Just leveled a priest, which is better spec?

I main a mage. I just leveled a priest and have been playing disc bec i love the look and mechanics behind the way they work. I also get owned by disc priest on my mage in pvp. However, i cant do any damage on disc priest? Is the only damage spec shadow priest? Which is better shadow or disc? And if disc, how do you put out damage? Takes me forever to just kill a npc.

Hey welcome to priests. I don’t pvp on my priest but I can give you some general tips. Discipline is not a damage dealing spec, it is a healing spec that heals by doing damage. Shadow -is- a damage dealing spec but can also heal passively by doing damage. The difference is Discipline will do big amounts of healing and small amounts of damage while Shadow is the reverse.

If your priority is to figure out how your mage is getting owned by discipline priests, I would suggest playing discipline. It will help you understand what they are doing, how their cooldowns work and what their weaknesses are. Fight a few mages to see what tools they use to counter you.

If your priority is killing npcs (or causing high damage to other players) try Shadow, or stick with your mage, but remember in pvp doing damage isn’t your priority as much as staying alive and restricting your enemy. Learn the utility and control effects you have available, not just the damaging abilities. Shadow has an interrupt that Discipline doesn’t but otherwise they share a lot of utility. Mages get access to a lot of escape options and crowd control abilities.

The best spec you can play is the one you feel most comfortable with, especially when thinking on your feet in the moment.

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I loved this! Thank you so much! Ill give shaow priests a try then.

Also in pve i have been healing and these tanks are like literally out of control and inconsiderate about the HEALERS. Every dungeon I play and heal they just run through the whole dungeon and im trying to keep up and keep them and the team alive! I got the healing down and know the spells and some of the resource abilities, but like they pull crowds and crowds of npcs and then a boss and im trying to stay ontop of the healing. I dont understand why tanks are so unaware of the rest of the team.

If you like world questing for pve and healing then I might suggest holy. When you get the hang of it you spend most your time on dps attacks and little time using big heals, which is the case for holy being able to dps quite well for a healer. Tho If you get overwhelmed and spend more time healing to keep yourself alive then you will do no damage and it will be considerably worse. Also pretty easy to learn the basics for healing if you do the odd dungeon.

Just an option to consider.

I’m quite geared and will chill in war mode and pull everything in sight (mobs of elites) without a care in the world.

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Haha so holy priest do good damage? Just coming from frost mage i hate that feeling of not being able to dish out damage :sweat_smile:

If they don’t have to heal they do good damage (for a healer) their trade off is they do no damage when they need to heal. When I do dungeons in the early season I have to keep everyone topped up (so my dps is very low) but now when we do 10s I just hit a few holy words and spam dps, and in world im quite strong. Its a trade off you get a feel for so you may have the rhythm at first… I’ve been doing it for a while now

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Do urself a favour and give up on priest b4 you start and roll a paladin or a druid.

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Ugh. Not helpful.

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Hahaha why? I feel like Pallys are OP atm and druid healing and damage seem great as well.

Maybe not a detailed reply and a bit too much TLDR, but certainly not incorrect. Disc is the only priest spec doing good/great in any content (M+), and that’s about to be cut down.

The priest forums are rife with doom sayers and negativity. Priest have their problems but no more than other classes.

Every class forum has people saying their class is bad or forgotten. When someone is asking for advice as a new player to the class, the least helpful thing to do is to say “play something else”. It’s not a commentary on the balance of the game, it’s negative for the sake of negativity.

I’m sure all the positive mental juju is going to make the class better! Because that’s what fixes the class, not the developers, right?

What happens when we LIE to the OP and say “no no no, priest is fine, just keep plugging away at it, you just need more (gear|experience)” and he eventually figures out the truth? “Sorry, we didn’t want to tell you that Santa Claus isn’t real”??

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This is the crap I’m talking about. You’re shadow boxing. I didn’t say anything of the sort.

Just throwing out random negative BS when someone is asking for basic info isnt helping anything. Go stew in your frustration somewhere else.

Very good advice! In PVP, if you’re consistently getting outmatched by a certain class, the best suggestion - despite being a big undertaking - is actually playing them. You can even use the opportunity to level one of the Allied Races and unlock their heritage sets.

It was day and night with me and rogues. I’m finishing leveling one right now and ever since I started that I got much better against them.

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Wait, what? Who’s the one who said “It’s negativity for the sake of negativity?”
You’re also completely ignoring the fact that if priests were fine, the forum wouldn’t be “rife with doom sayers and negativity” (BOTH your words). You seriously believe that people are doing it just for the pleasure of being negative?
If you went to the store, and bought some eggs, and the eggs were cracked / spoiled and you went to the manager and said “this is a problem”, and the manager thought “this is negativity for the sake of negativity”, that store would certainly have a clear path towards going out of business.

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That’s a good point, Ferio, I completely agree it does help!

You’re operating under a delusion that I have no patience to dispel. Good luck bud. Be well.

While I do generally agree with the sentiment, especially the parts about telling people not to play the class, this bit about priest having no more problems than other classes is objectively false.

Just look at the gameplay-affecting utility available to every class, and priest has the least. Priest has the worst mobility in the game. Priest uniquely has no kick. Outside of PvP, priest has the worst CC in the game. Priest has the worst dispel profile in the game. The only unique ability priest has is PI, which is powerful but has no gameplay feedback for the player, and every other formerly-unique ability has been taken away from priest and given to other classes or other classes have been given a more powerful version of it.

Priest does have more problems than other classes. There’s a reason holy is almost always ignored in all content and shadow is only ever taken when its a damage outlier - the core class kit is extremely anemic.

I would try each Priest spec and see which one you enjoy the most imho.

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I’m no stranger to the struggles with priest, but if you look at any other forums you’ll see plenty of people saying the same stuff about their own classes.

Perception is 90% of it and the wow forums are not where you want to be to have a sober analysis of balance.