Because I'm THAT zany!Follow

So. I stepped into Arena for the first time ever last week. It goes without saying that we sucked. Even if I didn't personally suck, which I really really do, priest-rogue isn't exactly sweeping the nation right now. Suffice to say my rating is lower than the price of a loaf of bread.

Before we did our matches this week, I respecced Holy. Why, you ask? Why not? Not like we were going to get worse, so I figured, why not have fun with it. Just to try it for giggles.

The disadvantages of speccing Holy for PVP are obvious. But I discovered a couple of surprising upsides:

1. Guardian Spirit! The beauty of this can not be overstated.
2. You know I'm going to talk about Circle of Healing. I'm squishy. Rogues are squishy. A quick stopgap CoH followed by PoH is pure win.
3. The boost in raw healing power is very, very useful. Renew goes from being a useful support spell to a front line healer. Keeping Renew ticking on everyone frees up time for other stuff. (Or for standing around waiting to get out of a stun. Again.)
4. Spirit of Redemption. Honestly, I was never that impressed in PVE. It's nice, but whatever. Here, 15 extra seconds felt like a lifetime.

So we won 6-4 this week, which still sucks, but is much better than last week's 3-7. Of course, the way the arena system works is, winning twice as much as you did last week means your rating goes down a hundred points.

Point being, if they really do keep this vague promise of more PVP viability for Holy, watch out. It'll give Disc a run for its money.

Oh, and I didn't need the CoH glyph for 2x2, so I grabbed the Psychic Scream one, while I was trying stuff just for fun. I realize it's widely regarded as useless, but again, 1 second in this context seemed looooong to me.

No you can't trick and confuse me like that! I am Disc spec and I have got used to it to the point that I own on it now. I have also been playing shadow and could keep up the dps race with even a nicely specced hunter. Don't give me a third sexy sounding option unless you are offering tri-spec!

Btw sounds like you win on Arena Teacake and still in Holy spec so bow to you. I haven't dared venture in yet.

I am so bad under pressure lol I am peachy if I can stay still and heal but give me a fight where I have to move around as well and I am so dead. I don't think any spec will help that issue.

You can have plenty of resilience and it's still the same thing. You're maybe improving from being 3-shot to being 5-shot. Just run Recount next time you're doing any kind of PvP.

I've got 800 some odd resilience (I've just got the hateful/savage gear you can buy with honor and have it gemmed for resil). The crazy burst damage people can throw at you was what made Holy okay, really. No priest of any spec seems particularly survivable right now, at least not at my level of skill, so the difference is negligible. Pain Suppression has a long cooldown and I can be 3 shotted either way, so if I'm more comfortable with Holy, I actually do better.

People are complaining about pallies and dk's, but while I really can't fight anybody, it's rogues and mages that are pissing me off the most. They seem to be able to keep me cc'd indefinitely until I'm dead, my partner is dead, or both. You only get the one trinket and whether you use it early or late doesn't seem to matter. I wonder whether the new increased stun resistance in 3.1 will help much.

Then again, my rogue partner is complaining he's been overnerfed and that rogues are way underpowered now, so I dunno. I keep telling him to bring out his dk instead. He responds by telling me to hurry up and level my pally. ;)

Rogues are the bane of my exsistence too. (That Pain Suppression glyph can't come fast enough.) Although I'm with Moz, it can go either way with a Mage.

What I've found to help when you've already been Polymorphed, is to hold off on the trinket until you see them starting to cast Offensively. Just like how some Priests use Psychic Scream to force the opponent to pop their trinket, your opponent's made a similar conclusion. By and large they're expecting you to break their first Polymorph - and since there's no cooldown and a modest cast time they can simply follow it with another. I even see Mages start to cast polymorph again while your still polymorphed, sometimes they'll pause in confusion when you waddle around helplessly, so ingrained is this expectation that you'll trinket first thing.

Once you've caught them with their pants down it can go one of two ways: they hit Esc like a well oiled machine and polymorph you again or they try to finish their spell and then try to CC you; anywhere between 1.25 - 4.5 seconds depending on what they chose to try and burn you down with/Human reaction time/Glyphs/Haste. There's a heckuva' lot of instantaneous trouble you can make for someone in that timeframe, though I like to use the opportunity to PoM myself and sic Shadowfiend on them. PoM so their offense really just makes you a ticking time bomb of healing reguardless of your state. And Shadowfiend because Polymorph is subject to diminishing returns, and our dear ole' faithful ugly little pet makes fantastic bait to help you make it through the 5 seconds of Cast #2. After that it's Cast #3 for a manageable 3 seconds, and then your immune until 15 sans-polymorph seconds pass.

Then there's the whole "time your Shadow Word: Death to cause you damage just as your polymorphed to break it" but holy hell I just can't seem to get the timing on that.


Also just wanted to mention the supposid upcoming armor penetration changes in 3.1
Clothies are getting a survivability thumbs-up by moving armor penetration from a fixed number to a percent. Between that, Body and Soul, and the Pain Suppression glyph I think Priest is getting alot of PvP love.



Edited, Mar 9th 2009 7:32pm by Zemzelette

Edited, Mar 9th 2009 7:32pm by Zemzelette

That's one damn nasty tactic, took me quite some time to master too. The thing is that SW:D causes a pushback effect, so if you don't time it completely right you'll just push back the poly 0,5 second and hit yourself with your own SW:D just before the poly lands. The trick is to launch it just as their poly finishes, when they've got about 0,2 sec casting to go. At that point lag will ensure you don't cause pushback and it'll hit on about the same time as you get poly'd. The self damage is then inflicted about a second later.



Also, that's so true. It's exactly what I've said in my "Resilience and PvP" topic some time back; it's really nice that the idea is to LOS people, stick on the DPS, OOM the healer or whatever, but I'm simply not going to be able to do that because I am getting 3-shot.

I just read that about points not being carried over, which is annoying, because it's directly contrary to their own stated arena information on the official site. I figured we could at least store some of those.

My question is, our rating will be reset when the new season begins, right? People don't carry their ratings over from season to season? Everyone is saying how crappy this season is, and if that's the case, we'll just use it as a throwaway to hang out and try to improve our skills. Especially if it doesn't matter for next season how low we let our rating get.

And I can use those useless arena points (since they aren't carrying) to pick up some of the Savage Satin pieces - if I keep playing with Holy I'll need to mix and match some crit in with my spirit. :)

I've got the hood and the boots from Wintergrasp. Between the 2 of them, you get just over 3% of the 4% hit you want for PVP. I need to cast a fair number of offensive spells, plus I hate when my fear misses.

I've picked up all the spirit gear (the non-set pieces of Hateful and the rest Savage) but I'm going to start swapping it out for some crit until I find a mix I like. BG's/WG are one thing and I'll save the spirit for that, but I've yet to have to worry about mana in arena.