Post by Zerul
Maybe I should create an official Disc PVP guide in wowhead sometime.
I recommend binding keys so that you can target either teammate and any of your enemies very quickly:
- Many good PVP healers like to use mousewheel to target teammates (eg. mousewheelup for Party2 and mousewheeldown for Party3), while using ALT modifier or Mouse3 to target themselves. This is so you can keep moving/aiming (ie. have better positioning and mobility) while not having to click your teammates to heal. I suggest use F1, F2, and F3 to target enemy Arena members.
- Use focus frames too! This lets you easily see the cast bar of an important enemy, such as a Mage who's casting Polymorph on you or a Druid casting cyclone.
ShadowfiendYou must take care of your Shadowfiend. It will be a popular target for Cyclones, Fears, and other such things. You may even want to save Fear Ward for the Shadowfiend against Warrior teams.
Shadowfiend isn't just a regen tool either; he is actually quite a powerful damaging creature. I like to use it to help pressure or finish off enemies.
Mana RegenThere are three ways to regenerate mana in big bulks: drinking, Hymn of Hope, and Shadowfiend.
You can drink water whenever you're out of combat. If your teammates are under little pressure and don't really need your help, you can stop fighting for about 5 seconds, find a safe spot/pillar to hide behind and drink mana to gain a mana advantage over the enemy healer. Do not let your opponents do this! If need be, even just putting a DoT on them will suffice for putting them in combat to deny drinking. Also, be mindful that drinking leaves you vulnerable to Sap! You will mostly find drinking opportunities in 2v2s and Battlegrounds rather than 3v3s.
Hymn of Hope is a bit like drinking, except you don't need to wait to be out of combat. Use it in a pinch! Hymn of Hope also makes your Shadowfiend regen more mana if you want to use them together, though you should use caution when doing so. Also, getting Pummel/Kick/Mind Freeze'd while casting Hymn of Hope will lock your Holy/Discipline spells (though they will often charge/stun/death grip you instead)! Be careful.
Fake CastingOne of the biggest threats from melee classes is the interrupt (eg. Pummel, Mind Freeze, Kick, etc.). However, you can trick them into wasting an interrupt. Start casting a spell and then cancel it halfway through. With the limitations of lag and human reflexes, they might interrupt AFTER you've stopped casting! After doing so, you're free to cast spells uninterrupted! With the mod InterruptBar, you can clearly see when they use interrupts and the cooldowns on them.
Penance is one of the best spells to fake cast with. People often assume you will keep the full channel and try to kick it. Once they miss, you're free to cast to your heart's consent!
Inner FocusInner Focus allows you to be immune to interrupts (so you don't have to fake cast), silence effects, and dispels from enemies.
The most obvious use of this is to allow yourself to heal uninterrupted from silence and pummels/kicks/et cetera (beware, stuns and such still work!). Inner Focus + Divine Hymn is a good desperate heal that ignores LoS (eg. you can heal someone above or below you in Blade's Edge Arena while not having to worry about interrupts!). Be mindful, Inner Focus's cooldown doesn't start until you actually cast a single target/binding heal.
However, immunity to Silence effects means that you can dispel Unstable Affliction without getting silenced (though you will still take a bit damage from doing so!).
Immunity to Dispel effects is underrated as well. You can protect essential buffs on yourself from being dispelled, such as Fear Ward, Blessing of Freedom, Blessing of Protection, Innervate, etc. One particular common scenario where you can utilize this is in Priest vs Priest situations. While dispelling the enemy's Fear Ward off, be sure to Fear Ward yourself! Then, put on Inner Focus so he can not dispel your Fear Ward off! This will help you get off the first Fear and thus swing the momentum of the fight into your favor.
Shadow Word: DeathThis is a very powerful, but difficult, spell to use. With it, you can break out of Polymorphs, Scatter Shots, and other CC effects that break on damage. You must time it very carefully; SW: Death the Mage when he has maybe 0.5 seconds left casting Polymorph (lag compensation can help). You must also make a macro to remove PW: Shield and Divine Aegis while casting SW:D so you can actually hurt yourself instead of absorbing the damage, thus breaking the CC effect.
Mana BurnThis is the scariest thing for an enemy healer! Remember, it is a slow cast time, so enemies will often try to interrupt or move out of your LoS (line of sight) to dodge your mana burns. What you can do to land them is: fear them, have a teammate root/stun them, or force them to heal their teammates by putting a lot of pressure (thus leaving them exposed). Borrowed Time from shield casts and Power Infusion on yourself will also help with Mana Burn casting time.
Dispel and Mass DispelThe key to being a good dispeller is anticipating your enemy's moves. See that Mage on low health? Get ready to Mass Dispel! See the Mage casting Polymorph while you're getting hurt pretty bad? This means he's probably Polymorphing your teammate, not you, so don't use SW:D! Instead, get ready to dispel your teammate quickly so he can help you ASAP! Your Rogue is stunning the enemy Priest, but the stun is about to run out! Get ready to dispel Fear off of your Rogue. Using the mousewheel to target teammates and F1-F3 as mentioned before will help you target and dispel even faster.
Smash TotemsIt is also your job to kill Shaman totems so that your teammates can focus on killing. You can do this with wands, Shadow Word: Death, and even melee. Grounding Totem and Earthbind Totems are probably the two most important totems to smash.
Priest CC'sYour most used CC will be Fear. Fear is kind of wasted on a target if he's being damaged heavily (because it will break soon), but is well spent on someone who isn't being focused. Fear forces trinkets and cooldowns, interrupts casting (so it's not always a waste on someone being focus fired), and sometimes makes enemies watch their teammates getting beat to death while doing nothing themselves. Fear is also your main defensive cooldown, so use it often.
Be mindful of Fear Ward, Berserek, Anti-Magic Shell, Cloak of Shadows, Lichborne, and other such immunities before Fearing!
Mind Control is a powerful, but tricky, spell to use. It takes a long time to cast, so it's easy to dodge and, in emergencies for the enemy, easy to interrupt. Of course, forcing them to interrupt Mind Control means you're free to heal, so it's not so bad. Mind Control doesn't share Diminishing Returns with any spell except itself, which is awesome. You often land Mind Controls from Fear, Blind, and other long CC's that aren't trinketed. It lasts 6 seconds and thus forces a trinket, action from the enemy's teammates, or simply buys your teammates a LOT of time to get damage done. You can also put the mind controlled person in a bad position or near yourself to get Feared right after, though you can't move him too far from his original spot.
Mind Control is difficult to pull off in Arena and you need to play and experiment a lot to build discretion on when it would be powerful (which is rare) and when it would be silly to use (which is often). However, Mind Control is VERY powerful in Rated Battlegrounds; it buys you a lot of time to capture nodes, and can force enemies to trinket or else face running off of cliffs (of which there are many in all the rated Battleground maps).
You can shackle too, sometimes. Shackling Gargoyles neuters a DK's damage by a lot, but try not to get interrupted since it is a Holy/Disc spell. Shackling the DK's pet disables his stun capability and lets you get off of combat if only his pet is chasing you. You can shackle the DK himself if he's Lichborne, but smart ones will turn off the Lichborne; don't expect to pull it off against smarter opponents.
Talents and Glyphshttp://www.wowhead.com/talent#bfhcMosbforofzr:mqorqoThis is what I recommend. You're not going to use Greater Heal in Arena. Use Mind Spike x3 -> Mind Blast + SW:D + Shadowfiend at <25% instead of Holy Fire -> Smite, it's faster and does more DPS.
Post by Izichial
You must also make a macro to remove PW: Shield and Divine Aegis while casting SW:D so you can actually hurt yourself instead of absorbing the damage, thus breaking the CC effect.
SW:D damage should break cc even if the damage is absorbed.
Tabbed out of SW:TOR atm (^_^) so can't test it right now but this was quite a discussion at AJ a while back because it was supposed to but was pretty bugged so it often didn't:
http://www.arenajunkies.com/topic/204315-swd-works-with-absorbs/Zerul penned down some very good basics, all I feel the need to add is "practice". If you start out as a fresh arena player you should probably expect to play several hundred games before you can consistently play at 1500-1750 skill levels. Also, class specific skills are probably at most 25-50% of being a good PvP player.
As for the Divine Fury points in that talent build, some people play with GH and some don't. I did when I played at decent ratings last; I know of 2400+ priests who are playing both with and without which is a bit above where I played if that matters.
