The best way to stay high on hp and mp is to avoid confrontation in the first place by kiting.

Use your spells like Shadow-word death to cancel out the effects of incapacitation spells like blind and sheep, because there is a delay on the damage done and the spell being cast you will remove the effect almost instantly.

If you were clever and rolled a nelf like me (yes nelf is better the dwarf for utility it brings against all classes not just 2 coupled with the fact that, that utility has the same if not more effect on the 2 classes the other racial only effects anyway!) you can use your shadowmeld to do the same, you can actually block out ANY spell with shadowmeld and the right timing. I do enjoy melding / pom-pyro and HoJ etc.

Save your trinket for detrimental moments, there really is no need to use it if your mage has abilities to escape a situation himself – this is where good communication is key.

Hug pillars… SO MUCH. Always play by a pillar, not only because you can los cc’s and save your spells but also because you can los people and drink for longer durations, as well as pre-emptively kite people as you think they are going to swap to you, the good ol’ 180kite. You can use them to peel to great effect too, say hamstring has a 2 second duration left, you can fear the warrior to put him on a GCD (and finger to keybind time) and lose the duration on your hamstring and be already olos of an intercept or re-application of hamstring. Or you can even out-last the hamstring by having your mage apply a CoC to the warrior as you slowly move los around the pillar and beging to 180kite/mount.

Exploit the drink bug ALWAYS, always try stay on full mana. I never go into an arena without 100 water, minimum! Let me ellaborate; so long as you are out of combat as your spell finishes casting and “lands” on your target (who may be in combat) you can drink directly as you’re being put into combat for the heal. So, while your casting Gheal, just as it’s finishing tap your water keybind to begin drinking.

Gheal is your most important heal, it’s the most mana efficient outside of renews and poms when your target is under fire, not only does it cost less mana than flash heals and shields but it also allows you to exploit the drink bug more!  Flash heal is there to be used below around 40% hp and even still, if you can get a Gheal off then – it’s the better one to go for.

A good offense can take a LOT of pressure off of your healing-load. Making someone play defensively puts you in a stronger position due to the nature of our class. For example… We’re in BeM arena and we face off against a paladin Warrior team and the warrior has somehow gotten onto me upstairs whilst my mage is downstairs. I would move to one of the eyes and hot / pom / shield myself and begin mc’ing the warrior close to the end of the shield (which negates rage – making it super mana efficient against warriors) – if he choses to interrupt the MC then he leaves me open to cast outside of my shields any of my holy spells – if he doesn’t then i’m open to drop him off of the edge and start drinking. Even to a lesser extent this can be done with rogues by facing over the edge so they can’t gouge you and using MC in order to force a Kick or a Kidneyshot or even a Blind (although – none of these spells are nice, the rogue has had to use them prematurely to less effect than he would have otherwise desired). You can use this method around pillars too by MC’ing them 180degrees aorund the pillar.

Levitate is a 0 mana costing spell inside and outside of the 5SR. This means it’s a good dispell guard if you’re being dispelled, i particularly like using it against warlock pets when they are on auto-dispel mode you can pop it up wait for the pet to eat it then drop a renew, safe in the knowledge it won’t be eaten for a while.

Shield is a BAD habit, with the exception of warriors (due to the nature of the spell and the way rage generation). It’s an emergency spell only! or a spell that goes up prior to even being damaged to save mana. The only time you might pop it above 60% hp is if you’re trying to get off a nice fast offensive cast (in an arena match – obviously in duels it’s used as a damage tool) like mana burn or mindblast. It’s far too mana consuming! Drop it, like smoking – it won’t be easy.

Renew and POM, outside of Gheals are your predominant heals with this peel and kite build. Sometimes you need to think, will renew  / pom top me off once i begin kiting these guys with the help of my mage? if i heal up and shield as well as have renew and pom on msyelf and i peel before shield is broken or i heal up to full before renew is finished, then it’s been a waste of mana it’s important to know your limit, it’s important  to push your limit in order to save your mana, i may even not put more than a renew on myself at 20% hp, in the right circumstances ofc.

Banadages should be used in similar circumstances to the above for obvious reasons.

Your mount is as much of a tool as your fear is, if you can break free of a focus and get mounted up, you can almost guarentee the targets needing to target swap, your partner can plan for this and you can practically reset the fight in most instances.

Fade will break you free of a pet to drink so long as your mage was on it’s “threat” table.

I’ll go into more detail on uses for all the above in the guides section. This was designed as BRIEF introduction to priest, things for oyu to start putting into practice and perhaps even modifying to your own benefit.

Because this whole blog is based upon 2v2 (particularly mage/priest) and 1v1 play, i’m going to suggest this build;

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=bVI0uhrtMcsZfqt0crofzh

You don’t NEED lightwell, you can put that point wherever you like, but i think it has its uses during a reset in 2v2 or while a targte is feared and i’m drinking, renew + LW from 20% can take you most of the way to full before fear is up. Great against lowburst damage output classes too like locks, shadowpriests and other healers.

Reflective shield is more of a 1v1 thing than a 2v2 thing so the spare points could be put partially into Serendipidy, depending on the changes to it in the cup and coming patch – it should be becomming something similar to that of the paladins FoL, use Flash heal and Binding heal then reduces the cast time on Gheal – so i hear.

Why no Blessed Recovery? Well… When you’re crit,  but the crit is negated by resilience or BR, you are still entitled to an on-crit-effect such like BR or FW – but only 1 and it’s rolled for by the game, i’d rather keep my BR and FW refreshed than have Brecov proc and reset my FW stacks mid-focus <_<.

Searing light, you will be needing to do a lot of support damage during your CC chains to get a target down, and with the changes to Holy Fire and Smite now, this will be a great improvement to your damage arsenal.

Divine Sprit is speculated to become some sort of AoE Power-word: Shield.

Surge of light procs often through your reflective shield procs, because RS can crit. It’s quite nice to have multiple Surge of lights on the trot! Don’t think it HAS to be triggered off of Flash heal / Bidning heal / Gheal.

Blessed Resilience can even negate Recklessness and Coldblood!

I honestly value this spec above the generic penance spec that everyone else is out there speccing, the extra healing your spells are doing through the points in healing, the reduced mana costs on your PoM’s and Gheals more than make up for the cheap-ness of penance and the effectiveness of Rapture. What’s more you’re almost unkillable and then add a pesky frostmage on their tail and let’s see somoene take you down. I think the problem is people feel obligated to spec into discipline due to the fact that it has been dubbed this “PVP” tree. Forget that! The PVP tree is which ever one it needs to be for your Matrix.

So…

Gear

Simply put, just gather all the PVP gear you can get. With our Tank and Peel and kite build we want a MAX defence setup, throughput is not as necessary as it is with say a Warlock or a Feral Druid.

Proffesions

Engineering is a great profession to have due to the fact that we now have arena-usable rocket boots, these increase our run speed by 70% for a short duration, so once we’ve broken through a snare we can get outta there nice and quick, or to chase down a target on the run! Making this alomst a necessity

Jewelcrafting to me seems the only other logical proffesion, the private-gems you craft are phenomenally better than those of which you can get on the AH or from the vendors and the trinket with a passive int bonus (crit, crit = surge of light) and 2 gemslots with an mp5 socket-bonus AND a manapot over 6 seconds on use ability make it a great out-lasting trinket. What’s more is the sockets are blue! YAY for us!

The following classes can be played with and roughly, in no great detail how it’s done,  arranged from hardest at the top to easier at the bottom;

Frost Mage – I will adivse you all to play this one, it’s my favourite of all the compositions. No other two classes share this amount of synergy, between the mages AMAZING, even beyond a rogues, peel and the great burst damage that can be set up if played properly. Sheep / Fear / Mind control all share separate diminishings and the ability to reset the fight with this matrix is wonderful. Making this a good outlasting comp – rivaling the Priest Warlock.

Warlock – Long-winded, not particularly easy, requires a lot of drink exploiting (will explain this later). The warlock has a few good support spells that can help to remove players off of you, fear and Curse of Exhaustion. The warlock receives more healing than most other classes and negates a LOT of damage, particularly spell damage, due to Soul-link. The pet is a nice addition because you don’t need to keep as much of an eye on the other healers combat as you would in other comps.

Feral Druid – This is quite a nice comp to run for any new priest, the feral druid can’t not be focused because it’ll do too much damage but it can’t be focused all the time either because once he shifts into bear form, he’s not a viable target, 90% of the time. Innervate is nice and so is the slow effects, stuns, snares and CC’s the feral druid can apply. The druid also takes more healing than some classes.

Rogue – Relatively straight forwards, your rogue has a variety of tools to burst down the target and keep you safe from other targets, added with a micture of CC’s that are on separate Diminishings to your own CC’s Fear / Blind / Sap / Mind Control (not in that order <_<), which can be used to devastating effect. The rogue takes more healing than most classes and i can’t express enough how good his “peel” is with crippling poison. Pillars are your best friend with a rogue if they weren’t already (which they should have been! BAD PRIEST!). Good for new priests.

Ofcourse you can play with other classes, but i wouldn’t reccomend them. It’s only when you have a great synergy with a player and your co-ordination levels grow before you should try playing with those classes, mage being the exception because i’ll be guiding that Matrix, right here!

Keybinding is a good place to start. Unlike other classes we need all our spells, bar 1 (Mind Soothe), to be efficient. Yes, all. The first thing i want you to do is bind up every spell in this fashion;

There is no Perfect way of binding  because everyone’s reach and finger length is different so certain key’s are going to be more awkward to reach, so spells like prayer of healing (rarely used) or Mind sear, should probably situate themselves in these slots. However i Advise you, strongly, to place your hand on the WAD keys (notice how i didn’t say S? This is because the first thing we do before we do anything is UNBIND our S key, so that it can be used for a spell, PRIESTS DO NOT BACKPEDAL – it is pointless, slow and looks ridiculous). W, being Forwards, A and D being used, only, for strafing, not turning. Then bind around these.

Spells that need to be triggered in order to better a heal, such as Power Infusion, Inner Focus, trinkets, basically spells that need to be triggered then immediately followed by another healing spell should be bound to your mouse. Why? Because by doing this you free up your keyboard hand to move to the key you want to follow through with whilst your other hand motions towards the buff spell.

Another thing i recommend you do is bind a “Target-self” key, again it can be found in the bindings interface. This key needs to be easily accessed on the move so should be around your “modifier” keys, like control and shift or your mouse- i use \, because i never use my pinky to activate spells, i only use it for modifiers.

Create / Change Focus – Please bind this up so you can change it on the trot in arena too.

Try position your spells in easy to glance places too, so that you can quickly establish the cooldown left on a particular spell, or if you’re in combat to use water.

Other things you might not have thought to bind, that need binding; Mount – Water – Levitate – Bandage – Fade

Once this is done we can move on…

Duels =/= Skill, fool?

Well, my friends, they kinda do. Being able to handle yourself in a 1v1 situation carries over into group play. Let’s say for example we’re in a 2v2 arena, playing a Rogue / Priest and we get mirror’d (Mirror, to face the same group composition in an arena match). The idea is to take down the other priest before they take you down, the match get’s split down into 2 kinds of semi-duels, in the lower ends of the 2v2 spectrum. If you know how to live here your chances of winning are greatly increased. But this isn’t the only time it’s important for 1v1, there are a multitude of scenarios, ones that i can’t even think of right now, off of the top of my head, that will just sprout when you least expect.

The priest is one of few classes with, what i deem, no official anti-class. While some classes are harder than others, we have a very good chance of coming out on top if we don’t get boned by RNG (Random number generation, however it’s usually used as a reference to any random aspect of wow, resist, miss, crit). Unlike those poorsod’s Warriors or their buddies, the Warlocks.

What’s more, if you’re like me. You love to duel!