Are Priests Fun?Follow

Level slower than a paladin? Hah, no that's definitely not true.

In terms of leveling speed, your first 5 talent points should go into spirit tap, then 5 points into the wand talent in the disc tree regardless of what spec you are going to go with. Spirit is a great leveling stat for any spec as Spirit Tap will regen your mana between battles, making the times you need to stop and drink few and far between. Then you just pick up pieces with Intellect on them to increase your mana pool along with some stamina so you aren't as squishy. Don't worry about +healing or +damage until Outlands.

In terms of spec, chose whichever spec you want. Shadow will always level faster and up until Outlands instances (and even beyond if you have a good healing set and know what you're doing) they can heal perfectly well in 5-mans. However, you can level as holy as well, getting the +dmg talents in the holy and disc trees. Maybe try both and see which you prefer as you have a higher level main, a few respecs shouldn't be too hard to pay for if you really want.

Uh... sort of. You definitely want to level Shadow. Period. Especially if you're on a PvP server or your life will be a living hell.

As Khalane said, you can heal perfectly fine up to and into Outlands no matter what your spec as long as you keep a set of dedicated healing gear on you (if your primary set doesn't cover it very well), but for solo grinding/question and world PvP, you will regret it if you do not level Shadow.

Im having fun leveling my priest. up to lvl 32 now. full shadow spec, didnt bother with the wand deal, as i wanted my vampyric embrace as fast as possible.

Lots of fun to PVP with, SW:P everything then heal everyone. Been in alot of bg's that we won, (alliance side)

Decided to top the healing list one battle ground, and healed: mission successful!

Decided to try to top the hunters/locks in over all damage one bg: mission successful!

Somehow managed to top KB list one time.. dunno how.

PVP servers are fun, but realize you WILL level slower, simply because YOU WILL get ganked.. unless you have a 70 or two on your back all the time.

Conversely, you also get to gank peeps..

So the long and the short: Yes its fun to play a priest, no they dont level slower than a pally, and pick PVP server only if you understand that you will spend some of your leveling time as a ghost. (on a full old-school server alot of time)

k i feel a little better about priests now. It's amazing what a difference a good tanks makes. did SFK as alliance (no quests there, but I did get decent shoulders there). 22 druid tanking. he did a real good job despite being 9 levels lower than the hunter in the group. I did let him die once when I was silenced. I was too close to the mobs I guess. I was silenced for too long. With the twists and turns I didn't like to be too far from the tank though. Seems like every time I try bandaging it doesn't go the full course. I'm not sure what is interrupting it. And we did wipe when the 4 wolves came out. some kind of curse doubled my casting time, I could barely keep the tank alive with the long cast times, and I didn't heal myself in time. I died, then tank bit it. Other than that pretty smooth for a 4 man party with the tank and dps in low 20's.

yeah spirit tap is only for solo questing/grinding. without it I'd be drinking alot more, and it would slow me up.

I do think I'm waiting long enough for heals. It's just tanks aren't using consecration or thunderclap. tonight I waited for the druid to get some swipes in before healing. He said he was new to tanking, but he did pretty good. I was going to suggest using swipe, but he already knew. And that's the thing, I don't like telling people how to play. But since I was randomly whispered in Stormwind to do SFK, I wanted it to be known since we had no real tank (I figured the druid was too low) that they had to do damage on all mobs to avoid them pounding in me when I heal. I'm convinved most low level (or even mid level) players do not know healing draws AOE aggro. They need to make this a tip on loading screens... And I don't like pets tanking because they can't tank multiple mobs.

I still feel like I need to get better though. That druid went up those stairs I should have been right behind him. He almost died at the start because he wasn't in my line of sight. Thankfully I wasn't mind controlled in that fight. Hehe earlier in the day doing group quests in redridge mountains I was banished. Instant wipe LOL. These guys were low 20's, and couldn't survive without my healing. but I was pulling so much aggro there. I died 3 times doing those quests with the elite orcs. Rogue was higher level so he was kinda sort tanking. Warrior used TC sometimes, but wasn't enough to hold the massive healing. Although now I think of it, I should have tried to get rid of banish. Does dispel magic get rid of banish? I have yet to find anything dispel magic dispels. Doesn't do curses unfortunately.

Edited, Aug 28th 2007 4:38am by thrashering

Opposite for me! I'm leveling my priest holy and created her entirely for playing with a party (though not PUGs, a specific party, which no doubt makes all the difference). I love my priest and I really enjoy those group runs, it's probably the most fun I'm having in WoW right now. We only pull these chracters out for the group so I haven't solo'd with her much except the random half a level catch-up or mining expedition here and there, but when I do I don't like it. It's probably not fair to say I don't like leveling priest specifically, especially as mine is too low level to really tell, but with a druid as my main I honestly don't like playing solo with anything else, it all seems so inefficient. Other classes have to, like, eat, and drink, and rest. Bah. :)

Edited for typos. Twice.

Edited, Aug 28th 2007 8:45am by teacake

Priests are fun to play in my opinion. Level as whatever spec you like- I personally leveled full holy, with all talents in healing things (I tried lolsmite and shadow builds, maybe I'm weird) But I leveled perfectly fine.