Yet another noob priest.Follow

Hey all, I've been a long time lurker here and enjoy all the great advice these boards hold. With that out of the way I am stuck. I am going back and fourth weather or not I should go holy or disc, currently I am leveling a priest alt as shadow who is 62 at the moment. I love what both the holy path and the disc path can do but can't decide. I will be doing heroics, BGs and maybe arena. I am on a PvP server also and what some good survivability but also want to keep 5 man groups alive as well. Since I am shadow now, is it true that the gear for shadow is closer to the gear of disc? Or am I completely wrong? Thanks for your time.

Go discipline.

Your gear will work. You are on a pvp server, and you will be able to heal a 5 man just fine. Penance and shields are awesome, and you will still have Prayer of Healing as your big group heal when you get a little higher.

You can always respec at any time. Eventually, you may even want to dual spec discipline and holy. The choice is yours.

Edited, Jul 25th 2009 10:30pm by dadanox

Sure it's safe. I leveled the entire time as holy, so you certainly can level as any spec you like. However, you might quest a bit faster as shadow, or you may have to drink a bit more as a healing spec. Give it a try. Get Penance first, but if you have enough points, you can always spec into a few more offensive abilities while leveling, like reflective shield, or keep spirit tap for improved mana returns.

If you have the cash, you could dual spec now. At 80, you will probably want to be dual spec anyway. Shadow and healing spec lets you do dailies faster at 80, or discipline and holy lets you have two styles of healing that you can switch for certain bosses.

http://wow.allakhazam.com/db/class.html?wclass=3;mid=123215041216756160;num=40;page=1

That should have all the cookie cutter builds, but play around with them, you may like something better.

Edited, Jul 26th 2009 7:16am by scottyjames

Edited, Jul 26th 2009 7:16am by scottyjames

Pffff. You can do it all as Holy, you know. Don't let the Disc svengali fool you.

Okay, maybe not arena.

:)

I agree that Disc is best for what you want to do. You can do heroics and BG's as either, but for any serious PVP you want Disc, hands down. You can also give both a try and see which you like, as the play styles are different.

Gear-wise, for PVP you'll want some hit anyway. Once you hit 80 you'll start picking up gear for your main spec and I don't think the greens/blues you get there with will matter much. My personal opinion is that Spellpower is always a priority, while Spirit and Crit carry a bit more weight with Holy and Int and Haste a bit more with Disc. But all five stats matter for both builds, and balance is always important. I wouldn't, for example, stack a ton of Spirit at the expense of a 14k mana pool even if I was Holy.

As for leveling, I agree that if you can afford dual spec, it's a good idea to buy it now. That way you can keep your Shadow build but switch to Disc once in a while so you can get used to it and will know it well at 80, and so you can heal instances on the way up with the same tools you'll be using at 80. I just feel like it's nice to hit the ground running at the level cap, since learning a different talent tree really can be a big change.

If you do switch to Disc (or Holy) while leveling, I highly recommend keeping Spirit Tap in your build. It just makes things a billion times quicker (especially if you're picking up healing gear which tends to have spirit instead of hit). I leveled 70-80 as Holy but with a Spirit Tap build and I didn't even keep drinks in my bag.


Edit: I forgot to say that if you don't buy dual spec, I'd actually just go Disc whenever you want. Disc is really not a slow way to level. With Reflective Shield and AOE damage Disc's efficiency against multiple mobs makes Shadow, IMO, only marginally faster.


Edited, Jul 26th 2009 8:52am by teacake

Thank you all for the great info! You are all the best!