How bad is it to level a priest?

Classes Priest
1

Hi all!

I’m curious to hear about everyone’s experiences with leveling their priest. I just unlocked Dark Iron Dwarves, and I was thinking about leveling one from 20-120 for the heritage armor as a Priest.

However, I feel like Priest has a bit of a history of not being super PvE friendly for leveling. With the nerfs to Disc over BfA my understanding is it is no longer the most efficient way to level and that honor now belongs to Shadow. I just worry that Shadow is entirely too ramp-up oriented to level and also enjoy the process. Is it as bad as I’m imagining it might be?

Any thoughts/feedback would be appreciated. :slight_smile:

I was also considering a Warrior…which I know would be significantly easier to level than a Priest. But I’d rather play a priest at endgame…

2

I’m levelling as Holy, with no heirlooms and whatever the NPCs give me. It’s absolutely fine. Having a nice mix of questing and the occasional dungeon, and have had no mana, survivability or damage issues. Chastise is so satisfying!

I’m sure that it’s not the fastest way, but you might as well pick your favourite style for the long journey up.

3 Likes
3

I main a priest. I have a boosted horde priest who basically heals dungeons to level (she was 100 when I found her and hit 110 without getting the shadow artifact - I’m going to see if the quest is different if you don’t have the artifact to open up the raid).

However, my KT monk is really easy to level for the heritage armor. (Daily quest for bonus experience, monks can heal or tank dungeons, and hitting random buttons seems to work fine for questing). I did heal on a monk in MoP, so it isn’t my first time healing as a monk (although I find it easier now since healers don’t have combo points).

4

Its not the greatest, feels kind of awkward at times imo

2 Likes
5

Somewhere between bad and really bad? :stuck_out_tongue:

Well Shadow leveling isn’t “as ramp up” anymore with Void Eruption doing higher damage. However, survivability is still crap in my opinion and you won’t ever come close to the burst that melee classes can do for example. I don’t think you’ll die if you pull slowly but you won’t be as fast as other classes.

If you just want the heritage armor of dwarves and don’t care about the class, any other class would be probably be faster to be honest.

1 Like
6

i would assume that they care about the class lol. i just hit 120 myself so i will how much better it feels at max level with azerite armor etc

7

I have a max level priest on the horde side, but it was one I used a boost on. So the leveling experience was cut pretty short and I didn’t really get to experience it without azerite traits. Also, it occurred before all the disc nerfs, so that was a more viable leveling spec.

I think I might just bite the bullet and stick with it. It’s a class that I’d be interested in playing at cap.

8

i leveled up to 120 with straight heirlooms , didnt even use the azerite upgrades. it was a little rough, but not too bad i guess. there were a few moments where i was spamming shadow mend to not die, but i made it i guess lol

9

With Heirloom gear it was a breeze as Shadow!

10

Just leveled my first priest, came back after a long break from Lich King. I used heirloom gear, questing as shadow, and ran five man’s and pvp RBGs as disc and flew through the levels. I ran some holy here and there but I prefer disc as I think it helps me pay more attention.

11

Priest is not hard to level. If you have heirlooms it is very easy. Just give it a go. If you pull too much just fear and run towards the road.

12

Holy and Disc are probably going to be slow for quests, but if you are a healer you probably run a lot of dungeons anyway. Shadow is fine and not fine. Some people like to use Void Eruption to gather and AOE mow down mobs, and they claim shadow can be fast. But not everybody likes that style (I don’t) and in that case shadow is going to feel slow if you kill mobs only 1 or 2 at a time.

13

Boring as a Holy because not many attacks, but I almost never die.

I go Shadow which is more fun, but I almaot die a few times.

14

I leveled 2 priests as Disc, horde and alliance. Did not have any issues, atonement is very strong, aoe down packs, dungeon runs if you get bored, and you can solo those 3 person quests. Disc leveling is the way to go.

1 Like
15

Leveled as Disc in BFA. Enjoyable.

16

Ive leveled a handful of priests to cap since mop. Rn im leveling a gnome shadow/disc priest that i made a few days ago…in looms with some enchants as well and im regularly first or second on skada in dungeons and ive been able to pull massive packs out questing. Shes only in the 30s so idk if that matters. I dont get why priests get such a bad rep in modern wow. Ive never really had an issue leveling one.

17

Was this before or after Disc received several nerfs, though? At the beginning of BfA I heard Disc was great for leveling, but after the nerfs it became too slow/inefficient and Shadow was the way to go…

18

I haven’t leveled from scratch in a long time so no idea how it works at lower levels, but for the 110 to 120 range at the start of BFA I started as Disc but felt too slow and switched to Shadow…

Not that Shadow was particularly fast, in fact Disc was probably faster for pulling one mob at a time, but when dong 3-5 at a time shadow definitely pulled ahead and I think the fact that you can die if you mess-up also makes it more fun. This was all in 8.0 even before Disc nerfs and Shadow buffs.

So I’d say if you don’t really wanna pay attention and maybe watch Twitch or Netflix while leveling go Disc, if you wanna a be a bit more involved in the gameplay while leveling go shadow. For dungeons I always went Disc to get faster Q ofc.

19

Well, the holy priest is just too weak for solo questing. The shadow priest has a lot of damage over time, but they are not too tough. Disc priest is where its at. Pull to your hearts content, you can take them all. I’ve switched to shadow for pvp before (a long time ago) but i would absolutely hate to level one. As a disc priest, i only use 3 attacks so it does get boring.

20

Can a Disc really do decent AOE for questing? I know there is an AOE ability, but isn’t it pretty weak? Or is someway to mass apply shadow word pain?