Priest Healing PvP

[Bolty]

In a 3v3 team where I expect to be FFed, how well can I keep myself up? The most likely team makeup would be Hunter, Rogue and myself.

A Priest, just like everyone else, dies fast when being assist trained without support. How well you can keep yourself up depends greatly on your Hunter and Rogue. Both are classes with the ability to stun/disorent/lock people out of a match for a short period of time, and need to do so if you're getting trained.

However, it's very likely that you won't be the primary FF target much of the time. The Hunter will be. I'm in a 3v3 group with a Rogue/Hunter/Priest, as you are, and only now are we starting to move up (went 9-1 this week and got into the 1700's) because our Hunter started gearing up for PvP. Before then, most matches started with some solid FF on him and he'd die so fast you'd miss it if you blinked. Enemy groups know that if they FF the Hunter, the Hunter can't do much, and you're forced into a healing position (defense) instead of a dispelling/mana burning one (offense). If the other team put a solid CC on me, they could burst the Hunter down before I'd get out of it. Now that the Hunter has some PvP gear, though, that's getting harder for them.

If they focus fire on you, the Hunter/Rogue can really tear them up pretty hard and you're just playing the typical Priest here-we-go-again-time-to-heal-myself-until-I-die game. In short, focusing on you takes you out of the offense. Focusing on the Hunter takes him AND you out of the offense. That's a win for them.

The evolution of arena DPS players goes something like:

1) Haha, PHEAR MY PHAT DPS! DIE! DIE! PEW PEW PEW what do you mean everyone else is dead?
2) Hmm, straight DPS doesn't work too well, I need to do solid crowd control as well.
3) I need to control my enemies, keep pressure on them, and limit the damage I take as well.
4) I'm really just here to pressure the enemy healer(s) and run them out of mana, either by attacking them directly or by providing solid DPS on a target, before my healer(s) run out of mana. Then I can pwn!

If your Rogue/Hunter is on step 3 or higher, you'll do well :) Step 4 only really develops once you get to higher brackets where everyone has 10,000, 11,000+ hit points and hundreds of resilience. At that point, you can't burst down anyone anymore and matches become mana/attrition wars. It was a real shock last night when Quark and I, after playing at the mid-1800 level for a while, played some 3v3 at the mid-1500's level. Quark and the Hunter would just burst down enemies so fast I'd be saying "he's dead already? WTF?"

For the talent build - what does everyone think of Improved Inner Fire? Initially it seems worth it but the thought occurred to me that it's likely insta-dispelled. Is this the case?

This was my conclusion as well after running a while with Improved Inner Fire. I ditched it and went with my current build. It's not just that Improved Inner Fire can be dispelled/purged easily, it's the classic problem that 20 hits just doesn't last long. I need Inner Fire against Rogues and Warriors, right? How long does it take them to get in 20 hits, with all the specials they whack you with? Not long, in the grand scheme of things. As you get higher and higher in rankings, arena matches last longer and longer. Many times I found Inner Fire fading off and wishing I could put it back up, but doing so costs a global cooldown that I don't have to spare. I chose instead to go for cheaper dispels so that I could last in mana wars longer.

This is just my opinion. Many top Priests use Improved Inner Fire, so it's a matter of preference.

-Bolty