I’ve been reading through a few priest leveling guides, and while all of them agree going deep shadow post lvl 40 or 45 is optimal, there are some differences regarding the talent choices pre level 40.
As far as I’ve seen, all choices start with 5/5 in both wand specialization and spirit tap. Most also add improved SW:P and shadow hit chance 3/5. After that, however, there seem to be 4 different suggestions: all shadow, all holy, all disc and disc/holy mix.
I personally think that all the remaining points going into holy would be the optimal choice, because it significantly increases the DPS of holy fire and smite, letting you burn some additional mana for extra kill speed. Additionally, it makes dungeon healing significantly easier.
However, I was wondering what was your opinion on the optimal talent build before shadowform?
This is what I did but more for the healing than for the boost to dmg. I didn’t actually respec until later b/c I found I was healing in dungeons quite a bit, probably about an even split between dungeons and solo play. You can still heal just fine if you want to get shadowform right away, but if your going to respec anyway, it really doesn’t matter what you pick and can try different things out. Outside of wand specialization,the talents you get from disc are more for survivability at that point, and probably better for a world pvp scenario, so how and where you’re going to play should dictate what talents you choose.
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A shadow priest can heal any 5-man in the game up to level 60. Just go hard in to shadow with Wand Specialization from the disc tree. 5/5 wand spec and 5/5 Spirit Tap as your first ten talent points and build from there.
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But are you sure this is better DPS spec than holy? Mind flay until rank 3, at level 36, is horrible, it has barely higher DPS than wanding, and less DPS/mana than smite. Even without healing, I feel that holy is higher DPS pre 40. Am I wrong?
DPS vs downtime or, in other words, efficiency is a question you should be asking yourself.
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I know I’m dumbing it down but it’s something like this:
- Questing - Mostly Shadow
- Questing + Dungeons - Little Holy, More Shadow
- Dungeons only (cleave/aoe) - Mostly Holy
Wands don’t cost mana. Bubble and wand things to death. That’s how I leveled a holy priest during vanilla.
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Efficiency is the name of the game as a priest. If you spec for wand damage you can pretty much ignore Mind Flay and even Mind Blast until later on. Smite->Smite->SW:P->Wand.
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Would also point out that if your levelling on the pvp server there are a couple of interesting pvp talents in the disc tree, plus blackout in the shadow tree
Wand is love. Wand is life. Put points into wand. Spirit tap is great for soloing. It’s not going to proc as often in dungeons.
Don’t worry about healing all the specs are fine. Have a spirit gear set handy. Keep in mind holy fire takes about 10 years to cast if you’re using that to tag, especially in crowded zones.
I prefer leveling holy/disc but I also group up a lot, I mostly wand things to death.
ymmv
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You also get Imp. Psychic Scream and Silence from the Shadow tree.
Yeah, so in principle, regardless of talents, the rotation should be, as far as I understand, the following sequence, with some elements potentially skipped:
PW:S>holy fire opener>mind blast>Smite>…>Smite>SW:P>Wand, where the number of smites depends on the amount of mana you want to burn. There are two ways to increase that DPS: by augmenting shadow elements (SW:P, mind blast), or by augmenting holy elements (holy fire, smite). My understanding is that the holy talents increase the rotation DPS more than the shadow ones. Am I wrong here? Many people suggest going shadow for the DPS, so my understanding might be wrong. But I’d be grateful for arguments why my reasoning is incorrect.
I think that for PvP, shadow is a better choice. While I will be rolling on a PvP server, I will use a maybe unpopular strategy of not fighting when attacked. I just plan to stay still and let people kill me quickly until they get bored. i think this will lose me less time than trying to fight any time someone opens on me.
Thus, you can consider the question as what is the best talent build in a PVE context.
always get the best wand available, hitachi is a good brand.
you will be wanding 24/7
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As many have said, a wand is key. Keep it up to date as you level. There is a nice wand reward in the Hinterlands when you get to that point. A wand is so much of your damage leveling as a Priest. You are not going to be super mana efficient. Level what ever branch you feel is good for you. Get spirit tap, and wand spec, everything else is your choice. Most of what you do is bubble and wand.
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I personally find that using 4 or so abilities per mob is too much mana in leveling gear, it’s not much more efficient than shield/wanding a lot.
You’d be surprised how fast the price of water starts to add up when you are saving for a mount.
WTB pocket mage
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As a tried and true priest main, all I can say is that wands will be your best and easiest damage source in PVE content until 40 no matter what spec. I mainly just pop shadow word pain and wand things down. When you’re using Wands that much you Don’t really need spirit tap.
Spiritual guidance isn’t until level 40 if you have the points in wand specialization and spirit tap. However, increasing spell damage and healing by 5% of your spirit per talent point is pretty potent (and is both damage and healing).
It also depends on things like whether you don’t want to spec shadow for RP reasons. I’m a bit conflicted about even using the points in spirit tap despite its extreme usefulness in open world questing.
I definitely don’t plan ever to drink. But almost all spells do higher DPS than wanding. As such, I feel like that starting a fight at full mana means that I am playing suboptimally with a DPS loss. PW:S and SW:P are very cheap. There is definitely a place for extra spells in the rotation.
While I do not plan to RP, I actually like the idea of a priest who is kinda “the goal justifies the means” kind of a guy. He’s not serving the light, nor shadow, he’s using both to help his allies and harm his enemies. That’s one of the reasons I main a disc priest in retail.
People go wand spec because wands give you the best damage at early levels. If you go tailoring/disenchanting you can rush tailoring wands and get a crazy early damage buff.
Personally I would level another class first unless you are dead set on priest. Everything in Classic costs money. Your skills will bleed you dry. And as a priest, since you are a healer it is kind of hard to level early compared to other classes, let alone farm.
I do plan to craft my own wand as soon as possible. I am still deciding if I’ll go tailoring/enchanting or skinning/leatherworking, and dropping leatherworking after I craft enough greens.
True, lesser magic wand does higher DPS than smite rank 1. However, relatively quickly the spells do overtake in damage. When I look at DPS, I subtract the wand DPS from the base, since by casting the spell, you stop wanding. Additionally, since “shoot” and “attack” have separate global cooldowns, I plan to weave in melee attacks between wand shots.
Since I am definitely taking 5/5 wand spec and spirit tap, I am effectively interested for the DPS considerations in the level range 19-39.
I will definitely start with a human priest, I’m not sure I’ll have time for alts in a long time.