Classic multibox leveling guide!

[jak3676]

I was really surprised to see the OP had the priest taking Holy Nova (HN) so late in the build (L53). I don't know if this is because I'm doing WMMMP instead of MMMMP, or maybe I'm doing something wrong and I'll realize it later (currently L42, still farming SM:Cath), but I'm really relying on using a ton of HN.


For my AOE pulls, I toss a PW:shield on my tank and use him to gather all mobs by facepulling & shouting. Once I have the mobs gathered, I cast flamestrike on each of 3 mages (which generally pulls aggro off the tank). Then I spam Arcane Explosion and HN, while trying to taunt or sunder armor with my warrior until everything is dead.


It generally works very well, but leveling through my 20's and 30's I had 2 problems. 1) my priest was pulling healing aggro during the pull and 2) I was running out of mana on my priest long before my mages, and long before everything was dead


The 1st issue was easy to fix by making sure to do the initial PW:Shield while out of combat, before charging in - then limiting any healing until flamestrikes begin dropping. PW:S causes aggro when the spell is cast, not when it actually prevents damage. So if you cast it out of combat, before the pull, then there's no healing aggro during the pull. I know this is generally considered bad for tanking as the PW:S robs the tank of rage, but when I'm just face pulling anyway and I'm controlling all the dps it works fine. For similar reasons, it's fine to cast renew on my tank before a single target pull (e.g a boss), but I learned not to cast renew at all during an AOE pull, as renew causes healing aggro as soon as it ticks.


I've learned that my ability to AOE pull mobs is effectively limited to my tanks effective health + precombat shield. I run around and gather mobs until my tank is below 50% health, and then by the time he's below 25% health I need to have my mage AOE and HN going off. I can extend this a bit with a potion on my tank if needed, but doing any healing when surrounded by a 6-12 mobs, before the mages go off just leads to priest death and a run back.


I had initially tried 5/5 Silent Resolve (20% reduced threat) on my priest to reduce healing aggro, and 3/3 Imp Inner Fire (more armor) as well as stacking more stam to survive the hits, but that didn't work. It wasn't a matter of my healer generating more threat per second than my other chars it was a matter of several mobs not having any aggro on them other than the face pull aggro from the tank. Now that I've fixed my pulling mechanics, I've gone from pulling aggro with my healer and trying to survive it, to having 0 aggro from my healer (Holy Nova causes no aggro) and never getting hit.


To fix the oom issue I tried a few things, but the ultimate solution was to stack more Int and fix my priest talents. I initially thought I wanted more regen so I tried 5/5 Spirit Tap, but that does not help at all as the amount of time in combat is very short - so even when it procs regularly, it doesn't actually increase the amount of mana available for HN.


To increase mana on the priest you manly need to focus on +int gear. This was initially a challenge fore me as I felt I also needed more stam due to my aggro issue. But once I fixed my aggro issue I was able to drop stam in favor of more int for my priest. (This also let me focus any +stam cloth to my mages as they can actually drop some int to get more stam as they seem to have plenty of mana for their AOE rotation.) I was also then free to drop Silent Resolve and Imp Inner fire.


I swapped my priest talents around to look like this:
https://www.bobo-talents.com/?c=prie...DiC-DaDbDcDdpv


I had always thought of Inner Focus as a dps boost, but I think my main benefit is a free HN. 5/5 Mental Agility and 5/5 Mental Strength also seem key to get more HN. This build does get to Power Infusion much later than the OP's build, but I haven't really seen a need for it yet. In fact I think I'm going to macro PI+IF to HN as an "Oh $#!%" instant heal & dps button. I'm already finding that during the pull, I'm better off casting another holy nova than I am stopping that to toss a shield/flash heal on whichever mage has aggro.


For boss pulls, I give my tank a second to get aggro, then have my mages just chain casting fireballs while my priest is either 1) doing nothing, 2) casting smite, 3) casting low level head on my tank. With an actual warrior tanking (even with a 2H in Arms spec) bosses are much lower risk than AOE packs. I don't think I've ever wiped on a boss, unless I completely messed up a mechanic (forgot to stop the kids from running into Herod in SM:Armory or ignoring LoS on Argual in SFK).


Up through Herod I had my priest casing Lesser Heal (Rank 3) on my tank every time my mages cast fireball. Herod made me switch to Heal (Rank 1) which is still a lot of overhealing, but I can spam that all day. I'm sure I'll bump that up to Rank 2 & 3 eventually, but I don't really see any need to do anything to improve my single target healing throughput or regen.

[Torgo]

I consider Holy Nova the MVS (most valuable spell) in my WMMMP team. The best thing about it is that it has a huge range and you can kill runners with it. It has saved me countless wipes by taking out runners, you just save Holy Nova spam until the mobs are mostly dead.