PDA

View Full Version : The Theory of the PallyPriest


Jafo
Aug 11th '05, 05:57 PM
We are fortunate of having a lot of pally?s in our guild and the #1 class we have a hard time finding is a Priest or a main healer. When you take an in depth look at the Paladin, the Paladin has a lot of abilities that can be utilized in allowing them to function as a priest.

The two main heal spells a Paladin has is Holy Light and Flash of Light, each one healing a different amount. This is currently what I can do:

Holy light at Rank 8 will heal a friendly target for 1425 to 1584 using 580 mana
Flash of Light at Rank 5 will heal a friendly target for 278 to 310 health using 115 mana

The Paladin can use the Holy Light and Flash of Light spell very effectively. When you add your Blessing of Light to all friendly players you now have a more powerful effect on those you heal. Blessing of light lasts 5 min and must be cast upon each friendly player in the party one at a time.

Blessing of Light Rank 3 adds up to 400 health points to the Holy light spell for a total healing ability of 1825 to 1984 and adds up to 115 health points to Flash of Light for a total healing ability of 393 to 425 per cast while using the same mana.

When we did our first guild run, Kyraath was not here to be the healer so I played the Main Healer and much to my surprise we actually did well. I have a habit of keeping some of my old items around from time to time so I equipped myself with all the intellect items that I could find and while we were in the instance I found another helm that gave me an additional 17 intellect so it started me thinking about how to convert a Paladin into a Priest.

Why does a Paladin wear plate armor? The answer to that is everyone expects you too. The Paladin is expected to fight helping the main assist or main tank and cast a heal only when need. Everyone is in the mindset that Paladins have to wear plate armor and they have to be a meat shield. No one would think of a Paladin in anything other than plate armor, but Paladins can wear any armor they want!

Why would a Paladin want to wear another armor other than plate? The Answer is Intellect and Spirit. Most of the Cloth items that you typically see are high in Spirit and Intellect. To Function as a Pally-Priest you have to adjust your abilities to fit your role as a dedicated healer. This means #1, you are not on the front line fighting. #2 your job is to stand back and heal the party.

The largest advantage of the Pally-Priest is you have the ability to use a Shield that a normal priest does not have. At level 60 most of the shields you find are over 2000 armor. This automatically gives you more armor than a normal priest has. So if a Paladin who is completely stripped all items other than a shield and runs no auras, that Paladin will still have over 2000 armor.

To expand and create the Pally-Priest you need to think a little outside of the box and be creative. This is where you look at the other armor. Find yourself items that give you intellect and Spirit. It does no matter if it is Cloth, Leather, Mail or Plate just as long as you get the maximum intellect and spirit you can possibly get.

Right now my Paladin in normal tank mode has 2642 mana with 94 intellect points. Which mean I can cast roughly 21 Flashes of light or just under 5 Holy light spells before my mana is gone. My base Intellect is 70 with +24 in bonuses from items.

The standard slots for every character that you can get an ability bonus too is Head, Neck, Shoulders, Cloak, Chest, Wrists, Hands, Waist, Legs, Feet, Finger #1 and Finger #2, not including the two trinkets, weapon or shield. That is 12 slots with an additional 4 optional slots. Lets estimate that you are capable of finding an item with at least +15 intellect for each of those 12 slots, normal green items not blue or purple, that would give you a 180 intellect in bonuses plus my base intellect of 70 for 250 intellect. 250 intellect would give me around 6000 mana allowing me to cast some 52 Flashes of Light or 10 holy Light Spells on a full mana charge.

I think it is very realistic that a Pally-Priest can achieve over 300 intellect points as a primary ability with some 7000 mana points. The other primary ability would be Spirit that could realistically be over 200. Strength, Agility and Stamina would all be secondary abilities and would only be a bonus if you were able to get them.

The Pally-Priest would be best using the Concentration Aura which give you a 35% chance of ignoring spell interruption when damaged and having your holy talents set to for all 5 slots in Spiritual Focus which gives your flash of light and hold light spells a 70% chance to not loose casting time when you take damage and all 3 slots in improved Holy light which increases the amount healed by your holy light spell by 12%. There are additional Talent points that are available to supplement this but this is what I currently can do with how I am speced.

I do not expect to get many blue items because most people would be offended by a Paladin picking up set items for other classes, but when the opportunity presents itself to pick up a solid mage or priest set item I am going to get it. When we do our guild raids and an item drops that no one needs I would like to opportunity to get it just to help me function as a Pally-Priest.

I am convinced that this is realistic and can be done. I am going to pursue this and start getting all intellect items. I am going to carry two sets of items basically. One complete set for when I need to be a tank, and one complete set for when I need to be the Pally-Priest.

Dread
Aug 11th '05, 06:41 PM
Or you could just roll a priest and level him up to 60 in a month. Seems to me that would be easier.:wave:

Malice
Aug 11th '05, 06:58 PM
Sounds good, you should really look into some form of set manager such as equip manager or something similar. That way you can save an item set and switch at the press of a button. Nice and easy.

Jafo
Aug 11th '05, 07:32 PM
Yea... start a priest:doh: and spend about 4 months building it.. no thanks easier to do this..

I have been able get some interesting items tonight off the auction house for reasonable prices. I am able to get an intellect of 224 with 151 spirit now giving me 4600 mana points. I still have 3 items that have no intellect on them at all and several of those items that do have intellect are under 10 per item. I am pretty sure that I can hit 300 intellect with items I just have to find them. Funny thing is I am still able to keep my armor around 5k. I just have to test it in action now.

D-Bone
Aug 11th '05, 11:34 PM
Don't forget the in the talent tree under holy, you can put points into Divine Favor and Illumination giving you a free critical heal every 2 minutes. 5 points Divine Wisdom will also increase your mana pool by 10%. It will be intersting to see what the devs do with our talent tree, supposedly, they are looking into them so they make more sense.

Jafo
Aug 22nd '05, 07:59 AM
So far the Theory of the Pally/Priest has worked out well. It has definately been tested in different situations and the results are good.

On Friday night ,8/19, Malice, Dark, Mongo, Lethal and myself did a 5 man with myself as the main healer. It was successful, and although we had a complete wipe we got in sync with what we were doing but we pulled it off.

Saturday Nights, 8/20, adventure allowed us to be graced with Kyraath's presence and I stepped back to the backup role again it was sucessful.

The Pally/Priest is definately NOT a priest by any means, but when the situation arises it can fill the slot of a healer and step up for the occasion. I learned that I definately have to stay in the back and do the healers job and not step in and fight unless it is at the end of the battle.

Other than healing my main focus were using the Stun and Seal of light features. Stun works great with the Pally/Priest because you can step in, hit a single target, and allow the rest of the group to take it down and back away.

Seal of Light is a Pally/Priests main seal. When your fighting a main boss or tough opponent that takes 2 or 3 melee characters to fight it down, Cast seal of light on that boss with judgment and back away. This allowes all the melee character to be healed by the seal for 30 seconds while the P/P sits back and heals. It is a great suppliment seal along with the holy light and flash of light.

My abilities are holding good. I am currently able to get a 260+ Intelligence and able to maintain 5000+ mana base. When I have the intelligence buff from a mage it hits about 5600 mana. My goal is to get enough items to maintain 300 intelligence.

Armor wise, I have alot more armor than expected. It is normally around 4k without the protection aura activated and the Light Forge items do make a huge difference. A complete lightforge set with supplimenting items all intelligence based would be a good combination.

Overall I think the Theory is legit and it performs. You just have to be willing to spend the money on a complete set of intellignece items and not worry about loosing your armor until you find higher armor items that gives you the intelligence you need.

lethalmind
Aug 23rd '05, 03:57 PM
It must be very hard for you to sit back and heal when your used to running into battle. I think your doin a pretty good job at this and is a great supplemental to the healing aspect even when kyraath is there.. just need to work on not overlapping each other. In a pressure situation we are getting some overlapping heals done and draining mana unneccesarily. But this has been very seldom and nicer to have to much than not enough. Congrats on the work. Nice to see you step out of the normal stance of the pally and use it to another means.

Maverick
Jan 28th '06, 11:16 PM
I'll be leveling a druid and priest coming up. (Shadow priest) wanted to explore the taboo Face melter, seems to be very powerful with a heavy Shadow Talent base, increasing your Shadow DPS by 40% and heal at the same time. (100% of their damage if 5 members in the party -- 20% per party member)