Sell me on priest vs paladin. I’ve always been a ranged player, moreso a disc priest or resto druid, occasionally playing mage or shadow priest. Part of me is considering switching it up and going paladin in classic but I’m having a lot of trouble deciding. I’m also not sure I want to look like a clown wearing a mix of cloth, plate, mail, and leather…but as far as I know pallies have the highest throughput healing in 1.12. But priest does have a lot of versatility. Although I’ll be primarily focused on PvE I’ll be PvPing a lot as well, and I’m not sure which was better back then (although I do know that shadow priests melt faces)
Do you like getting a full mana refund when you crit heal? Cool, go paladin, with the right gear you crit all the time. Not to mention you get value out of simply existing with you auras.
In all seriousness Paladins are super fun if you’ve been wondering what it’s like you should play it. Granted the game play for healers in my opinion is kinda boring in classic.
See I’d love to have that mentality but vanilla isn’t exactly the game for leveling something up just to see if you like it, considering the time investment. If I spend a couple weeks getting to 40 and decide pally isn’t for me then that’s a lot of time to reinvest into another class.
Paladin is kind of weird. You’re very unwanted until raids, especially if you’re not Holy. Holy Paladin is AMAZING with gear, but Priest has a lot more tools to get them to that point.
Well yeah if I play pally I’d be holy. But I guess my main question is: we all know priests have lots of utility and a much easier time leveling, as well as being able to heal dungeons while leveling. Paladins have to spec into reckoning which makes healing basically not an option (and I’m definitely not a tank player). So is it really worth it to roll pally when priest is already so strong and has a much easier time being strong?
If you’re min/maxing and counting on getting all your BiS loot, then Paladin will be what you want to play. You can also definitely try to make healing at lower levels work. You’d be unique.
If you want to have a generally easier time, always be consistently strong then play Priest. I do expect Priest to be the most played healer, though, you might have trouble making yourself stand out.
i’m going holy pally. the drawback is, you spend most of your time in raid just redoing blessing of kings as it only lasts for 5 minutes and by the time you’ve handed out potentially 40 of them (if there are no other pallies capable of doing so), its time to start over. haha
upside is under that dress, you may have a mithril vest given to you by bilbo baggi…err wrong story. you have some decent defense.
What a luxury… being able to use ANY armor class. Gearing up a priest has a much narrower path. Pally wins that
Priests are versatile. Paladins, however, are probably the most versatile class that’s not a druid. There are few roles you cannot perform as a paladin. Terrific solo class at max level, too, being able to Seal/Judge/Heal/Tank things down like no other.
Planning on dwarf priest here but I have previous vanilla priest exp.
Priest will always be excellent healers. In PVE a serious guild may run with one shadow priest, maybe on launch if we’re starting with 16 debuff slots. A casual guild may allow more. Otherwise, shadow will be a (very good) PVP spec. This is important. If 3 months into MC the guild leader gets into a fight with the lock class leader and the guild splits up I could just respec shadow and melt faces in PVP for a while. Then switch to another guild before BWL comes out.
Healing on a priest is satisfying. Shadow isn’t very complicated, but compared to a lock or mage the PVE rotation is complicated enough to not be boring. Priests also have some very interesting tools if you’re messing around: mind sooth, mind control, levitate, racial spells, etc. The talents leave enough room for some experimentation.
No experience with Paladins, but they are going to be healers at level 60 PVE and PVP. I expect PVP would be more fun since they have the perfect toolkit. They can use any type of armor and most weapons.
The reason I hesitate to roll pally is their other 2 talent trees are some of the worst in the game. Even geared druids can bear tank some bosses or an ambitious feral could dps. In PVP druids have so many options. A prot pally will never be allowed to tank in raids. A ret is possible if you’re the guild leader’s wife or a famous streamer. Even if you wanted to explore these 2 specs all 3 specs will have different gear. I guess there is an aspect of unexplored frontier with pally talents and trolling or messing around, but there are no serious career paths aside from healing.
Pallies will be more difficult to level than priests but they do get a free mount at 40.
That said, roll pally, it will increase the demand for priests.