Wow Moz ... who knew you were such an expert .. glad to see you have a sticky (and it even has an excellent rating, unlike the equivalent sticky in the rogue forums by you-know-who ;->), kudos mate ;-)
OK, enough of me being ****** now ...
I've finally decided to enter the big bad (or good) world of healing classes, and have decided to roll a priest to do so (she's 8 at the moment, so still a while to go).
Now, the response to the OP in this thread appears to focus around building a disc priest, specifically because he'd be leveling in a group, and being the priest in that group would lend itself very well to being a healer as well. Now, I've read (and it was even alluded to above), that Shadow is the leveling build of kings. The thing is, I have 4 other 70+ toons, all of whom are DPS focused (Rogue, Mage, DK and Warrior - warrior will go tanking at 80)... and I have no real desire to play (or even level from scratch) another damage dealer.
So, would the disc leveling build mentioned above and in the linked thread, do for solo leveling .. or should I suck it up and stick to shadow for leveling.
If so, I'm then assuming standard use of skills / spells would involve spamming things like smite and holy fire (when that comes). I ask this, because even though SW:P comes along very early, I find it very inneficient (mana and damage-wise) at the lower levels - smite-spam usually account for the mob just before he gets to me (or very soon after), but opening with a SW:P (which, being a dot, you would think makes sense) and then smite-spam practically ensures that he'll get to me and start wailing on me before he dies. So I've resorted to casting PW:S, renew, smite-spamming, and if he gets to me, my shield and heal accounts for any damage - seems to work well, but ....
The other thing is mana inefficiency ... is this just something I must live with, or am I doing something wrong where I start every fight with a full mana bar, but finish every fight with about 10% mana left ... ok, ok .. I know it's very early days, and it will most likely get better, I'm just hoping for some reassurance here .. I REALLY don't want to level a pally (which is my other option). Mana chewing was something I encountered when I started my mage, but for some reason, it didn't bug me (perhaps having an endless supply of water helped ;->)
Sincerest apologies if this is covered elsewhere in threads (or even in stickies), but I can't seem to find anything related to new priests soloing (lotsa info on 70+ instance healing and end-game, which is useful, certainly ... but we all have to start somewhere). The reason I posted in this thread is that it's pretty much relevant to me ("New to Priest") ... so I figured a new thread would just be a waste.
Thanks in advance.