I’m currently levelling a priest on live to get a better understanding of them - and also inspire myself.
I want to play a priest because its the only class I’ve never capped - but it is the one I’ve always thought had an interesting playstyle.
Also, since I’ll have less time in real life - I’d like to hop on and get quick dungeon invites etc…
More efficient that way.
I heard the Wand talent is your Go-to - along with the Spirit Regen talent.
Any advice from those who played one in Vanilla?
Get into shadow for spirit tap ASAP also get a good wand, if you plan to go alliance it’s worth going into Deadmines and farm cookies wand, disc is also a pretty good leveling spec but any works and you can heal and dps in eaither or.
It’s not that fast paced so learn how to pull etc, remember to get last hit and so on, and also remember every race has a different spell etc.
Dwarf priest are most wanted for fear ward, (Though i never really tell anyone to go Dwarf priest for it since my pocket healer always went NE and never had a problem getting into end game guilds. if you’re out healing other priest by like 5-10% it’s worth missing one fear ward, and i also only did hardcore endgame as horde and we all learned stance dance day 1, so i may be different.)
Improved wands and spirit tap
Do NOT put all your points in the Holy talent tree. ![:stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye.png?v=6" ":stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:")
Been there, done that, and it makes the leveling slow, very slow.
If you’ll be mostly solo, Spirit Tap is good. If you plan to do dungeons a lot, it can be potentially useless. It requires you to get the killing blow on a mob that gives you experience. Ditto if you plan to group with someone to quest - a damage dealer or tank is far more likely to get that killing blow than you are.
Questing solo can be easier if you travel a lot and focus on green quests in every zone rather than push the yellow and orange quests to stay in one zone. Group quests are best done as groups.
Watch Local chat as much as possible. If it is anything like vanilla, people will ask for help doing quests and even if you don’t have the quest yet or are a couple levels lower, shielding and healing them can be all it takes to get them through. The goal is to find the ones who seem like good people and tell them to add you to their friend list and call on you if they need a healer.
Make friends with tanks, especially. The more tanks you know, the higher the odds you’ll have quick dungeon groups. Plus, getting to know the tanks will give you more awareness of their individual playstyles, when they use their defensives, how well they manage trash pulls. Working as a team can allow a healer and tank to be more efficient.
In dungeons, try not to pre-heal the tank or put Renew on them too early. It can cause any mob in a trash pull that hasn’t been hit yet to veer off in your direction. If you do pull healing aggro, run to the tank before you hit Fade. (Some damage dealers can handle pulling the aggro off you and getting it back to the tank. If they do so, heal them and thank them after.) Prioritize your healing - keeping tank up, keeping yourself up, keeping damage dealers that avoid unnecessary damage up, keeping well-managed pets up, and healing the idiots who stand in fire last.
Spirit tap and wand specialization are absolutely gotos for levelling.
Dwarves are highly sought after for fear ward. Humans are decent alternatives.
You can go deep disc to make mages cream their pants with power infusion.
Remember that warriors don’t generate rage in vanilla if you shield them.
As another note, both sides should do BFD and the quests there for the Gravestone Scepter. It will last you something like 15+ levels. Ridiculously high DPS for the level you can get it, great for solo’ing.
I’d say if you’re Alliance and want to raid as a Shadowpriest, go Dorf for sure, just to make it easier to get that 1 slot. If you’re healing, it really won’t matter unless the guild has 0 Wards and desperately wants one.
At level 10-14, put 5 points in Wand Specialization in Discipline. After that, get Spirit Tap and continue down the Shadow tree.
At level 40 you can decide if you want to respec full Shadow to get Shadow Form, or just wait it out. You wont rely on your wand quite as much at this point.
Then since you want to heal, respec to Holy at 60. If you want to run any dungeons while leveling don’t worry about respeccing, you should be able to heal them as Shadow.
Humans are arguably better than Dwarves as a race for Priest. Fear Ward becomes less useful when your Warriors know how to stance dance and in later tiers when fear isn’t as common. Humans get +5% Spirit which is always good for Priests.
That said, any race of Priest is good provided you’re a good healer. Even a Night Elf, which is often regarded as the worst race for Priest Alliance side.
If you want to make a Mage fall in love with you, you can always respec Disc to get Power Infusion.
Nobody will click the Lightwell, so don’t bother getting it =P
As a shadow priest you will melt faces in PvP
But… but… Holy Fire!
I honestly preferred leveling as Holy, but I also wanted to heal dungeons while leveling and at max so it was just easier. I also liked the lolSmite spec for soloing (and even more so in TBC) so I’m biased.
Priests at max level and early tier raiding only have like 100 spirit do they not? so 5% spirit would be only +5 spirit. That’s not enough to make or break anything.
Priests have around ~130 Spirit before any gear at max level from what I can find, plus another 100-150 from early gear depending on how much you focus on Spirit.
Though part of it is that the usefulness of Fear Ward is also overstated a lot. It’s not that it’s bad, but if your Warriors know how to stance dance(and they all should) then your tank really shouldn’t need it.
That’s still a max of 14 spirit for early gear.
Which is about another piece of gear worth of Spirit.
Plus my point isn’t that it’s the most amazing thing ever, but rather that it’s still better than what Dwarves get.
If you’re not min/maxing obsessively, pick whatever race you wish.
My personal joy as a night elf priest was running back through a dungeon after a wipe and using Shadowmeld to wait out patrols. NINJA priest! I also loved Starshards, which meant I had three different classes of magic with which I could do damage.
(And, what really sold me on female night elves … when you’re bored and jumping, that flip. That FLIP! :cough: Just don’t cheer. ![:angry:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/angry.png?v=6" ":angry:")
May the cheer burn in fiery torment.)
Even if you have bad tanks that dont know how to dance, you dont want every priest to be a dwarf! Their usefulness is basically zero after you already have 2 dwarves. 5% spirit will always be useful.
Yea but that’s if you’re gearing towards spirit, of which you’re already highly likely to have rolled a human to begin with.
As for being better than fear ward, to each their own but you’re also forgetting that, should your warriors be stance dancing, you can instead use fear ward on yourself.
being dwarf helps but honestly you need 2 and they can cover Fear Ward on tanks.
Every healing Priest should be gearing some amount of Spirit, especially if you’re Holy and get 25% of your Spirit as +healing.
I didn’t forget that you can Fear Ward yourself. That’s the best use of it, but it’s still limited in just how useful it is because not every boss will fear you and even ones that do you wont catch every fear.
Spirit on the other hand is useful on literally every single boss fight, because more Spirit is always a good thing for Priests.
It’s also useful in pvp. I’m not arguing that dwarves are end all be all. Roll whatever you want. I just want people to realize it’s not a huge difference to have that racial.
Mana regen-wise, it results in an extra 4mp5 and, assuming you have the holy talent and aren’t going deep disc, it’s an extra 4 +healing, of which greater heal only gains a +3 heal due to coefficients.
get your boy/girlfriend to level with you as a warrior, be the desired dungeon team