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Saturday, February 13, 2010

Discipline Priest roadmap for levels 20-80

This weekend I'm bound to hit level 40 on my Priest, seeing that currently I'm 37 and levels are flying by. Lately I haven't had the chance to level the Priest a lot due to the Love is in the Air event that I had to complete on my Hunter main. On the other hand, I've faithfully completed all the Stormwind dailies that the holiday offers on the Priest, because they are incredibly easy and give a ton of XP.

Level 40 is the "Big One". That's because several things will occur: I will get an epic mount, I will buy Dual Spec and I will get access to some of the Priest's most powerful talents. At 40 I can finally get a proper healing spec and I've decided to focus on Discipline because this tree seems to be the best for healing single targets, or in other words it works best for anything outside raids.

In order to prepare for the Big 40, I've drawn a roadmap for how my Discipline talents will look, up to level 80. I decided to start from level 20, even though I've got a big head start on those who might wish to spec Discipline from level 10. I don't recommend it though. You can heal well enough as Shadow all the way to 40. So here's my roadmap.

Level 20
11/0/0
Key talent: Inner Focus.

Level 30
21/0/0
Key talent: Soul Warding.

Level 40
31/0/0
Key talent: Power Infusion.

Level 50
41/0/0
Key talent: Pain Suppression.

Level 60
51/0/0
Key talent: Penance.

Level 70
57/4/0

Level 80
57/14/0

I'm not sure this is the very best spec but to me it feels right. One thing that I'm not 100% certain of is Pain Suppression because it seems to be mostly a PvP talent from what people are saying. I still think it'll come in handy on myself though because I seem to grab aggro more often than I would like in spite of using Fade every time it's off cooldown.

So what do you guys think?

6 comments:

Shannara said...

I have a lv80 holy and disc priest. I have found that disc priests are great for damage preventing, but not so well at damage healing.

In other words, they make great main tank (only) "healers" as they prevent most of the damage, and what little damage that does come though are with in the healing capabilities of a disc priest.

You will find as you level up that disc priests SUCK at healing in some (say 40%) 5-mans. This is due to the massive amount of damage bosses pump out, discs just cannot keep up.

Disc does make an awesome PVP spec though .. :)

Holy is all around simply the most diverse healing tree there is in the game. They can heal up massive damage, they can even prevent some damage :)

If you want to get into healing, use the healing tree (holy), if you want to be a tank only healer or pvp healer, go disc :)

Darth Solo said...

@Shannara well darn it! There goes all my planning :) I thought I had figured it out exactly but now I'm not certain anymore. As I write this I'm very close to 40 and now you've made me go back to the drawing board. Thanks for ruining it for me! Just kidding! Thanks for the tips, now I'll see what my options are, though I might still try a Disc spec just to see if I like it.

Anonymous said...

Actually, if I might respectfully disagree... I do have a 80 disco priest as my main and if I had to level her again, I'd go the bubble way. Bosses in levelling dungeon don't dish out so much damage that they are impossible to heal through. Hell, back in the days, shadow priests were routinely healing instances and surviving the experience.

Do take pain suppression... It's your ultimate Oh shit button when you feel yourself incapable of healing the tank back to full before he gets hit again. 40% less damage will save him. You also want to keep power infusion on the dps to help with kill shit faster. Disco priests greatly remind me of holy paladins, with their hands and blessing to save and help party members, but they at least always have a group heal.

Also, ditch divine fury, you never use greater heal as a disco priest unless there's an emergency. It's bubble, keep penance on cooldown, use flash heal if there's still damage.

Holy can deal better with aoe damage and that is their strength. However, disc priests won't die because a mob looked at their crosseyed. Their shield is much, much stronger. You will need it with inexperienced tanks.

Darth Solo said...

Aw shucks, I took Shannara's advice now and specced Holy. Disc still remains an attractive option. I might give it a try.

Anonymous said...

There's absolutely nothing wrong with going holy either. Priests are the only class who get the option of two working healing trees. (As an aside, get the glyph of guardian spirit as soon as you have the ability. It's amazing.)

You might already be reading Tamarind's blog, but go there for a really long-winded, brilliant and insightful post on the whole holy vs disco issue. http://www.righteousorbs.com/?p=1343#comments

Darth Solo said...

Oh I just noticed this glyph. Sounds very good and I'll get it as soon as I can. Thanks also for the great read!