soo im new to the priest class and im trying to make a good dis/holy spec but i cant decide wat is a absolute must have and wat isnt could use some advice or spec examples plz...

Assuming you're going for PvE, there's two "cookie cutter" approaches to a Holy/Disc Priest.  There's the IDS Build(Improved Divine Spirit) and the CoH Build (Circle of Healing).  Ultimately, you should probably choose a spec very close to one of these:

IDS Build: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=bxRhzhxzbZfxxcc0qVhc

CoH Build: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=bxRhzhxZfxxcc0qVhVo

To explain the difference, IDS is on of the best buffs in the game for casters, particularly priests and druids.  If you're doing 5-man, 10-man, or are the only Holy/Disc Priest in the raid, it is a 100% MUST have.  If you're doing mostly 25-man content, and you already have a dependable IDS priest, the value of that spec goes down and CoH goes up.  The advantage of the CoH build is it will give you a little more healing (2 more points in Empowered Healing) and it will give you Circle of Healing which is a powerful AOE heal, but only shines in a few T5 fights and into T6 content.  OTOH, if you have more than one Resto Shaman spamming Chain Heal, CoH probably loses some of it's luster anyway.

I'll also try to briefly explain the talent choices as well:

Unbreakable Will vs. Wand Specialization:  Basically, if you're raiding/grouping a lot, you won't be wanding a lot, but the occassional resist to silence or fear could mean the tank living or dying in a fight.  If you'll be doing mostly grouping, stick with Unbreakable Will, if you'll be doing lots of soloing, go with Wand Specialization to save mana because you can wand mobs down more quickly.

Improved PW: Fort:  Absolute MUST; this should be a no-brainer.

Improved PW: Shield:  Not necessarily a no-brainer, but given the other options of Wand Specialization, Silent Resolve, and Martyrdom, it's the best option.  It's still nice to throw up before a pull, for protecting a mage, and for soloing.

Silent Resolve vs. Martyrdom:  Silent Resolve is not as good as it sounds, simply because you won't pull aggro unless a mob isn't CCed (or pops unexpectedly), the tank is bad/under-geared, or you're doing something wrong.  Still, Martyrdom is worthless.  If you're critically struck, it means you pulled aggro, and if you need resistence to interuption after already being critically struck, you're probably dead anyway.  It's a PVP talent, not a PVE talent, so stick a point in Silent Resolve instead.

Inner Focus:  Amazing talent IF you use it correctly.  Basically, it lets you chain OO5SR periods together while still getting a max-rank heal with a fairly high crit chance off.  I've written about it in other threads, so I won't get into too much detail about how to use it unless you ask, but it's a must have.

Meditation:  Another no-brainer.  This is one of the talents that truly makes a Holy/Disc priest shine and one of the talents that makes spirit the primary stat for Holy Priests.  You MUST max this out.

Mental Agility:  Many of the spells you cast (Renew, PW: Shield, PW: Fort, Spirit, Dispel, SW: Pain, Abolish Disease, PoM, etc.) are all instant casts.  This is an amazing talent that reduces the mana cost of a large number of your spells.  The other talents on this tier of PVP oriented and, if you DID go CoH, it's STILL worth having over pretty much all of the Holy talents you could pick up instead.

Divine Spirit / Improved Divine Spirit:  I already explained, but amazingly awesome.  But you have to decide if it's worth having over CoH based upon your personal and raid needs.

Healing Focus:  May not seem that useful in a raid or group, but it's not uncommon that you receive some sort of AOE or random target damage.  It's also ENORMOUSLY useful when soloing.  For only 2 points, it's totally worth it.

Improved Renew:  No-brainer.  Renew is one of your primary healing spells.

Holy Specialization:  Not particularly great on it's own, but is important when combined with Inspiration.  If you need a few points farther down the Holy Tree, this is probably the talent you can take them from.

Divine Fury:  Absolute MUST have.  Greater Heal is your Bread and Butter heal.  Smite and Holy Fire are your Bread and Butter damage spells.  Less cast time, no effect on the damage/healing coefficients.  A Holy Priest without this talent is just a waste of a raid slot.  MAX IT OUT!

Inspiration:  Another talent that makes a Holy Priest shine.  You may not have much crit unless you have Holy Specialization, but adding extra armor, particularly when MT healing, saves all the healers mana and helps lessen the chance of chain damage killing the tank between heals.  Almost every raid has at least one Holy Priest on MT healing (the rest usually Paladins), and this talent is precisely why.

Improved Healing:  This should be a No-Brainer.  It reduces the mana cost of Greater Heal, your bread and butter healing spell.

Spirit of Redemption:  Again, AMAZING talent.  If for no other reason, you get 5% bonus to spirit.  That alone is worth the 1 talent point.  But beyond that, it is extra-ordinarily useful.  You get 15 seconds of mana-free, threat-free, interupt-free heals when you die.  It provides a nice buffer to call out to your raid that you've died and allow for a battle res or some other sort of adjustments to keep the raid from wiping.  It's also useful if you are COMPLETELY out of mana, you can sacrifice your life for 15 seconds of spam healing.

Spiritual Guidance:  Another talent that makes spirit the most important stat to Holy Priests.  This talent is awesome, because it makes it so spirit gives you the two most important things priests need:  mana regen and healing.  It also scales with raid buffs (like Kings and Divine Spirit) and it's healing/damage bonus stacks with Improved Divine Spirit.  Further, it makes soloing as a Holy Priest slightly less painful, because you get some damage from all that spirit you've got.  You MUST max this out!

Spiritual Healing:  Should be a complete No-Brainer.  It increases healing... what else could you ask for?

Holy Concentration:  Nice even if you don't really use it right, because it basically makes 6% of your spells free or you can look at it as reducing mana cost of each spell on average by 6%.  However, if you can watch for it to proc, you can chain it with Inner Focus and get a fairly long stretch of OO5SR mana regen, making this talent amazing for mana regen.

Empowered Healing:  Pretty straight forward.  Increases the healing bonus on Greater Heal and Flash Heal, your bread and butter heal and your emergency heal.  You WILL see a difference when you put points in this talent.

Circle of Healing:  Already went over briefly, so you have to decide if it's worth it over Improved Divine Spirit.


Other talents you may want to consider:

Holy Nova:  Amazing if you do even a little bit of PVP.  Also situationally powerful in 5-mans because it's an AOE (albeit, a mana inefficient one) and it's threat free.  I don't use it a whole lot, but it's only one point and because the points in Holy Specialization have diminishing returns, I think it's most likely worth it.

Holy Reach:  Probably worth it if you go for Circle of Healing.  If you do, you'll probably want to ignore Holy Nova and just take two points out of Holy Specialization.

Healing Prayers:  This really depends on your style.  Even when I use PoM a lot, it's not expensive and it's already helped by Mental Agility.  So it really comes down to how much you use Prayer of Healing which, even though it's expensive, I don't use a whole lot and, when I do, it's generally still WAY more mana and time efficient than the alternative (3-5 casts of Greater or Flash Heal).  It MAY be worth while if you are very good about getting PoM out every 10s, you use PoH a lot, and you don't use the other spells covered in Mental Agility that much.


Of course, if you're still leveling, you probably don't want to go with either of those specs.  You'd probably want to go deeper into the Discipline Tree as discussed in other threads.  I can post a good leveling spec too, if you're interested.

This was very helpful. I appreciate the time you put into it. I do have one question however, you said:

Holy Concentration:  Nice even if you don't really use it right, because it basically makes 6% of your spells free or you can look at it as reducing mana cost of each spell on average by 6%.  However, if you can watch for it to proc, you can chain it with Inner Focus and get a fairly long stretch of OO5SR mana regen, making this talent amazing for mana regen.

what is OO5SR? I have no idea what you are talking about

OO5SR = Out of 5 second rule.

Basically, the 5 seconds after casting a spell you don't regenerate any mana.  So if you can get the proc and use inner focus to cast, you can increase the amount of time you aren't actually using any mana and regenerate a little bit which can count in the end.

well all main priest specs have meditation and therefore regen at 30% of their spirit based mana regen.

On your character screen where you can see your equipment, take a look at your spell tab: mana regen.  There is 2 values, mana regen while casting, and mana regen while not casting.  Each time you cast a spell (that costs mana) you enter a state of "while casting" for 5 sec, where all mana regen ticks will be based on your "while casting mana regen."  After 5 sec of not casting a spell that costs mana, you regen mana at the "not casting mana regen" value.  So getting out of the 5SR gives you much more mana as a priest or druid, especially is you stack spirit over mp5.

I personally say spirit>mp5... but that is a close enough call that people will argue for hours without giving numbers.  And of course the more Int you have the more mana spirit gives you... so what is better may depend on whether you are in blues (mp5) or t6 (spirit).

This is a good point, and for those interested in numbers to understand it, please refer to my post in the Priest>General forums on the Spirit changes in 2.4.  Depending on your playstyle, Spirit outshines MP5 pretty early.  Either way, regardless of where you draw the line on when they are about equal, Spirit will ALWAYS come out on top at the highest gear levels because it itemizes better (2.5 points of Spirit for every point of MP5, in general), it also effects healing (0.35 Healing per), and it improves with buffs (10% more from Kings, 5% more from SoR, and 10% more if you're human).

If anyone is interested, I'd be happy to make a thread in the Priest>General Forums that compares MP5 and Spirit at different gear levels.  I've already crunched most of the numbers for my own purposes, so it wouldn't be a lot of extra work.