Holy Schmoly - pure damage

News Flash: Jools is insanely happy! After having killed about 200 ogre geomancers and about three times that amount of skirmishers in Blade's Edge over a period of two months or so, it finally dropped! The recipe for [Enchant Bracer: Spellpower]!

Only thing not so fun was the mats required for the enchant...6 large prismatic shards, 6 primal fires and 6 primal waters...with those mats you would have expected the enchant to give 150 spellpower instead of 15...ah well, I got the recipe and gotta start looking for somethinhg else to farm for when I have a moment to spare :-)

Back to the usual stuff:

As you probably know already, I respecced Jools to holy recently and immediately ran into trouble gear-wise. What is she supposed to wear? How can she improve her healing bonus to the max?

Every holy priest dress list mentions the Primal Moonclothe set as the absolutely best for a holy priest. Well, I am not gonna drop my 375 enchanting or my 375 jewelcrafting to pick up tailoring, so what else is there?

Not much actually. Well, now I tell a lie again, there is pretty much, but not much that is achievable for me, casual player with too many girls to take care of (damned be that alt-itis of mine!). Drops from Kara, heroics, ZA, pvp vendors or BoE stuff from the Trade Channel or the AH is what I have to dress Jools in.

Btw, and this I didn't realise until recently, have you noticed how aptly named Jools is for a 375 JC? Hihi...

There is a chest that drops from Nalorakk in ZA, and there is a chest that drops from Julianne in Kara. Both are pretty nice and both are pretty hard to get.

There is the hallowed set ofc, which requires a lot of instance going and good luck in drops (= really not an option for me then, which all of you avid readers probably know by know....

...optional reading regarding my luck in drops:
The day I specced Jools holy I went for a Kara run. Huntsman, Moroes, Maiden, Opera, Curator, Chess and Aran went down that night. These bosses dropped in total
- 0 (zero) healing gear that Jools could wear.
- many (a lot!) of other stuff
(Well I am not complaining that bad, I got 4 new shinies that night for my spell damage gear, including the one and only Staff of Infinite Mysteries that Paynne have been longing for so long =( well it aint that bad for a priest either)

It seems that the times I roll goood rolls, like more than 80 or so, are the times when noone else is interested in rolling so I will get the bling-bling whatever I roll, and it feels Fate is just teasing me with this, cause next time when I roll against someone its that customary 10 or lower....oh cruel fate!

...optional reading off)

So I decided to do like everyone else these days, I will go get some honor and buy some sweet shiny epix for my priests healing gear - yeye I know I said I didn't want to do a lot of bg's but hey! A girl can change her mind can't she?

So I go AV for the honor (which goes fast and is fun) and I go AB for the marks (which is slow and pretty painful and have to be spread out through the day to avoid death by acute irritation at your fellow alliance (a guildie of mine called alliance in AB for headless chickens, and I see his point. Very clearly. Too clearly, in fact. Ah well, no pain, no gain...I try to look at it as en exercise in patience and keeping your calm no matter what the world throws at you...))

Anyways, as I went to Alterac Valley I noticed that there usually is enough healing going around on the boss fights, Galv and Drek, so I switched and started nuking instead. This made me curious - is it possible for a holy priest to actually put out some serious spell damage? I am not talking about topping the raid charts, but maybe just a chance to survive out there in the hostile world? And how is the survivability of the holy priest when she goes offensive?

Let's try to examine this a little.

Jools has about 860 + spell damage unbuffed and a crit chance of 15 % for her Holy spells and about 10 % crit chance for other spells.

How many offensive spells does a Holy NE priest have? Two Holy spells with a cast time, three shadow spells, one dot, one cast spell and one instacast, and one arcane dot.

I am not counting spells like Drain Mana or Holy Nova because they are very situational to use, and I don't think I have ever used Shadow Word: Death, not even back in the old shady days.

Smite
Now here is a spell with a cool name, smite, smite, smite...mmm just taste the name, not just any other everyday blast-things-away spell but very Old Testament-like, smelling strongly of the crusadery killing of unbelieving infidels, smite-the-mobs-with-the furious wrath-of my-pure-and righteous-faith-kinda spell.

Smite has a 2 sec cast time and does about 1300 Holy damage in her current gear. It crits for about 2000 but not as often as you'd wish (guess 15% is about right).

Holy Fire
Dunno what's so holy about this one but it looks cool, probably one of the coolest spell animations in the game, with that pillar of white fire blasting the target away...it has a 3 sec cast and hits for about 1100 and with another 450 damage over 10 sec. Isn't that the most pathetic dot-part ever?

Good thing though about the two holy spells is that they have no cd, so u can keep casting them on and on and on...

Mind Blast
As a Holy priest, MB has a 1,5 sec cast time, an 8 sec cd and does about 1100 Shadow damage.

Shadow Word: Pain
A staple for any priest, regardless of spec. Insta-cast, 2200 Shadow damage ticking over 18 seconds.

Starshards
A Night Elf racial priest skill, an arcane dot that with a 30 sec cd that costs no mana and ticks for abot 1650 over 15 seconds.


So off she went to Shadowmoon to finish those Scryer quests and get a little closer to the coveted shoulder enchant...

And to my surprise and delight it went real well! The mobs went down like snowmen in June and even the occasional add or two was really no problem to handle. Tried it on the warriors, shamans and elekk handlers of Baari and the slayers and chosen of the orc stronghold with the same result.

Usual spell rotation was Shield, Holy Fire, SW:Pain, Starshards and as the mob came running a Smite or two and then wand to death. Reapply Shield if needed.

Psychic Scream and Elune's Grace helped in the could-be tricky situations of additional mobs turning up, and she took a beating or two, but all in all she did real well and only died a couple of times (and one of those times was when she swam into a group of hordes while doing a quest).

It was a happy holy priest who almost reached revered with the Scryers that day :-)