Holy sh*t!Follow

Forgive the bad joke title, I couldn't resist.


Anyway, I have a priest who is now lvl 58.
I started her to level with a friend, who was leveling a shaman to catch up to the hunter I rerolled to on Kazzak.

So, what I did was the logical thing (I thought) I specced shadow.
Shadow = dps = leveling quick, holy/disc = healing = painful and slow leveling.
Anyway, at lvl 34 I was getting back to my hunter and my friend leveled his shaman up trying to catch up to my then lvl 62 hunter.
The priest was left to rot euh, rest for a while.

When I got back and tried solo leveling I ran OoM so quickly and it all felt so slow, and while talking to a friend who leveled a priest and asking how he did it he suggested going holy.

Now my first reaction was very skeptical, I mean how can that ever work.. healers kill slow!
But I decided to go for it anyway and went with this spec at level 34.

The idea behind the build is obvious I guess, very mana efficient and holy fire > Smite while the DoT is up > wand until Holy fire is ready and repeat.
And personally, I was amazed.
It's so much more mana efficient than shadow at that level and killing was quicker too.

I entered BG's at level 47, because the pieces could replace some very weak pieces I was wearing and it was the most fun I ever had in battlegrounds.
There's really nothing quite like topping the healing meter, topping Honorable kills, being high on damage done and in the top 3 killing blows.
Of course I did play really aggressive and taking a killing low by finishing someone off with Holy Fire before healing up the guy who's at 50% hp.

I really really enjoy playing my priest in BG's as such an aggressive healer, it really makes me feel like I can do it all, and all at the same time too!

Anyway, thursday I was lvl 47 and I'm at 58 now (dinged this morning, been away the rest of the day) so that shows how much fun I have while leveling.
I'm specced 18/28/3 now, which looks really silly (to me at least) but it works amazingly well.
And I'm going to keep going in disc until I'm nearing 80, at which point I'll switch to a more conventional xx/1x/0 PvP healing build :P


Ok, so now I've been rambling and I realise there's very little point in this post except me talking about having fun.. or something.
So to not make it a complete and utter waste of time a quick question to follow: anyone got any really good disc PvP video's or guides or something that'll help me become a good PvP healer?

Edited, Aug 16th 2009 8:20pm by Aethien

Rapture is sex. Solves all mana issues and greatly reduces the need for Spirit Tap. Once I got Rapture I dropped Tap and barely noticed a difference.

I rock this build. Got about most of level 67 in a day's worth of BGs. Likely going to BG to level to 68 then instance grind while doing BGs till I hit 80 then go quest. Well I will probably start questing mid 70s but more to get the Hodir grind going than anything else.

I've already checked around on the builds, I'll probably go very defensive in my build to compensate the lack of resillience I'll have.

And I'll be doing arena's as quick as possible (just need me a rogue) to get gear and experience.
I should be able to get a good amount of PvP gear quickly, and people love healers in BG's :)

I started playing in Wintergrasp some. I'm not much of a pvp person. Focusing on pvp a bit, I've gotten to 881 resilience in a couple of weeks. After I've gotten everything I want from emblems in PVE, I'll focus some more on my pvp gear. The most fun is escaping from the apposing faction, and continuing to shield / heal the raid on the run.

I love Blizzard's response to someone complaining about dieing even after they had resilience.

Nice, Aethien. I saw your build when you posted it on a different thread, it reminded me of what I levelled with from mid 60's to 80. It covers damage and healing pretty efficiently.

As far as BG's and pvp gear, I have a rudimentary pvp set (mix of hateful and deadly with 800 resil) that I use most of the time. But when we are digging in on defensive, I will switch to my raid gear if I have time to mana up. The difference is quite noticeable.

SoL procs are used for healing in raids; In pvp, well, Nova + SoL Smites make for some interesting melee. Jump into the pile of peeps and Nova heal and smite off the procs. They have to tab to find you then!

Yeah, I tend to do goofy things in pvp but I do get serious while raiding. BG's remind me of recess in grade school.

As disc I used Holy Nova when there are at least 5 people around. Doesn't matter if the mix is all foe or friendly.

Proper use of Holy Nova also involves jumping. Spinning in the air is optional.

What kind of gear are you stacking as you level? I have 28 Blood Elf (Catharla on Scilla, armory no worky for me right now) I am leveling and I am stacking mostly intellegence and such (getting dugeon runs from freinds to keep me in blues) rather than spirit. I am shadow at this moment, and I was running into to the OOM problem but thought maybe I was over casting with my Holy Fire --> Mind Blast --> Devouring Plauge --> SW:P rotation. I have dropped Holy Fire from the rotation and have noticed a big jump in how much longer my mana lasts, but I am still chain pulling faster than Spirit Tap can keep up. Just wondering what I am doing wrong (gear, spec, rotation). She is a beast though and I am taking red level mobs no problem.

I just started leveling as shadow recently, as stated in another thread. I have to say, I can take on 3-4 mobs at a time with little to no problem. With my wife's warrior at my side, we're unstoppable! The only spec I haven't tried, but will try eventually, is holy. Discipline and Shadow both rock. This is my new favorite character, even though I'll have a new, new favorite in a week..

There's definitely something to be said for this route. If I'm going Shadow my preference is to sprint up to Shadowform as fast as possible (after level 30 mana regen ceases to be an issue anyway, I find), but that's a matter of personal preference.

I love using my pvp holy spec in the old BGs! My pve gear is much better than any pvp gear so I just ignore resil. My strat is to PoM then run in circles (while jumping) spamming holy nova. The heals on my group outway the dots and the constant dmg eating away at the other group is enough to allow my team to finish them off. Once I have successfully pissed off the bad guys and they start to ignore everyone else in the BG but me, PWS, Angel, renew, Nova spam, win!

Not to mention bubble sprint is amazing in WSG the flag carriers love me >:)

If you can't do a 360 while in the air and spamming holy nova you're doinitwrong!