR, STA, or AGI, I wanted the piece. If the talent point said “damage” or “crit,” I wanted to spend the point.
Now that I am a priest, it seems like there are a lot more options, and even one that I had never considered before reading this article on a DPS Holy build. WoW Insider has been rocking my world recently with new in-game concepts that I was unaware of, despite my constant surfing. Maybe I should play more and surf less, but I do have a job. 🙂
Several things would be different for me if I went to this build now. The biggest is my lack of level 60 gear. I’m guessing that with the stats he put up for his damage and crit rate, he’s got some end-game instance gear. I am 6 points away from having his level 62 build. Have any of you tried a Holy build with the intent being DPS rather than purely healing?
Here is that build if you didn’t click-through to read the article:
Discipline (14 points)5/5 Wand Specialization
3/5 Silent Resolve
2/2 Improved Power Word: Fortitude
1/1 Inner Focus
3/3 MeditationHoly (32 points)
2/2 Healing Focus
3/3 Improved Renew
5/5 Holy Specialization
5/5 Divine Fury
1/1 Holy Nova
3/3 Inspiration
3/3 Improved Healing
2/2 Searing Light
1/1 Spirit of Redemption
5/5 Spiritual Guidance
2/2 Surge of Light
Shadow (7 points)
5/5 Spirit Tap
2/2 Improved Shadow Word: Pain
I still use my Hoodoo stick from ZG, but I do recall a quest in Hellfire Penn that gives an offhand as a quest reward. I don’t think Ramparts, BF or Shattered Halls have offhands as drops (could be wrong) but Slave Pens has a healy offhand drop and the Cenarion Expedition has a really nice off-hand with Exalted rep.
Pure dps holy damage in my oppinion is as follows:
Discipline:
5 – wand specialization
2 – improved power word fortitude
3 – improved power word shield
2 – martyrdom
1 – silent resolve
1 – inner focus
3 – meditation
3 – improved inner fire
5 – mental strength
1 – devine spirit
2 – improved devine spirit
5 – force of will
1 – power infusion
Holy:
5 – holy specialization
5 – divine fury
1 – holy nova
3 – blessed recovery
2 – insperation
2 – holy reach
2 – searing light
5 – spiritual guidance
Shadow:
2 – spirit tap
this is the dps build with holy damage in mind
you will need as much plus damage as u can get.
but i believe that the burst damage can compete even with the other dps caster classes
let me know how u feel about it
kazimarou, I’m not sure about giving up all the Shadowy delight that I have now, but I might give this one shot. I believe I have something in the neighborhood of 560 +Healing and 510 +Dmg.
How is this for survivability?
actually, the only real reason to go shadow is to have a replacement for a shammy’s water totem with a free heal that pulls more aggro the harder you dps. simply put, you pug as shadow and don’t either downgrade or hold back, you will die. a far more reliable (speaking from experience, i’ve seen them go head to head in raid after raid) raider is a smite spec’d priest stacking crit and hit (all 70 blues) will outdps a shadow priest (in kara+ epics). to do this effectively…take everything you find with crit on it (throw in some hit rating for boss fights) and spec down to improved prayer of spr in disc, and down to surge of light in holy, making sure to grab the reduce casting time, higher crit, searing light, and holy reach. with average gear and a ret pally in the group, holy priests can rival an affliction lock. people don’t accept this build…but it is one of the most incredible ones i’ve seen.
that last spec that was posted i think you looked of=ver a few things like surge of light which gives you a chance to have a mana free instant cast smite and though it says it cant crit i have had it crit before yes very rare but it has happend now that goes for all crits if you crit on a heal or on a damage spell you have a 50%
I liked the build I plan on using it myself. atm I am a 64 dwarf. I also leveled a warrior and found it to be too boring.
Its good to see some other USF people areound we are going to take over the world. Muhahaha
Due to that I don’t know how much a holy dps priest would aggro yet I can’t say how right or wrong your points suggested to spend in Silent Resolve is correct. But in PvE raids aggro maintenance is more important then most of other talents.
I searched for this as I want to get my priest up and run as holy dps, and a hybrid build in disc and holy is needed…
I found that Spirit Tap makes lvling alot easier… If you get gear specific to holy damage you don’t want to use shadow word: pain… The Flask made for end game raiding that gives bonus to holy damage, does not include shadow as far as I know….
I made this build so far, so I would love your points of view on it:
(30/27/4)
Disc: Wand (full), Silent Resolve (full), Improved Fortitude (full), Inner Focus, Meditation (full), Mental Agility (4/5), Improved Mana Burn (full), Divine Spirit, Improved Divine Spirit (full), and Force of Will (full).
Holy: Healing Focus (full), Improved Renew (full), Holy Spec (full), Divine Fury (full), Holy Nova, Holy Reach (full), Searing Light (full), Spiritual Guidance (full), Spirit of Redempion, and Surge of Light (1/2).
Shadow: Spirit Tap (4/5)
As I only would need spirit tap on trash whilst end game raiding (and bosses with adds), i have only used 4 points in this talents…
I’ve been holy dps lately because of a new 70 druid healer in the guild and she pretty much replaced me. So I tried a dps spec. I could pull about 1000 dps on average. 2000-7000dps on aoe pulls. But since 3.0 it went down a bit because of the major nerf on priests.. and complete crap that they have been given. With the new changes to 3.0, this is the spec i found best for 10-man, 25-mans:
Disc:
5/5 Twin Disciplines
1/5 Unbreakable Will or Inner Focus
3/3 Silent Resolve
2/2 Improved Fort
3/3 Meditation
1/1 Inner Focus
5/5 Mental Agility
1/1 Divine Spirit
2/2 Imp Divine Spirit
5/5 Enlightenment
1/1 Power Infusion
Holy:
5/5 Holy specialization
3/3 Improved renew and 2/2 Healing focus or 5/5 Spell Warding
5/5 Divine Fury
1/1 Desperate Prayers
2/2 Searing Light
2/2 Holy Reach
5/5 Spiritual Guidance
2/2 Surge of Light
Surge of light can be switched out with focused power for 4% more spell power and reduced mast dispell cast. But i prefer the occasion insta-smite. A rotation is very hard to define, because it all depends on what your attacking and how much health it has. With 3.0 changes, everyone’s dmg got so buffed, that everything dies almost instantly. With that in mind, i go:
Holy fire, Smite, Smite, Smite, Death, and repeat smite until dead.
During bosses, which of course last longer, I roughly do a rotation of:
Holy Fire, Pain, Devouring Plague, smite, death, smite, smite and replace DoTs when necessary and use death when off cd.
Some people have said that a rotation of holy nova until proc surge of light, then insta-smite a mob and repeat. Although this method does work, it only works if there are 3 or 4+ mobs in the pull. In fact, I wouldn’t even do it on 3. To AoE efficiently, you would need around 300 m/5s (I do have more than that, but I dont stop AoEing to cast insta-smite). Using CDs when you can. My personal cds, being a BE, i use arcane torrent, and have earing of soulful meditation (increases spirit by 300), i get up to 400m/5s.
I say DO NOT use Hymn of Hope in combat. Hymn of Hope is worthless unless you are given time where you are absolutely doing nothing. If you are at 0% mana and dont have a good mana regen, then yes, maybe its useful for long fights. But I always use it as a substitution for drinking.
The reason I don’t spec spirit tab in the shadow tree is because that is only useful if you get the killing blow on the target you’re killing. If your in a 5-man or above, that can be hard to proc. And 5 points can easily help dps elsewhere. Such as surge of light or enlightenment.
Hey! Great post, I’ve always been enthusiastic about such builds 🙂 It’s easy for people to say certain specs won’t work, or that other classes will be better at DPSing. Actually, if a Mage wasn’t a better DPS than a priest no matter what spec, I’d be worried for the game in general lol. Though, holy priests can indeed pull some pretty hefty DPS..
But either way, with the spec you indicated, you’d still function as a decent supiment healer as well! So nuke your heart out, but when the group needs a little more healage, you’ll be pumped you’re a holy priest 🙂
Question for you though, and this relates to a straight Holy Priest spec (with or without slight Discipline adds): We all agree on Spell Power, but what is everybody’s take on Critical vs. Haste? It’s a toss up for me… you get 25% refund for healing someone past full.. therefore, spamming flash heal works out stellar with Haste + mana saving.. Plus, less time for “bad things” to happen with flash 🙂 Thoughts?