I will now spec my priest into holy, but im not sure if witch one of these two trees I should pick.

Divine spirit:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=bxghzhMzbZfotccbqiu

Circle of healing:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=bxghzhZfotccbaiuVo

Any rates or suggestions to improve, please post.

I went 23/38 - but I know many priests who went 20-41 instead.  Improved Divine Spirit is such an incredible buff that I just could not see not having it, especially on a spirit-build raid priest.  I did have to convince our raid leader that several of the dsc talents counted toward 'healing' talents (since we require healers to have a minimum of 41 talent points in healing) but it wasn't hard to do once he actually looked at the tree.  DSC is where your threat reduction, mana regen, and spirit bonuses are - all of which make you an asset to the raid. 

Unless your group is extraordinarily well trained and the fight is such that you can have your dpsers running over to click it, skip lightwell (so many fights are dps races that you really cannot even count on them noticing that they are taking damage, nevermind run over to the lightwell).  The amount healed is so small in comparison to the pain in the backside of getting people to run over and use it that there are few (not none, but few) times when it is valuable.  I actually took holy nova instead, lol, since there are several times when having an AoE is a godsend.  Spirit of Redemption on the other hand is really very nice - not only for the 5% spirit buff but also for the 15 seconds to heal before death.  Sometimes that 15 is all you need; and if you are SSed then it is 15 seconds of mana-free, threat-free healing before rejoining the battle. 

Hope that is helpful, though either way you go (21/40 or 20/41 or 23/38) you can build an excellent healer. 

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/priest/talents.html?504200013050012000000023405003030214 0530030000000000000000000000


That is the perfect Raiding priest build. USE IT.

I cannot agree with that at all.  Why so many points in Silent Resolve?  Unless your tank sucks, or you're doing something wrong, you shouldn't have trouble with pulling aggro, especially with Salvation.  MAYBE occassionally on trash, but that's generally the result of a sheep popping, a tank dying, or something else, in which case it's STILL going to go to you because you're healing and no one else is on it's aggro list.  Granted, the points aren't in a WHOLE lot better use in Improved PW:S, but that might be enough to save a mage who pulls aggro, and it's always helpful when soloing

Why Healing Prayers?  Are you really using Prayer of Healing THAT much?  Sure, you should be abusing Prayer of Mending, but that's already effected by Mental Agility because it's instant cast, and when I do have a mana issue, it's not because of the cost of PoM, it's because I'm spamming heals which generally precludes the use of PoM.

Why isn't Spiritual Guidance maxed out?  It makes a Priest's best friend, spirit, even better.  Certainly that one point must be better spent than on Healing Prayers.

The link you posted wont work for me for some reason but the post right above me is correct. I have never used silent resolve in my healing spec, not even for pugs.

I recently went a full 41+ in Holy tree with CoH, but I dont like it that much. More balanced in Disc/Holy is better imo. Get at least Divine Spirit and the imp one and the other spell casters will love ya.

devine spirit all the way. ive respeced a million times, even when killing illidan, devine spirit rocks and always will rock :)

Most 25-man raids I've been in have had a 23/38 (Imp DS) priest /and/ a 20/41 (CoH) priest.  CoH is /very very/ good for certain fights (particularly where a melee group is taking short-range AoE damage) but Imp DS is a great raid-wide buff.

If you have only one priest you would probably want a 23/38 (particularly in 5- or 10-mans, where CoH just isn't that good.)

I ran as imp spirit disc/holy hybrid for well over a year.

Clearly though, as I progress into higher end content like Hyjal, BT, Sunwell, there is little to no excuse for not using CoH spec.

With CoH, I can keep the raid alive fairly easily, and be on top of effective healing (and overhealing) meters all day long.

The real issue is, the raid doesn't die.  Instant cast, GCD, rocks for topping the raid off fast, especially when there's stuff that's doing 8.5k damage to the entire raid in one shot.

As hybrid with more disc / imp spirit, you're a lot more useful for buffing, but far less effective for healing.  The extra points in Holy reduce the cast time of GH, and make it crit about 1k higher on average, and regular hits go up 800-1k as well.

Mana regen is not as good.  Learning to live OO5 as much as possible is great when main tank healing, but basically, you just need to stack regen (spirit these days, used to be MP5) and have a nice large pool to draw on.  With a couple of potions and shadowfiend, there's little reason a priest should ever be OOM except in the most extreme situations with half of the raid's healers down.

Simply put, I held out forever switching to CoH spec, but I found my healing and the raid's survivability went up dramatically when I did.. It's simply the most effective (for straight up healing) spec there is.

In every raid, we have one priest who is spec'd hybrid.  One is enough to buff the raid.

I thoroughly disagree with using the healing meters as the best way to judge the effectiveness of a healer, and this is coming from someone who tends to top the chart in both effective healing and overhealing.  I tend to assign myself the hardest task to which a Priest is well suited because I am amongst the best, if not THE best, healer in my raid.  Sometimes this task means I top the healing charts, sometimes it means lots of moving around, sometimes it means very low numbers because it's all about burst HPS.


What boss does 8.5k raid-wide damage?  CoH will NOT help heal up 8.5k damage raid-wide, unless its far between.  CoH is good when a specific group is taking steady and/or predictable damage (VR's pounding on the melee group is a good example).


This isn't true either.  IDS is an AMAZING buff, but the only difference between a good CoH and IDS build is the 3 points for IDS go into 2 more points for Empowered Healing and 1 point for CoH.  Even if you have good healing (like my 2300ish), those 2 points in CoH is 8% of that to GH, or less than 160 Health per GH.  The only REAL difference is that you have CoH.  So fine, a CoH priest is a better raid healer, but that's it.

And SERIOUSLY, who is a IDS priest and DOESN'T have Divine fury?  I'm a 23/38 IDS Priest, and I have all of the talents that reduce GH cast time, increase crit, gain bonus from spirit and all of that stuff.  NO WONDER you think IDS Priests are useless for healing, because you've been playing with ones that have horrible specs.


Mana regen is equal for IDS Priests and CoH Priests.  I have ALL the exact same talents, including Holy Concentration.  The Five Second Rule is critical to ALL Priests.  And also, if you WERE stacking MP5, the rule was less useful than if you weren't.  Now that Spirit is Godlike, you kind of have to stack it, but even still, it just makes previous Spirit stackers even better.



I do agree here.  Every raid should have exactly one Priest with IDS.  Additional IDS Priests bring less to the raid because they're not as effective raid healers as CoH Priests.  Thus, your most dependable Priest in terms of attendance should be IDS and everyone else should be CoH.

Naj'Entus (excuse me if i spelled his name wrong) is the first boss in BT. Over the course of a minute ppl get 3k hits, then after 60 secs, he goes in a bubble, som1 uses an item gotten during the fight to break the bubble (and allow him to dps'd again) and the whole raid takes 8.5k instant dmg. every1 then has to get above 4k hp in less than 10 secs before the 3k hits come back

I was aware of this fight, but the way you said it, you made it sound like something that happens a lot more often than it does on Naj'entus.  And, yes, CoH is very good for that fight if used properly.

Even for that fight, it's not about topping people off, it's about getting people above a minimum threshold.  For a fight like that, when learning it, many guilds will heavily favor Resto Shammies and CoH Priests over Paladins and Druids.