PVP Priest

Thanks for looking, this information was swiped from the boards and I liked it so I thought I would put it up and work on disproving. Thanks to Convert <> Genjuros for the original post.

Intro:
I started writing this in response to a thread about rogue/disc priest teams but these tactics can be applied to pretty much any combination with a priest. Im not going to claim to be the most practiced or best geared priest out there because im not. But through my fighting I have found certain tactics to give me the best shot and that because of the lack of guides out there I have had to use trial and error to find Most of all i would like to hear from other peoples tactics as I myself am trying to learn how best to go about pvp encounters and we can use this thread to help each other out and open up new ideas for each other. I hope this will give the priests out there either noobs or experienced some way to ask questions and get answers.

Gear
First are foremost you need to collect yourself some pvp gear. Yes you are a healer going into the arena with Karazhan healer gear is probably not the best idea. As a disc priest you need to concentrate on building up your survivability. You can do this by stacking resiliance and stamina. Resilance is very important because lowers the speed at which others can kill you and lowers the effectiveness of their attacks. Once you reach a certain amount of survivability you will in most cases only die when you run out of mana. Increasing your resilience also means less healing and so more mana. The easiest way to get the best pvp gear is in fact pvp. Get down to your bgs and start farming.

Talents
Just the same as your gear, to get the most effective priest for arena you must spec for pvp. The Discipline tree will give you increased survivability and improve the efficiency of your instant cast spells. The Holy tree concentrates on healing power and casting spells. To get the most out of your priest you can just put all your talents into one of these trees, you must make a balance. Currently I have placed my most of my talents into the Discipline tree with a 42/19/0 spread.

This enables me to be an effective instant spell caster. http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=bxxGuhgtMcozfVxoc

Explanation of my Build
Holy:
Healing Focus – Allows you cast more easily under pressure
Improved Renew - Renew is an important spell and you should keep it up at all times on players who are damaged
Spell Warding - Good for lowering the dps of casters and helps when dealing with being nuked Divine Fury - Reducing your casting speed of greater heal, a must have to make this an effective spell
Blessed Recovery - Giving back health from a crit, doesnt help too much as multiple crits will only cause it to refresh not stack
Improved Healing- Makes your Greater Heal more mana efficient, this talent could be scrapped for more points in the Disc tree as you wont find yourself casting too much

Discipline:
Unbreakable Will - Reduces the chance that I will be stunned, feared and silienced
Silent Resolve – Slows down the rate that the enemy can purge/dispel your heals/buffs
Improved Fortitude – Unless Fort is removed increases you are your teammates max health giving you more chance to get heals off
Martyrdom – If an enemy crits you, you will gain focus casting and a resistance to interruption for 6 seconds
Absolution- Increases the mana efficiency of all dispels
Inner Focus -Gives you a free spell every 3 minutes with increased chance to crit, use for casted healing spells or can be used on expensive spells such as Mass Dispell
Meditation- Gives you mana regen from spirit even during the heat of battle. Helps you last long fights
Mental Agility-All instant cast spells are more mana efficient; good for lasting longer battles Improved Mana Burn- Lowers casting time of Mana Burn; a must for all serious PvP priest Mental Strength- Increases your mana pool Devine Spirit- Increases spirit and due to meditation increases mana regeneration through out the fight, if anything is also a dispel buffer Focused Power- Reduces cast time of Mass Dispel; effective at breaking pally shield and mage Ice Block
Focused Will- When you are crit reduces damage on yourself and increases healing; increases survivability
Power Infusion- Can be used on you or on your allies to increase damage or healing output Enlightenment- Increases your core stats of Stamina, Intellect, and Spirit Pain Suppression- Reduce damage on yourself or ally; great way to prevent large amounts of burst damage focused on one person Druid Put your dpser on his dpser. Try to dispel all HOTs and buffs on the the enemy dps to give the your ally an easier time and to make it hard for the druid. You should chase the druid and try to mana burn him when he goes out to heal. The more he is running the more mana he is going to waste on changing form. If the dps attacks you try to get your friend to slow/CC him. When the druid gets on low mana send your pet after him so he stays in combat and get your friend to go after the druid. If the dps tries to stay on your dps MC him. The main thing you have to make sure is that you don’t allow that pesky druid to drink or you are done for. I find that he normally runs out of mana before me and that its just a matter of making sure that your dps switches. Communication is key.
Against 2xDPS This can be touch and go at times but here you are trying to make sure that you are using maxium CC and not getting caught out casting as that could spell the end of your friend. I find it is best to send the rogue in first with you hanging back out of range. Once the rogue enters combat and they are focusing on him pop your pain suppression on who ever they are nuking (normally the rogue) and heal like crazy. Dont be too trigger happy with your trinket and keep it for when you really need a heal off. Try to stay out of the heat of the battle so their CC is as limited as possible and dont forget to use fear to give yourself a breather even if you aren't getting attacked yourself. Hunters I find hunters very annoying as they kite my rogue and can really do some serious damage- not to mention their viper stings can change a battle completely. Since damage means more healing for you. In my experience the best way to stop a hunter is to Pain Suppress who ever he is attacking and mana burn the crap out of them. Most hunters have very little mana and if you can take that away they can do no special moves including traps and viper sting (more mana for you). Of course this means getting yourself out in the open. I generally only do this if either im facing another healer or their dps is low. In some situations you will find that is better to kill their pet fast especially if he is a beast spec. This will lower you dps and allow you to drink. Rogues Rogues are probably the biggest pain the ass for priests. With their stun and poisons they can make a real mess of you really quickly. Make sure your partner picks these guys up fast and gives you time to heal yourself because if you let a good rogue stay unhindered you are going to be dead pretty soonish.
-Save your trinket for kidney shot -dispel his buffs -make sure you keep renew up -keep on shielding -watch charges on inner fire Warriors Warriors can a be a tough attacker to heal over. Their MS lowers healing by 50%, certain skills allow them partial immunity to fear, hamstring keeps you slowed, pummel to interrupt your casts, intercept and intimidating shouts as CC. You will eventually die from a warrior unless you attack him in a 1vs1 situation. The best way to slow down the process of dying against a warrior is:
-stay shielded to reduce his rage and direct damage to you (another positive is it is not effected by MS so has full 'healing') -keep renew going the entire time -rebuff inner fire when its gone -try to fear when he has used his anti fear spells -get your team mates to help CC him. Even in a 2vs2 it is normally best for dps to attack the warrior to limit his dps and because the other heal is likely to kite. When the warrior is CCed move away from him and try either mana burn the other healer, drink, or move away from him and heal without the MS debuff on you. Due to charge/intercept the warrior wont be off your back for too long so use your free time wisely.

Casting Spells A new priest soon learns that casting spells in the heat of a pvp battle is not always the best. Being caught out with kick, pummel or i dare say counterspell can lead to the death of a priest. Due to the fact that all of the priests healing spell including shield are in one tree means that any type of interrupt will lock out all healing for a period of time (not a good thing). To be on the safe side it is always best to only cast instants if there is any possibility of an interrupt. Though you find yourself in instances where you have weakened soul, you have renew ticking away, and POM is on CD. You could in this instance actually allow the player to silence you at this stage as you have nothing to gain and it would allow you to get a few heals off while their interrupt is on CC. Better in fact is making them interrupt you without affecting your healing. One way to do this is through the old art of feint-casting. This involves you casting a spell and then interrupting the casting yourself. You hope the enemy will see you casting and then go to mash their interrupt button, but because you stop casting once they have hit the button you are no longer casting and their interrupt is on CD and you are free to cast some spells. Although this doesn't always work. The player may not even see the cast and then would not interrupt or you leave it casting for too long and you get hit by what you are trying to avoid.

Mind Control
I find that if you want to get heal off you can actually cast mind control him. With such a large cast time he is bound to try to interrupt it or he will be CCed. This gives you your chance to get a heal off while his interrupt is on CD. Though against rogues make sure you keep your back to him while you are casting the heal as he will most likely to gouge you. If for some reason you want to MC the rogue do the opposite, cast a slow heal (greater or even prayer of healing) so he kicks that and then cast your MC. This also works on warriors. MC if undisturbed (can be easily dispelled or the team mate can just hit you to knock back the timer) will make him either burn is anti-CC so you can fear etc or give you the chance to loose those poisons he has stacked up on you. Be warned though it is not a good idea to use this on healers unless your dps is on top of the kill on the opponent as you may find as i have that your rogue could die during these 10 seconds and then you will look very stupid for basically CCing yourself. Another application of MC is getting a dpser off the back of your dpser so he can kill their healer. For example if the druid is on low mana the rogue could blind the warrior, and sprint to the druid. Wait close to the warrior (not too far or too close so he cannot interrupt or charge) and then MC him. This buys your rogue more time. I normally round up my MC with a fear as this seems to be quite effective.

Using Mana Bun & Fighting Other Priests
This spell is generally only usable in a fight where its a healer battle. Basically your dpser is fighting their dps and its about who runs out of mana first. The best thing to do is peruse their healer making him have to use LOS to block the mana burn. This generally leads to them poping out every now and again to heal. This your time to strike. If they are being sneaky about it then get close to them and fear. Follow the fear up with a few mana burns and if you are lucky he wont run out of range. Other ways of getting them out into the open is getting them to come to you. Help out your dpser by fearing or by dotting the enemy up/casting. (with the addition of spell to healer gear you will be surprised as to how much damage you can do. Not mention if one of their team is lower on health, fear the other team member and mindblast-->death-->spam smite. Combine this with power infusion for extra effect. Dont get too carried away and waste your mana. Even if you dont kill the enemy their healer will be on edge and spam healing giving you ample time to mana burn him down. Save your pet for if they try to drink and help finish off the other member. If you are fighting another disc priest you are playing a game of chicken. This is a battle of nerves and clever positioning. You are trying to mana burn him without him mana burning you. There are a few ways to win this. Against less experienced priest you will find this easy. They will basically run for the hills once you start casting and you give chase and eventually you will burn down his mana. More experienced priest stand by cover so they can see their dpser and heal him but can quickly duck away behind line of sight at the sniff of a mana burn. Due to the mechanics of the game trying to run out of the range of an incoming Mana burn is difficult. Even if you are out of the range of the mana burn when he finishes casting it you will probably get hit by it. So you are best off use your terrain to block these attacks. To open up a stale mate there are a few things you can do to get the advantage. Giving your dps the advantage so the other priest has to stick and heal is one way to pull him into the open. One on one fear and your fiend play are a large role. Fear allows you to get 2 or 3 mana burns off without him returning but be careful when trying to get close as this could make you vulnerable as you move towards him. You should save your fiend for a mana burn face off. This is where both priests are casting mana burn on each other at the same time. If you use your fiend while you burn each other his cast bar will be knocked back by the fiend's fast attacks and will be further knocked back because you complete your burn first. Basically if you have you fiend out while you exchanged mana burns you will come out on top. If he puts his fiend out LOS his burns and try to get your team mate to kill the fiend quickly if possible. Having your fiend available will give you the offensive advantage and allow you to be more aggressive. Mana burning and keeping your damage dealer alive takes a lot practice to get right, so do not worry if you do not get it straight off the bat. The main the thing you need for mana burning is confidence (many priests play too defensively), time, and good awareness of your surroundings.

Mages
These masters of the arcane magics of water vendoring are indeed an annoying lot. Not only do they spit in you water when you ask for some but they dont say 'thank you' after we take it off their hands. There are 2 main groups of water vendor which try to spread their conjuring ways through the arena these are frost and ice. Although there are obviously many different ways you can spend your talent points you are basicly left with pretty much the same.

--Frost Mages-- Frost relys on small burst damage and control over the fight. To prevent the mage from acting freely you should pressure him with DPS making him use his CDs and reduce the amount of time he is allowed to cast. He will be tricky to kill for melee classes due to frost nova and slowing effects. To give your melee classes the best chance to kill him dispel all slowing and snare effects and remove buffs like ice barrier and frost armor. If he iceblocks on low health mass dispel it quickly. If on the otherhand you are or in fact a party member is on low health you can almost use Iceblock as a let up to get a few heals off. Remember, most mages will have 2 ice blocks so be ready to either dispel or switch targets at moments notice. Dispelling frost nova fast will stop his ice lance from gaining that triple damage effect and the increased crit chance.

--Fire Mage-- Most fire mages focus on large amounts of damage in small periods of time. This involves blowing all their CDs and nuking the hell out of their target. This big burst damage has been traded for sustainability and survivability so normally if your group can survive their initial attack the worst is over. Most mages will infact sheep you first and then nuke a team member. When you see their target trinket out the sheep and instantly Pain Suppress them and then cast you instants. This is generally enough get through this intense period.

--CC-- It is not the damage of the mage that makes them particularly dangerous (though it does help) but also their ability to CC targets. If timed a correctly and if you have already used your trinket (if you dont have the anti-CC trinket yet, get it fast) a sheep can give a team enough time to finish off one of your friends. The best way to stop a mage freely sheeping everyone is attacking him. Though you need to understand the mage will sheep you, so to prepare for this event try to always keep your teammates topped up for health and keep a renew going on who ever they are attacking most. Fearing is a good way to slow down the mage nuke but as you should most mages will have their trinket ready, but this still should buy you some time to heal against the nuke. Personally i have never done this purposely but if you are able to time a SW:Death when the mage is about to sheep you the reflected damage of it not killing him will actually unsheep you. Do not rely on this as it is pretty difficult to master. If you able to last the mage attack for a long period of time he will start to run out of mana. A mage without mana is a dead mage. They have mana jems which they can consume during the fight but the main way of regeneration is through evocation or drinking. Evocation is a channeled spell and if uninterrupted they will gain back 60% of their mana pool. By this time you will probably be close to low mana, if you allow the mage the chance to evocate you could be signing your death certificate. Thankfully any type of damage will knock the channeled spell forward and so you can dramatically reduce his mana gained. The best way to stop an evocation though is some sort of CC. This will stop the cast completely. Fear is a good option for you if you are close. After the fear burn off that mana he has gained and finish him off. Even if he has evocation on its 8 min cd he can still go sneak over to the corner and drink. If you have your shadow fiend you can keep him in combat by sending it after him and therefore preventing him from drinking and gaining yourself mana.

Shaman
Now I shall tell you the tale of the evil shaman... On the first day god (blizzard) created the classes. Everything was going swimmingly until the greedy shamans got hungry. Since all the mages in AV were either leeching there was a famine of tables across the land. Though the shamans did not care that everyone else was also hungry/thirsty and they complained to god, 'Gief us foodz or wei quit.' So the humble god to try to make them happy gave them purge. This purge enabled the shaman to make the disc priests completely defenseless as it removed all their instant cast buffs and heals. The priests were still allowed to cast spells healing what little life they had left. So god gave them earthshock which allowed them to spam interrupt all the of priests casting. This left the priest with nothing and so the shamans were able to eat the priests for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Basically if you leave shaman alone to attack you, he will eat you. The best way to counteract this is to kill them. Elemental shamans are harder to kill then the enhancement but have lower burst damage and cannot cast if under pressure lowering their overall dps. If you attack the shaman he will think less about his stomach (you) and more about his neck (the guy destroying him). After the shaman is dead make sure yell out about the fact that he killed mommy priest, daddy priest and little sister priest and that this is part of your crusade to kill all shamans. Resto shamans are the less danagerous cousins of the elemental/enhancement shaman and not as much a problem for you unless they are particularly aggressive players. Get your teammates to attack the other members of the team and try to give you space to burn his mana down. If he puts up any type of shield on himself dispel it (so he knows what it feels like to be purged and also to stop him gaining health or mana. If your quench for blood is still not satisfied dispelling his bloodlust/heroism should do it. Start first with dispelling the dpser's buff and then move onto the healer to limit the amount burst damage they can do with this. Dont forget to kill his friends. This obviously is an odd statement as shamans have no true friends. Their only companions in life are their totems. Crush their soul by simply swing your weapon at them and destroying them. Because all the important ones have no health any direct damage will destroy them so its the perfect job for a priest to do in his spare time. Totems to watch out for:
-Windfury - allows melee player around the totem to gain an extra swing from attacks, powerful if he has warrior allies (friends would be too kind a description)
-Tremor - Periodically breaks fear charm and sleep effects
-Grounding totem - absorbs not direct damage spells and absorbs direct damage spells but is also destoryed
-Earthbind - Slow all enemies in a 10 yard radius
-Searing Totem - shoots fire at a single target, can be annoying as they cause spell cast knock back.
-Poison Cleansing - if you are with a rogue friend destroy this asap as this periodically removes 1 poison from all members.
-Mana Spring - Gives the shaman a constant stream of mana
-Mana Tide - A shorter lived more powerful version of the Mana Spring giving all party members in range 6% of their mana back, easily recognized by the distinct swirling effect at its base. Destroy this fast.
-Totem of Wrath - Increases spell damage of all surrounding allies

Warlocks
Warlocks are the result of blizzard having lots of good ideas for spells and then at the end of making WOW just sticking them all together into one class. At least thats what it feels like for anyone who has ventured into the deep dark realms of the warlock.

--Warlock Strengths-- Crowd Control Damage Over Time Mana Drain Pretty Good Survivability(SL/SL) Unlimited Mana (when paired with a healer)
--Warlock Weakness-- Dispelable Damage Reliant on Pet Low Burst Damage
Most warlocks you meet in the arena will have almost identical talents specs. This cookie cutter build is known as SL/SL. It is a hybrid consisting of pretty evenly distributed talents between affliction(the DOT tree) and Demonology(demon tree). The idea of this build is to get two talents, Siphon Life(magic DoT which also heals the warlock) and Soul Link (20% of the damage on the warlock is transfered to the pet). This build means that although the warlock has less damage they can mitigate damage, heal themselves with DoTs. At very high levels of play killing the warlock's pet twice means the victory for team. The pet is more then just the damage mitigation,damage and spell lock(felhunter) it is a means of keeping you in combat. If you or the other healer is able to leave combat and successfully drink it means that you gain the advantage. Even in a small amount of mana which gives you enough mana for that extra heal is enough to decide a battle. Not to mention a good healer will try to heal a pet, so by attacking the pet which has no resilience you can quickly exhaust the mana of the opposite healer. Crowd Control Crowd Control is one of the warlock's biggest assets. If you have ever been deathcoiled and then chain feared you will know what i mean. Though with all types of spamable crowd control this spell is subject to diminishing returns (the spell will become less effective if spammed for every time it is applied until the player is immune. It is 3 fears which come to a total of 18 seconds of fear and on the 4th fear the player is immune for 15 seconds before they can get full force fear on them again. It is true that fear does not break under damage but it does increase the chance that it will break so if a warlock wants max fear time he wont dot up his feared target. You can absorb one fear with fearward but then you will get feared for a full seconds before you can do anything that is unless it breaks for what ever reason. The next fear is 5 seconds and 3 after that. If one your team members gets feared just dispel, simple as that. If you are facing a burst team and they are nuking your team members trinket out of the fear and get your Pain Suppresion on him/her straight away, if you have time shield them etc. Dont forget fear is casted so you can use interrupts or run out of line of sight to stop it. If you can stop fear you can cripple a warlocks defense a lot. Warlocks also have Howl of Terror and Death Coil. Howl of Terror is a casted AoE fear with a 40 second cooldown, it is an instant cast with talents but the SL/SL warlocks that you will face normally will not have this in their build. Death Coil is an instant cast horror effect lasting 3 seconds, doing damage which heals the warlock. Death Coil is not considered a fear effect so it wont be affected by your fearward, although it is still a magic effect and so is still dispelable.

Paladins
Paladins are the result of thousands of man hours of trying to splice the genes of humans and...a bottle of washing-up liquid. What was created was something that can clean almost every sort of ailment (except curses) and produce bubbles. Paladins are interesting opponent for priests. Currently there are two viable talents specs for arena; holy and retribution, and with most talent trees create two different play styles.
--Holy-- Holy is the currently the most common style of paladin you will meet.
Strengths
-Highest Armor (wears a shield unlike warriors)
-Mana Efficient Heals -Dispels:Magic, Poison, and Disease effect
-Momentary Invulnerability -Instant Stuns -Blessing of Protection(make immune to melee and ranged attacks
-Blessing of Freedom (removes snares/slows and makes target immune to both for a period of time)

Weaknesses -Cannot heal while moving -Lack of instant cast heals -Easy to lockdown/silence


Videos
Gladiator Holy Priest PvP http://warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=46672
Pandemic's Arena Vid 2100~ S3: Movie: http://warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=56026 Armory: http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Frostwhisper&n=Pandemic
Swarm 2 - Priest Arena PvP (shadow with 3vs3 as Disc) Movie: http://warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=53221
Armory: http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Tichondrius&n=Swarm Zomgasm: You Lack Discipline! Movie: http://warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=54001 Armory: http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Rivendare&n=Zomgasm