New to priesting, tips?

[Deleted]

Hello.

I recently started playing a priest, now sitting at lvl 77. Im not a total noob with a priest, i have briefly played it on levels below 70 before, thou never at max lvl. I would like to know if it is, in it's state post 4.0.6, advisible to roll a priest, specifically a healing one? I know the answers will differ alot, mostly between yes and no (duh), and so i would like to have broader answers than that. What kind of class is priest on max level? What kind of person would like a priest? Disc or holy, why and why not? Any semi-beginner tips that contain info i might have missed?

Ps. Yes, i know priest sucks in arenas atm and "pala got all priest things, priest got nothing in exchange" so i don't even bother to read either one of those.

Also i have to add that im looking for more in-depth info for myself here, thou i won't mind smaller ones either. I believe 5 years have thought me enough "skin-business" of all classes.

EDIT: I knew priest was one of the least played classes in WoW but come on, not this unpopular.

[Ynna]

I play a Holy priest. To me it' main attraction is flexibility and having tools for every occasion and then some more. I like having to decide (in less than a second) which skill I should use, why and how much mana I can spend on it. We have our fair share of goodies like Body and Soul (targetable sprint), Leap of Faith (Stop standing in the fire!) and Chakra, that set our class/spec apart.
A player that would like a Holy priest is someone who would enjoy his/here share of responsibility, likes split-second decision making and isn't afraid of a challenge and likes pushing him/herself to the limit. It's doable to be okay at priest healing, it's hard to get awesome at it.
I personally prefer Holy, since I like it's healing style more than Disciplines, and I really enjoy the flexibility.

As for tips:
- Try healing like mana already matters (even though it doesn't below level 83). This will make it easier to get used to the healing at level 85.
- For PvE: Glyph Psychic Scream. This is really handy on numerous occasions.
- If you go Holy, take Body and Soul.
- Guardian Spirit is your friend, use it! Might be a bit obvious, but a lot of players hold on to their cooldowns too long.
- Prayer of Healing might seem like a mana hog, but it is pretty efficient as soon as 3 players have taken damage.
- Lightwell is awesome, encourage your groupmates to use it.

[Deleted]

It's pretty hard to give advice to someone at lvl 77 since the healing game is so different at 85. When you get to 85 though, there's a lot to keep in mind. Make sure to read the guide on elitistjerks.com it takes your skill from possibly average to awesome. With that guide, you'll know exactly what kind of gear you need, what spells to prioritize, what gems to buy and what glyphs to use (I sort of disagree with the above poster, fear is only useful in extremely rare situations, for example when trying to get the achivement It's Frost Damage, if you have to use it, your group is probably already toast).

[Akiraislonggone]

Shadow is pretty awesome, unless you are dead set on healing. Although shadow is in a iffy period right now, I think it is going to be really strong at max gear and skill level. And once you get your rotation down it is just the smoothest class to play imo. As for healing, it depends, I hear disc is better for leveling, holy would do the trick as well, but the disc bubbles although are not what they should be, they still help during random aoe phases of newer dungeons, and you can then switch back to being mt healer mode. Where holy is more so raid heals, you might end up wasting a lot more mana. In raid situations, it sounds like holy is the way to go, with ok mana consumption, and the ability to heal over all more effectively.

[Deleted]

Holy priests are just so imba right now its silly (and yes my main is one).

Quite frankly, we rock. We can put out stupid levels of aoe heals, switch to tank healing mid fights and excell at that. We have utility, you'd be surrpised how useful body and soul speed increased area, and lightwell is just a little pot of awesomeness. Mana regen is pretty much perfect, we can sit at max mana in normal phases, even regen whilst casting heals to refresh renews, and then burn mana to massively up our hps as needed.

I always top healing meters, and by quite a bit, and my fellow healers are not fail at all, its just that we have a nice mix of hots, direct heals, aoe smart heals and 'oh crap' options to allow a good preist to react to anything almost instantly. Having healed on all the healing classes, i have to say priestes, esp holy ones, require a bit more, I hestitate to use the word skill, ability to cope with complexity? there are alot of abilities, and they interact with each others, so there is a lot to keep track of to spearate the average priest from teh good ones.



Disc? I like disc, I love the mechanics, the smite, atonemets, archangle interations, but tbh and much as I hate to finally have to admit this, it just does not pull the numbers to match up to holy. Having said that, its soon to be buffed, allowing grace to stack on multi targets will go a long way to helping disc out.


Shadow, Its nice for raids, but soloing is pain I found, its just boring mindspike spam, dots just are not so effective when questing, so I'd not bother. Find a mate and level as disc, its actually able to solo stuff that pwn most classes, if you have an AA build.

[Deleted]

Holy has every healing tool there ever was, and then some. They have awesome mana regen and can, when shit hits the fan, explode their mana bar into healing... and they *always* heal in big numbers.
Takes a bit of skill to handle though.

Discipline is the lone wolf among healers, as we don't stack. It is also the odd healer out as we supress damge instead of healing through it.
We are probably the ultimate support healer. With shields/aegis we add some virtual HP to the tank, pain supressing spikes and power infusing any paladin on MT healing duty. With more powerful shields than holy and short CDs we save the life of the DPS who took a 90% dive, letting the druid time for its hots to kick in or the holy priest to land its big heal.
While easier to play, I think we will have to be more attentive to incoming damage as we can't put out the same raw healing once the damage starts rolling in.

Shadow is probably the most even DPS class available. While a mage typically do 3K-33K DPS, you will do 11.386 DPS at all times. Getting your rotations right is the most important aspect, as none of your abilities scale with gear. It also makes it the only class/spec allowed to raid naked, saving you valuable repair costs while still maintaining throughput. Maybe I'm exaggerating a little.


Tips:
Abuse your long cooldowns unless you know you need them. Makes your life easier and teaches you just how powerful they are.
Abuse Heal if you can. Both disc/holy has talents that benefit from it.
Use Prayer of Healing for AoE healing. Learn it now as it's basicly your only option later without going completely OOM.
Everybody hates Lifegrip, unless you save them with it. Use it for desired effect.

( Speaking of. I saved a rogue from dying in fire the other day. Where the heck is my achievement? )

[bobo333]

good priests make lots of friends, so keep a hunter alt on standby for the days you don't want to talk to anyone. also, more seriously, if mana is low and there's no shammy with yummy mana tide goodness, if you have 10 seconds spare cast shadowfiiend and then hymn of hope right after, just really make sure you have 10 seconds spare though i can't stress that enough.mix your cooldowns to see which works well. power infusion (if you're disco) and divine hymn will save the day very quickly (and proc a load of aegis's all over the raid which buys you more time for PoH's). chakra is amazing, learn it and love it. most of our cooldowns are on 3 minute timers so usually if you use them early on you'll get another pop towards the end of the fight. earlier posters have covered some great advice i'm just trying to add to the list

[Deleted]

Thanks all, that should take me to the moon.