Does Spriest get better?

Compared to everything else I’ve been leveling, spriest seems to be the weakest. I really like the play style though. Does it get better after max? Or is it still one of those middle of the pack specs?

Like every spec, it has its strengths and weaknesses. Spriest has very poor burst damage potential, but it is arguably the king of ‘rot’ damage. Slow but steady.

Leveling feels quicker when you burst a mob and your abilities are cooling down between trash packs or the next mob you’re moving to. That’s why Spriest probably doesn’t feel good while you’re leveling.

So yes, it gets better at max level.

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No.

Shadow has always sucked.

(For fun factor I mean, I dunno about effectiveness.)

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You’re best off leveling as discipline. It does more burst damage throughout the leveling process than shadow does, kills mobs quicker and more reliably, and it can facetank any rare/elite you come across due to the heavy self healing it puts out while dealing damage.

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They had to put old Boomkin somewhere, the weird shadow burst is quite annoying and lack of any good AOE. It’s a shame you need a valid target to burn others around, and if they’re low health to begin with its a fruitless effort as you get swarmed finding a new target to channel on.

Shadow priest is highly azerite trait, essence, and gear dependent. It’s also dependent on having enough finesse to make the spec work because of the inner workings of it.

I love my shadow priest. But I did the 30k honor grind for Blood of the Enemy, Lucid Dreams dailies, so on and so forth in the attempts to improve my character. It’s a late bloomer in my opinion.

Shadow is one of the most grossly OP specs at level 120 in endgame. You’ll be fine.

Well, next expansion, there will be a shakeup. There is hope the neglected specs will get some needed tender loving care. I hope sub rogues will rise up personally.

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Priest sometimes suffers the same problem that Shaman has, and that is Blizzard giving you a functional heal spec and little else.

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Top 10 things i am glad i never bothered with.

Starting with Fallout 76 and BFA Spriest…

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Shadow won’t really get better for you unless you plan to gear it up some after hitting 120. For 8.3 content it won’t really feel ‘good’ until you get to around 450 ilvl with some good azerite traits.

I leveled a few characters last weekend with 5 days off, and Spriest was the clear winner in most annoying to level as I got higher.

It seems to get worse the higher level you get UNTIL you hit max, then it improves with gear, naturally. (Not necessarily talking about the scaling issue people have complained about since BfA launch, I mean overall.)

A big part of why this is is because spriest is dependent on flow and ramp. When leveling, the higher you go, mobs will generally die around the same amount of time, but every skill you get is about building rot pressure and about ramping. Maintaining the ramp and staying in void form longer, etc.

When leveling, there’s pauses. It’d be like a dungeon run where mobs flop instantly and your tank has a brain lag and doesn’t pull as quickly as he should. Shadow priest always falters in those situations.

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For sure. That’s definitely what made it annoying, and slowed it down. It feels like 100 levels of buildup without the sweet release. Leveling Spriest is a sinus infection. :stuck_out_tongue:

It didn’t help that I leveled it immediately after my fury warrior who was basically a tornado of steel leaving a trail of blood and feces in his wake.

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I dunno, I did spriest for both of the heritage armors I have and it never seemed that bad. I’ve been playing priest a long time though.

But I definitely preferred previous incarnations of the spec. Same with disc. Which is why I don’t really play priest much anymore.

I literally just finished leveling a fury warrior and was considering priest next, since I’ve never gotten one past level 40, good to know what’s to come. I got lucky by seeing this thread

I just got my priest to 120 and killing stuff seemed ok out and about but this is doing the dailies in Boralus. I’d hate to see the new stuff at his current ilevel gear.

Honestly SPriest is a bit weak at every level compared to other DPS classes. It def needs a buff. For leveling Discipline is actually better.

It’s not really BAD, just slower in comparison with some others.

I also finished my mage and it was probably between the two. One good thing about the priest though is that I almost never felt in danger in larger pulls. I would generally pull packs of 3-5, sometimes more if I had VE up. Every two minutes You can pull an entire zone and be unkillable for 15 seconds. lol

Side note: Do not do this with mobs that can chain interrupt, silence, stun, knockback, etc… :stuck_out_tongue:

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Spriest questing is awful. I leveled one to 120 then benched it, so i am not a pro at it by any means. But I had an easier time doing quests as holy, for what that is worth. Lol. I never tried disc.

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