Tobold try out

http://tankspot.com/

for a selection of builds and discussions on them.

Jeeves
 

And I would like to point out that, last I checked, Prot is actually quite good for soloing now! Prots damage is way up, and you are still nigh unkillable while soloing. With the addition of a self heal and the str to sbv change, you can run around destroying mobs. Not AS fast as the other two specs, but much, much improved.
 

Hi Tobold,

DPS for Quests is NO problem at all with my Disc priest. I did not even bother to set my Itemrack yet and just killed the mobs in my "old" healing gear.

I have specced discipline with a shield Build, which maximises use of PW:Shield. I am not sure i will keep this build, but i wanted to test this way of playing.

While getting my Outland Questing achievement "Speed Bombing run" in Blades edge i got shot down twice and landed in a group of Mobs and managed to kill of 3 of the Demons, which are around the Fel Canons.

killing got far faster and DPS with spells doubled. (at least it felt that way)

We got more spells on the DPS side.

Holy Nova is not a "talented spell" anymore.

Devouring Plague is no racial anymore.

Penance is fun aswell, but you need to put 51 Points in Disc for it.

Priest Quest/Grinding got massively buffed, i cannot talk about raid/group healing yet, as my server was seriously borked yesterday.
 

Dear Tobold.
I have the same problems as you with my warrior and priest. But I went protection path with warrior and i did not regret. It is FUN and easy to solo. Check http://www.tankingtips.com/. 5/3/53 is also my choice. Shockwave rock.
 

Try www.talentchic.com. It scans the armory and shows you the most popular builds for all classes and specs. It's been updated for the new patch with all the new tools.
(Disclosure: I created the site)
 

Dual specs are also (allegedly) coming after LK launch. I was planning on speccing the warrior prot for raiding and instances now for free, then using the second spec for lolfury to use for dailies and those bosses where more than tank is wasted dps later.
 

"Northrend could turn out to have lots of frost resistant mobs"

It doesnt, at least according to a frost mage from my guild who is on beta
 

Hello Tobold,

I agree whith th first poster, have look at www.tankspot.com.

The round up about the def warrior is here :

http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f64/40487-3-0-preparedness-your-tuesday-guide.html

They propose different specs : one for main-tanking, and one for 5-man, KZ.

Being a prot warrior myself, I tried to do something a little bit different :

http://www.wow-europe.com/fr/info/basics/talents/warrior/talents.html?tal=050000000000000000000000000000300000000000000000000000000053341225003002520330013321

I chose to loose concussion blow and vigilance to be able to round up the rest of my template.

If my aggro proves to be no problem in raid, I am going to keep this template for the next month.

Gehenne
 

I am playing a priest, healer all the way. Yesterday we went Black Temple with new specs and cleared it in under three hours. Normally we need 2 evenings for that.

Damage was insane, as was healing: we had only 5 healers in the raid, I was the only holy priest, #1 in heal meters.

The key was circle of healing and prayer of mending. CoH now intelligently picks targets in need of heals. So all it takes is to position yourself and spam this instant cast. Its mana to heal ratio is far better than any other spell since downranking is no longer possible. It only cost merely 100 mana more than Flash heal, greater heal costs 200 mana more than CoH.

Prayer of Mening (PoM) now heals for 2.5k in my T6 equip per jump, thats insane.

So all I did was PoM'ing the tanks, and spamming CoH. Took a lot of mana and the new rule "one mana pot per combat" made it hard but the raid wide mana regeneration of various classes helped.

As boss fights are now shorter it is possible to have less healers in the raid, so more damage, which shortens the encounter again and helps the mana problem too.

As PoM and CoH are instant casts I suggest you still skill the disciplin talents to reduce instant cast mana, improved spirit you don't need as a healer, leave that to shadows or discipline priests.
 

For priests:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?priest=053020013000000000000000000003505003230015053005331000000000000000000000000000000

Usage: Greater Heal on Tanks, Flash Heals and Renew (enhanced by Glyphs) on the rest, CoH and PoM in the case of AOE-Damage.

Spirit is still not a bad buff, but as Holy ists simply out of reach. You'd have to sacrifice all of your AOE-Heal-Power and a good part of your Single-Heal-Power to reach it. If you really want Spirit you'd have to specc Disc, granting you amazing Single-Heals, but weak AOE-Heal-Power. And you'd have to learn a new style of healing while holy is still kind of the same.
Soloing should be no problem, Holy Fire got buffed and the spellpower-change accounts for huge amounts of spelldamage on your healgear. Smite is a lot of fun now ;)
 

Everything you ever needed to know about the changes to the priest class in patch 3.0.2, including sample talent builds, can be found in a Survival Guide made by dwarfpriest.
 

As a lot of people have already linked to Tankspot, where Ciderhelm posted everything a prot warrior needs to know about, I won't repeat the recommendation.

I will only say that there's never been a better time for protection warriors, that we really shine in solo play and groups now, and that above all, playing now is amazing amounts of FUN!

Blizzard did a fantastic job of fixing every possible problem prot warriors ever had. Me, I am going to tank Heroic Shattered Halls today, without any sort of CC, and I am gonna love it.
 

Put 5 points in spirit tap pick up some dmg increasing abilities in holy and disc and jack your spirit to the hills. The new combination of spell dmg with healing serves this build well, you can solo well enough and be able to heal a 5 man with no problem. Kinda makes me want to dust off my priest, but Warhammer is keeping me interested. I yern for the days when surge of light was broken and you could get 3 or 4 instant smites off :).
 

www.plusheal.com for tons of discussion on priest and healing things
 

Just go for whatever you feel useful and good. Is numbercrunching that much for? Not for me. I cannot imagine myself ever again looking for optimalised talent builds. They take out the fun of planning my own!
 

@Kirth - new revised talents make Spirit Tap only 3/3 now. Even better!

Actually, Seri from World of Snarkcraft did a good write-up of new offensive holy talents and charted a build that maximizes one's holy soloing ability with a specific focus on mana efficiency (no stopping to drink). The added advantage is that the build should be able to handle most healing for any given 5-player content on the 70-80 trek.

http://snarkcraft.wordpress.com/2008/10/02/seri-sez-i-smite-thee-leveling-discholy-in-wrath/

My take on the level-while-holy spec is as follows.

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=bVcbkhxdrLZrxt0cbabZh
 

Here's what I'm using as my warrior spec now:
http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=LVZhZVItMxczVdIzsGo

Obviously, there's room for tweaking if you want the 5% crit from Cruelty out of the gate. In a Kara raid last night, I was anywhere from #3 to #5 on DPS & damage done in a 2-healer raid with the above spec.
 

Tobold--

There are a couple of tank blogs that I like to read that might help you make a decision. Tankspot of course is a good resource, but it has already been mentioned. I also recommend http://www.tanklikeagirl.com/ and http://www.willtankforhealz.com/. Both have helped me understand the warrior class a little better, as I am spending most of my time leveling a warrior. Hope that helps!

Oh, and plusheal.com is also a great place for priesty or other healer class info.
 

My Prot Spec at 70:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=LVMZhZVIdMg0zidIzsGo

This build is less focused on being the ultimate damage mitigator and more on threat generation and having fun while tanking. I don't really need Imp Spell Reflect, but it's cool as hell when I do pull it out in a 5-man or in a situation like Hyjal trash. The main thing I don't have is maxed Anticipation, which would be the first thing I'd change if tanking progression level content. Avoidance stats like Dodge are so plentiful on gear (and you only really need a baseline amount before mitigation becomes more important), that I like to have as many threat boosting talents as possible when tanking casual level content. Thus, I've taken Armed to the Teeth instead of maxing out my Dodge Rating.

I've passed on most of the rage reduction talents as well (excluding Focused Rage) since rage is abundant post patch, especially if you're raiding with a prot pally with Blessing of Sanctuary. If not, you're still OK. I now rely on Warbringer to generate my upfront rage. Forget Shockwave and the new and improved Thunderclap, forget all our increased damage and scaling threat, Warbringer has been the most exciting thing in the patch so far for me. Prot warriors are now the most mobile melee class in the game. Combine it with Imp Charge and the minor glyph that increases Charge's range, and you'll be zipping all over the place with enough rage to do whatever you want.

A few of the new talents worth mentioning are Damage Shield and the new Imp Defensive Stance. Damage Shield now means we can do a poor man's version of pally aoe grinding, and the Enrage proc from Imp Defensive Stance is up basically all the time, which means there really is no more damage penalty from Defensive Stance if you have that talent. These are both must-haves IMO. Shockwave is great and really self explanatory, and Vigilance is proving to be a lot more useful that I thought. It should obviously go on a healer if they're pulling healing aggro, but if they're good at controlling their threat then you can put it on that maniac Warlock and let his out of control threat actually provide some benefit for you.

At 80 I plan on taking my spec up to look like this:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=LAM00bZhxZVIdMg0zidIzsGo

I'm undecided about where I'm going to put my next 3 points in Arms since we rarely have to stance dance with Warbringer, but what I'm really going for is the 20% increased crit damage from Impale. Then I'm going to complement that by getting Cruelty maxed out again. At level 80 with the right talents a prot warrior is going to have a 25% crit chance on all his major abilities, without having a single point of crit or agility on his gear. 20% more damage on all those crits is a lot, and ups your threat significantly. On top of that you can equip your dps gear when grinding or not tanking, and your crit percentage should be well into the 40's for Heroic Strike, Thunder Clap, Cleave, Shield Slam, and Devastate. That gives you the flexibility to really dish out some hurt while leveling and grinding, but gives you a build that is still capable of tanking anything in the game, including entry-level raids, as long as you have the right gear.
 

Dear Tobold,

for your concern about deftanks.

Forget these concerns.

Today shadowlab heroic.

All 5 man in full epics (kara, t4 or t5)

Deftank, warlock, hunter, shamy healer and myself as deepfire mage.

after shadowlab clear, recount showed that:
http://img185.imageshack.us/img185/7571/unbenanntsa7.jpg

The tank was full prot spec had 18k life.
I (mage) have 1043 spellpower
the warlock had 1153 spellpower

all i can say is, deftanks are imba
and warlocks are screwed. ;)

cu :)
 

Since it sounds like your Disc priest is an alt, and you'll be doing PvE content, there are 2 options (ignoring Shadow).

You can max your Spell Power, or go Deep Disc.

Maxing Spell Power means getting both Improved Divine Spirit and Spiritual Guidance. Divine Spirit is now better than it was before, granting +50 to spell power. Spiritual Guidance gives 25% of your total spirit to spell power.

Deep Disc priests are now de-facto main tank healers and Holy priests are raid healers. An added bonus is that being a MT healer automatically makes us ideal for 5 men instances. Also with Rapture, you almost never run out of mana spamming Flash Heals/Renew/Penance.

If you're considering a Deep Disc build for both PvE and Raiding, I highly recommend 51/10/0.
- Make sure to put 5 points in Divine Fury which Reduces the casting time of your Smite, Holy Fire, Heal, and Greater Heal
- Get Penance (51 point Disc)
- Get Improved Divine Spirit
- Get Rapture, Divine Ageis
- Highly recommend all the shield related buffs inc reflective shield