Thinking about rolling a healer, how brutal is it questing in the world as a priest or a healer in general?
Get a good wand and you’ll be fine as a priest.
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yeah, just keep a good wand and its not bad at all
You can level a priest as Shadow and heal just fine pretty much any instance up to and including BRD.
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It’s pretty easy as a priest. Up until shadow form, it’s really nice being able to top yourself off on health and you still do decent damage, and with spirit tap you’ll stay pretty well topped up on mana. And once you get shadow form, things just melt. Fear is a great CC to help when you get too many mobs on you. There were a few points where I struggled a bit but ultimately I found it to be pretty painless.
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In general, the trick is that you don’t have to be talented for healing while leveling. Any of the classes can be leveled in the best leveling talent build, as long as they have at least some gear for healing (+Int, +Spi, +healing, etc.)
This isn’t Retail where, the moment you go to pick a talent, you have a chunk of non-healing abilities taken away. You have everything available to you, outside of needing to exit special forms (shadow, kitty).
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Itz pretty easy.
Wands are cool & annoying at the same time. The clunky wand mechanics make it impossible to switch seamlessly between wanding & casting as needed.
You can heal just fine as Shadow Priest in all Vanilla/Classic dungeon content, assuming any decently-competent group. Heck, I was even doing it in TBC Heroic dungeons back in the day, in our guild groups.
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Most of the time you don’t level in a healing spec because it’s a lot easier to use a dps spec and then just re-gear when you need to a run a 5-man. You only really need deep Resto/Holy specs for endgame raiding. While they do permit you to pull off some amazing feats when everything goes sideways in a 5-man, the fact is that it’s a hell of a lot easier to not screw up and go with an average healer than screw up because you’ve got an exceptional healer to cover your mistakes.
You can actually level healing spec if that’s your thang… just dungeon grind which is fairly easy on high pop servers.
priest is a bit slow, but underrated in its safety. shield + renew is great for healing yourself passively on pulls of 2. having a good wand makes a big difference until level 40. at which point you can respec into shadowform and go a lot faster but at the expense of much more frequent drinking.
paladin is also safe but extremely boring. if i had to pick i’d say shaman/druid are the most flavorful experiences
I enjoyed leveling a priest and it never felt slow. And this is coming from someone who also leveled a 60 mage and has seen the true speed potential.
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Leveling as healing is super easy. You might have to purchase dungeon runs or take your time to find a group once u get to SM. But @ 42 pretty much as soon as you say “XX Healer LFG” you’ll have an invite within minutes.
As other have said, for leveling you do not need to spec into healing. You will still be able to heal dungeons just fine (if your group is wiping, it’s probably not your fault) and you will be much better able to solo quest.
5 points into improved wands and 5 points into Spirit Tap, after that do whatever you want… But I would recommend at around level 40 or 41, respec to go 31 Shadow and pick up shadow form, then go back and fill out your improved wands and put the rest into Disc for Inner Focus and Meditation.
At around level 55 or 56, when you start doing BRD and (U/L)BRS you will probably want to respec Disc Holy for healing. I would recommend a 31 Disc spec with the rest in Holy. You will need to switch to start using Holy Fire/Smite for dps and put your shadow abilities away. Except for Shadow Word Pain, you’ll always use that in any spec, it’s too good not to.
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Leveling my priest was one of the most enjoyable experiences I’ve had in wow. You need 5/5 spirit tap and 5/5 wand specialization (along with making sure to always be up to date with the best possible wand) and leveling becomes incredibly safe, consistent, and stress-free. You can respec to shadowform at 40 (and then get wand spec over the next 5 levels) if you want. Shield yourself, do 1-3 damage spells + wand. You end the pull with full hp and mana. I leveled to 60 without drinking at all past level 19 and watched all of star trek deep space 9 on my second monitor. It was great.
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In vanilla (granted I knew about a 1/10 of what I knew leveling in classic) I leveled resto and kind of all over the place. It took FOREVER and was pretty miserable. Classic I went straight feral and must have done it in a forth of the time. I could heal 5 mans just fine with a gear switch until strat/scholo when you run into fury tanks that dont have the mitigation, but otherwise it was no problem.
Mind blast, pain dot and wand until dead. At higher levels you’ll need one extra mind blast. Wait five seconds while wanding until the target dies and get full mana regen. You’ll barely ever need to drink.
Start off with wand damage talent first then spirit tap