[Priest] Levelling Guide

[Kelesti]

Kel's New2Priesting guide

If you're new to playing a priest, it means one of two things:[*]You just started one, most likely at the first level.[*]You figured out how to use eBay. Congratulations.

Now, this guide is obviously for the former and not the latter. And it's going to be a work in progress probably until someone else decides to take over this project from me come Cataclysm's launch, so feel free to contribute!

Gear!

So usually for trash greens that drop while solo'ing, that means your go to items you'll be wearing will probably be lots of "Of the Owl" and "Of the Whale" gear. That's okay, nothing to be ashamed of. If you're not on a new server/faction, and managed to save up some BoA gear, I'm going to list my order of priorities:[*]Tattered Dreadmist Robe Good, solid stats on chests are just hard to come by, and 10% experience bonus is nothing to stop at. This comes first.[*]Tattered Dreadmist Mantle Same reason as above. Just the stats on the chest are better. [*]Discerning Eye of the Beast You're not going to be picking up any useful trinkets any time soon, so this is uncontested and it helps drop a bit of regen "Down" time, even though Spirit Tap has it mostly covered.

After these three, up to you whether you want to go for the Dignified headmaster's Charge as a very solid weapon, or another trinket of your choosing. Obviously filling up all slots is awesome, just a matter of priorities lead me to pick Trinket, Weapon, Trinket, your mileage may vary.

There are four things to be looking out for, on any questing drops you get, no matter how you're spec'd.[*]Spellpower (starting out, this will be in EXTREMELY short supply, but it's okay. Just grab what you can when it becomes available)[*]Spirit[*]Intellect[*]Stamina

Your first nine levels!

Your first nine levels are going to suck. There's no way around it. Sell your grey item drops that you can't equip, and pick up an extra bundle of water whenever you're starting to run low.
[*]You'll get Shadow Word: Pain at level 4. Don't use it now. It's a little expensive to be using on every single target. You either have to slow yourself down and wait for the DoT (damage over time effect) to kill them, as you would've been better off both in Damage Per Second, and Damage per Mana just casting Smite.[*]Power Word: Shield comes in at level 6. It's on the expensive side, and pushback as of 3.0 is pretty trivial now. Annoying, but the real troubles are behind us. However, should you pull an extra add (or two, or four), this should immediately be your first cast. It's going to let you finish off your current target without any interruptions, and focus on either healing yourself up or burning target two before you even have to look at your health bar again. This spell does not replace healing, but it will buy you time, and as such can become a leveling priest's greatest friend.[*]Starting at level 8, a running joke among the priest community is watching newbies try and save themselves with Fade, just from the way the tooltip's written. It only gets the target to stop attacking you if someone else has touched it. Something that also works is when that asshole is stealing your kills, toss out a fast cast on something that he's running towards, or as he's casting. Yours hits first, you tag it. His hits immediately after. You cast Fade, he has the aggro to fight it off but you get credit and are already working on mob #2. This is a tactic I've used all-throughout TBC and Wrath, even cross faction if not on a PvP server.[*]You also get Renew at this level. While it's awesome to have, it's not very effective at this point in the game. Casting it before you take damage is expensive, and as your'e taking damage it's not going to save you. Keep Lesser Heal on an easy to reach Hotkey.

Okay, I've got a talent point, now what?

Your first, second, and third talent points go into Spirit Tap. Mages have Water, Mana Gems, and later Evocation. Warlocks have Life Tap/Life Drain, and Mana Drain. In combat, what does a Priest Get? Nothing. Out of combat? Vendor water. : This is the talent that lets you keep killing, nearly eliminating all down time. Pick up a wand and start shooting mobs as they get below 15%, and if this becomes habit enough, you'll forget you even have a blue bar. [*]Level 10 also nets you Mind Blast. I personally didn't use this spell too much except when I needed one extra little burst to finish a target off. It's decent damage, and high DPS, but its Damage per Mana kinda sucks, so I mostly just continued casting Smite at this point.

So what happens after level 13?

Well this one's up to you, as there's two and a half ways to level your character from this point.


This area is reserved for upcoming Smite and Shadow guides, which will probably be some time this weekend

[Yizren]

i think he likes spirit tap

[harky]

I'm glad someone took it up to try and make one. Some notes:

So usually for trash greens that drop while solo'ing, that means your go to items you'll be wearing will probably be lots of "Of the Owl" and "Of the Whale" gear.

The 'of healing' gear has been converted completely into spellpower now. You can actually have about 50 SP at level 10 now if you're lucky with 'of healing' items. They're the best bet for quickie gear from 1-56.

Pick up a wand and start shooting mobs as they get below 15%, and if this becomes habit enough, you'll forget you even have a blue bar.

This will actually slow you down. It's usually only worth casting 1-2 spells on a mob, then begin wanding. Compare a Lesser Magic Wand to Smite at level 6. With no interruptions Smite does ~14 dps, while the wand would roll on at 11.3 regardless. Interrupts drop Smite down to 10 DPS. So while casting a couple times is okay, once a mob reached you your wand will actually produce higher DPS. That doesn't change until level 14 at which point Smite passes a Greater wand slightly even if interrupted. Opening with MB and then either Smiting (50%+ mana), or wanding (<50% mana) will produce better mob kill time at 10-12. At 13 you can switch to pure MB and wanding exclusively, then use Smite's new rank at 14.

It's actually very sad that Wand Specialization was removed, it actually made pure wanding viable all the way to 40. :-\

[TwistedPower]

I would sugest.

At Level 5 you should get a the Lesser magic wand made by an echanter for a only a few silver, http://thottbot.com/i11287
You can buy the mats at the enchanting supplyer vendor in any major city they sell limited supplies of the lesser magic essence and infinite wood.

It has 11.3 dps, which is more dps then you can output with spells and you dont have to drink. Put that baby on and wand everything to death. Use your spells to heal yourself and shield.

There is another good wand for level 13 http://thottbot.com/i11288 which you can use untill you can get talents into devine fury for smite or mindflay for shadow. This is also an enchanting wand.

Neither of the wands require enchanting they are just made by them.

The enchanting wands have more dps then normal green wands their level becuase blizzard buffed them so they would be worth somthing way back in BC.

Doing great dps with no down time at least untill you get some good talents helped me with the strugle of the lower levels and the wands are dirt cheap.

When you can get devine fury or mindflay I would stop wanding and start casting spells, wanding only to finish mobs off just like you sugested.

Edit: now that I think about it, are you going to cover leveling as holy or shadow or both?
And good luck on the guide :-D

[harky]

From the bottom text it looks like both, which certainly fulfills the intention I'm assuming it has: Stop the daily posts about 'how do I shot web' I mean 'how do I level.'