3 Raid healing Priest specs at a glance

Now that the patch has been out for several days, players are slowly getting accustomed to various specs and talents. They're trialing them now in raid situations to get a future handle for them when they hit raiding at 80. How well did they hold up?

Here's a brief summary of the 3 raid specs I suggested:

14/47/0 (Traditional with CoH): Here's the spec many Holy Priests are used to. Key talents include Meditation, Improved Power Word Fortitude, Surge of Light, Circle of Healing, Serendipity, and Improved Holy Concentration (up to 2 ranks). The emphasis is on trying to maximize your mana return as much as possible.

4/57/0 (Guardian Spirit): Only 4 points invested into Discipline for this spec. You're nabbing all the upper tier ones including Guardian Spirit. Even though the cheat death effect isn't as useful right now, raiding with this spec will serve as good practice for those that do want to master it. At level 80, the 10 additional talent points can be used to snag Meditation and Inner Focus. Right now, the one thing going against this spec is the mana regeneration. I get a nice healthy 800+ mana regen out of combat. But if I'm in combat I only get about 125 mp5. So experiment with this spec if your raid DPS is insanely overwhelming. The race is between the damage your raid dishes out and the mana resources your healers have.

56/5/0 (Penance): Key talents include Focused Power, Rapture, Divine Aegis, Pain Suppression, Grace, Borrowed Time, and Penance. A reader brought up a great point in comments last week. There's no realistic reason to grab Reflective Shield. That was a mistake on my end and has been taken into consideration. As a result, I've adjusted the Disc tree spec accordingly. I get to jump into Black Temple again tonight and I'm going to switch to this and give it a shot.

Note that none of the specs above have any points invested in Silent Resolve. Especially with the latest patch and the way threat is, there is no reason to grab any right now. The tanks I play with generate an insane amount of threat. However, please keep in mind that these are suggested specs. Your actual mileage may vary. If you're encountering threat problems, then by all means feel free to pick up Silent Resolve.

For the Shadow Priests, take a look at Alex's Shadow Priest talent build.