Questions for Priest healers of Vanilla.

[Kickrockz]

The meta has changed. Race class combos are now more closely understood than in retail vanilla and ally raiding guilds don't want priests without fear ward.

Few things man,

1. There are no world first....you don't need to min/max, you will never be special, the content has been beaten before and nothing is going to change that.

2. Good luck with that, once the first wave of people come through and their all snatched up the pool will be low and you'll take whatever you can get, the old saying beggars can't be choosers and that's exactly how it will be just like in vanilla. If you think every priest is going to roll Dwarf for some stupid spell that you don't even need if you have a tank worth a lick, you're mistaken.

3. People are going to quit a lot and go back to other games or retail, again lowering that pool even more within the first few months. Time constraints, most that have been there before will burn out and want something new. There are always exceptions to the rule though...

4. 40 mans are hard to fill, look at live right now...people have a hard enough time with getting 20 people to show up night in and night out, you'll take what you can get.

5. Whatever you saw on the Private servers is a joke....I played Classic and at times we didn't even have a Dwarf Priest in the guild, of course we have a great tank that wasn't a baddie but we made it all the way to Naxx and even beat a few bosses doing 3 nights a week...not hardcore in the least.

I can't wait for the hardcore/Min/Max/e-peen crowd to come in, consume and then leave.... their a cancer to the community and they'll do nothing but turn others off and create an elitist mindset that's not healthy for anyone. If you're trying hard in Classic, you're doing it wrong...enjoy it this time around, stop thinking about being first or what's best and have a good time!

Play what you want! Don't let anyone scare you or try and tell you others won't let you into their raid groups unless you do X-Y and Z....Don't stand in fire, do your best, come prepared and you'll do great! =)

[Deletedaccount1]

Few things man,

1. There are no world first....you don't need to min/max, you will never be special, the content has been beaten before and nothing is going to change that.

2. Good luck with that, once the first wave of people come through and their all snatched up the pool will be low and you'll take whatever you can get, the old saying beggars can't be choosers and that's exactly how it will be just like in vanilla. If you think every priest is going to roll Dwarf for some stupid spell that you don't even need if you have a tank worth a lick, you're mistaken.

3. People are going to quit a lot and go back to other games or retail, again lowering that pool even more within the first few months. Time constraints, most that have been there before will burn out and want something new. There are always exceptions to the rule though...

4. 40 mans are hard to fill, look at live right now...people have a hard enough time with getting 20 people to show up night in and night out, you'll take what you can get.

5. Whatever you saw on the Private servers is a joke....I played Classic and at times we didn't even have a Dwarf Priest in the guild, of course we have a great tank that wasn't a baddie but we made it all the way to Naxx and even beat a few bosses doing 3 nights a week...not hardcore in the least.

I can't wait for the hardcore/Min/Max/e-peen crowd to come in, consume and then leave.... their a cancer to the community and they'll do nothing but turn others off and create an elitist mindset that's not healthy for anyone. If you're trying hard in Classic, you're doing it wrong...enjoy it this time around, stop thinking about being first or what's best and have a good time!

Play what you want! Don't let anyone scare you or try and tell you others won't let you into their raid groups unless you do X-Y and Z....Don't stand in fire, do your best, come prepared and you'll do great! =)

Oh man I'm not even going to bother. If you are baiting then you did very well because I can't tell.

[Kickrockz]

Oh man I'm not even going to bother. If you are baiting then you did very well because I can't tell.

You gonna try hard? You going to min/max a game that's already been beaten? Act like its super serious to beat things that have already been done lol...Yes the best radical is FW for priests but its not the end all be all and EVERY boss can be beaten without it...

Did you play Vanilla?

[Niwes]

In raids you'll downrank your spells, use shield, and renew. there's no using prayer of healing as it was very expensive. Unless of course that's part of the healing design for your raid.

As a MT healer you'll be paired with a pally or be asked to just use renew, shield, fear ward if applicable, and flash heal if warranted. I used to downrank to Greater Heal rank 2 and just continually spam it without ever having to worry about mana or the 5 sec rule.

When we learned how to play in MC and raiding going forward max rank heals were out of the question because of mana. When we overpowered and out geared the instance then it didn't matter. So lower ranked healing it was.

As for grinding as holy i used to use shadow word pain, wand, shield and renew. when they nerfed wand/dagger i switched to shadow for grinding and that was expensive constantly switching. You can always be a smiter of course but it was a one at a time proposition. 1 mob at a time. if 3 came you had to fear, shield, renew, kill one fast and out last them. Higher gear levels made this easy. but in greens and a mixture of blues (MC starter level) it was difficult and dangerous.

All in all it was fun but got boring as gear came rolling in from MC/BWL/AQ/ZG farming.

it was far better in dungeons and instances levelling up and gearing up before raiding because there you had to go all out. And threat was bad. Fade is a good friend.

hope that helps.

exactly this.

[Deletedaccount1]

You gonna try hard? You going to min/max a game that's already been beaten? Act like its super serious to beat things that have already been done lol...Yes the best radical is FW for priests but its not the end all be all and EVERY boss can be beaten without it...

Did you play Vanilla?

I did play Vanilla and I have been playing it for years since it ended on retail. If you watch old videos of top guilds in Vanilla like Nihilum you will see that they keyboard turned and back peddled and some were even clickers but that was normal back then. People understand the game better after 13 years of theorycrafting than they did back then.

You can clear content without fear ward but good luck finding a good guild that will take you. Rolling the ideal race/class combo isn't even min-maxing in this case, it is just common sense. Respeccing and switching between BiS sets between fights is an example of min-maxing. There are some classes where the difference is negligible but ally priests aren't one of those. You can be as casual as you want but don't blame me or others for pointing out that it puts you at an unnecessary disadvantage in finding a raid spot.

[shifu]

In raids you'll downrank your spells, use shield, and renew. there's no using prayer of healing as it was very expensive. Unless of course that's part of the healing design for your raid.

As a MT healer you'll be paired with a pally or be asked to just use renew, shield, fear ward if applicable, and flash heal if warranted. I used to downrank to Greater Heal rank 2 and just continually spam it without ever having to worry about mana or the 5 sec rule.

When we learned how to play in MC and raiding going forward max rank heals were out of the question because of mana. When we overpowered and out geared the instance then it didn't matter. So lower ranked healing it was.

As for grinding as holy i used to use shadow word pain, wand, shield and renew. when they nerfed wand/dagger i switched to shadow for grinding and that was expensive constantly switching. You can always be a smiter of course but it was a one at a time proposition. 1 mob at a time. if 3 came you had to fear, shield, renew, kill one fast and out last them. Higher gear levels made this easy. but in greens and a mixture of blues (MC starter level) it was difficult and dangerous.

All in all it was fun but got boring as gear came rolling in from MC/BWL/AQ/ZG farming.

it was far better in dungeons and instances levelling up and gearing up before raiding because there you had to go all out. And threat was bad. Fade is a good friend.

hope that helps.

Thank you very much for the pointer! I greatly appreciate you taking the time. Thats unfortunate that the better your gear became the more boring the class became.

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Oh, and if you're Allied... Dwarf Priest or don't bother. Unless Blizzard decides to get Fear Ward to all priests as a concession.

I saw that. I was also thinking Human could viable because of the spirit boost? Or still pales in comparison to fear ward?

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Well I probably can't remember right, but i was an aq40/nax holy priest back then. What I recall that it was fun but it wasn't spammy , you had to be out of cast for 5 sec if you could sometimes ( to regain mana from spirit or something along those lines) , also downrankig was a thing yes, pretty much its what you described but you had a group heal . Spamming was out of question , since if you spammed flash heal you failed horribly and went OOM. What I can tell you that I enjoyed it a lot and never really regretted rolling a priest, and also never been a healer since vanilla because of the spammy playstyle thats exist nowadays. ( its more fun as a dps for me)

I leveled on holy spec ( without want spec, full raid spec ) ,because I'm a masochist I guess. It was fine for me, did a lot of instanced content to practice healing. I started as a hunter and rerolled immediately after hitting 60 because I felt like dead weight as a hunter. ( everybody was a hunter or a rogue) So after power leveling my priest to 60 , i loved how I was always in demand. Seriously that feeling of being like an asset and a treasure for a team was so liberating after playing as a hunter.

So in summary I loved being a priest in vanilla , leveling isn't to hard even if you do it holy you just need to party a little more. ( bonus: you make more friends that way), and you will be a respected and valued part of the community. That was the last time wow gave me this feeling of being a respected contributor to an online society. Oh and one more thing , gearing will be so much easier , in raids you will have to fight with less people and raid leaders will actually want to gear you and shower you with loot.

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I was a night elf priest ( worst race to be a one ) and still became a nax raider. Raid leaders were happy to have healers, being dwarf was just bonus.

I know that feeling! I got the same feeling as a Paladin. Probably the reason I absolutely love being a healer. Always in constant demand. People appreciate you greatly (Especially if you know what you are doing). And there is always raid slots. I couldn't imagine not rolling a healer for Classic. The only real struggle for me is Priest of Druid i just cant decide.

[babyback]

I did play Vanilla and I have been playing it for years since it ended on retail. If you watch old videos of top guilds in Vanilla like Nihilum you will see that they keyboard turned and back peddled and some were even clickers but that was normal back then. People understand the game better after 13 years of theorycrafting than they did back then.

You can clear content without fear ward but good luck finding a good guild that will take you. Rolling the ideal race/class combo isn't even min-maxing in this case, it is just common sense. Respeccing and switching between BiS sets between fights is an example of min-maxing. There are some classes where the difference is negligible but ally priests aren't one of those. You can be as casual as you want but don't blame me or others for pointing out that it puts you at an unnecessary disadvantage in finding a raid spot.

This is sad but it’s true. Many will be extreme try hards even if it doesn’t matter.

[shifu]

In Vanilla healing per mana is the most important thing. If you enjoy that mechanic (5 sec rule etc.) then priest is just fine for you. Obviously much less skills than on retail. Priest healing output is great and you are wanted in raids and dungs.

I always missed this in retail. Waiting 5 sec after cast to regen mana gave the feeling that mana was precious. And you had to very careful where you spent it.

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I have been playing priest since the past year on the private servers, cleared MC/BWL/ZG now preparing for AQ here is my input:



You do everything that every other healer class can do but better your spells are simply superior and scale better you are THE healer + you have an instant heal in form of PW:shield.
In terms of actual gameplay it's pretty similar to other healers you derank your spells, get your assignment, manage your mana by using different heals to match the incoming damage. The core difference is that you tool is much bigger than other classes have. Also since you are a spirit based healer you have to also watch your 5 second rule.



This. I'm a t2/bwl geared and i personally use heal 1 rank, max rank renew, GH rank 1 and max, flash heal rank 3 and max, PW:shield max rank, PoH max rank.



I actually want to roll a paladin when Blizzard release Classic because priest lacks almost any form of utility he is just pure healer no totems/blessings no saves like BoP and LoH no wipe recovery either.



Not bad actually. Since you have spirit tap you almost don't need to drink and you can heal yourself too so food isn't required either. But you kill things a little bit slower than a mage and can't solo kite elites and you need a good wand before you hit level 40 and respec into shadowform. i rate leveling 7/10 with 10/10 being warlock/hunter leveling and 1/10 being warrior leveling. And you can also heal all the 5 man dungeons as a shadow no problem.




There are 5 spots for priests in my guild most guilds roll with the same amount. I saw a guild recruiting so i filled an application and got in and now i'm core raider nothing special really.



No. Shadow is obviously more effective at grinding than holy and it's a real struggle to kill anything past level 55 as a holy but good thing is - you really don't need to. The only thing you have to farm are the demonic runes but it drops from level 50-52 satyrs and they are easy to kill even in healing gear and if you get some pre raid +spell damage gear it will become much more bearable. For gold your primary farming method will be DM:E plants farm since you can aoe lashers with holy nova and it will get you about ~25g/hour.

Some things that you should consider:
Tailoring is a must at the beginning - Truefaith Robes are glorious and simply too good to pass.
There is no /mousover or /focus and raidframes don't show range and incoming heals. Addons do help but they don't work flawlessly.
BENEDICTION!!!

Thank you very much for your input. I especially appreciate the bit about utility. That was always something I loved with my Paladin in Vanilla. BoP, BoF, DI, and LOH I felt were always game changers when used at the appropriate time.

I loved how you mentioned benediction. I was always SOOO DAMN JEALOUS of Priests in vanilla and their staffs. I must admit it is part of the reasons I'm considering Priest for that damn beautiful staff haha

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Hi.

I played a priest all through vanilla and I played priest again on Nostalrius. I raided Naxx 40 and killed all but KT back in the day. It is the only class I'd play for healing as Alliance and the only reason I'd consider Shaman as horde is the dynamic change from a 1.12 Chain Heal in a raid setting.

The reason that priest, in my opinion, is far and away the most interesting healing class in vanilla is the vast and powerful toolkit that it has. In an intense healing situation every global cooldown you have matters enormously. From pre-shielding a tank about to take a huge hit or a cloth dps about to AoE and inevitably draw the attention of mobs that pose a very real threat to their survival, to miraculously saving the party with a well timed Prayer of Healing, to efficiently and effectively choosing the correct type and rank from the vast array of single target spell and hots and lower Prayer of Healing ranks at your disposal. The array of commonly used spells literally count in the dozens. And, if you care, well played priest is a beast that spark well deserved awe and revere from peers that other healing classes frankly are unlikely to ever live to experience.

Finding a raid spot as a priest should be easy, the class to avoid from that point of view is far and away druid. While good, smart and team-play oriented druids are important and valuable, the market for 'decent but not exceptional' druids is very small.

Grinding in the world however sucks, badly. I strongly suggest an alt for that. Even with late tier raid gear sub-optimal would be a stretch.

That is the one thing that is making me hesitant about priest. The grinding struggle. However an alt would not be a bad idea to remedy this issue. Thank you for your input. I especially loved the tidbit about pre-shielding a tank about to take a huge hit. I feel that would add a great deal of fun / depth to your healing experience something that i feel was lacking a bit with Paladin healing.

[Piesor]

Priest was my main in Vanilla, here's what I really liked:
1. The first big goal to achieve: Benediction / Anathema
2. Leveling as shadow was fine, healing as shadow in dungeons was fine until ~lvl50. Specced holy the first time when I had to heal Temple & BRD.
3. Nice toolkit for raiding, didn't play a dwarf though :P
4. Total beast in PVP as shadow.

What I didn't like:
1. Constant respeccing. However every healer / tank / hybrid had this problem.
2. Beeing stuck to dwarf if you would create a character today.

I think the Paladin is the more interesting when it comes to solocontent, especially if you are able to obtain the right gear easily within a good guild for your offspecs.
For raiding only I would always prefer the Priest.

[shifu]

Priest was my main in Vanilla, here's what I really liked:
1. The first big goal to achieve: Benediction / Anathema
2. Leveling as shadow was fine, healing as shadow in dungeons was fine until ~lvl50. Specced holy the first time when I had to heal Temple & BRD.
3. Nice toolkit for raiding, didn't play a dwarf though :P
4. Total beast in PVP as shadow.

What I didn't like:
1. Constant respeccing. However every healer / tank / hybrid had this problem.
2. Beeing stuck to dwarf if you would create a character today.

I think the Paladin is the more interesting when it comes to solocontent, especially if you are able to obtain the right gear easily within a good guild for your offspecs.
For raiding only I would always prefer the Priest.

A large part of me wants to roll Alliance again. And this single point is really offsetting for me. I understand fear ward is truly great! and ideal for a raid priest healer. However i just fucking hate dwarfs. I hate their looks. Their mounts. Their animations. Their starting zone. So this single point really is a buzzkill because unfortunately i fear everyone is going to be a min/max guild on classic and will see any priest that is not dwarf as inferior. I would argue that humans and their racial increase of spirit would be more beneficial but whatever.

[Sooba]

Renew was pretty garbage in vanilla as I remember it. You don't cast a whole lot of instant spells as holy, ditch mental agility and get some of the improved prayer talents and spirit of redemption, it can be a wipe-saver.

You can skip holy nova too.

Then you remember incorrectly. Renew was more powerful than Rejuv. And as HoTs did not stack on a target, it forced guilds to either assign groups for to specific healers or tell druids not to use Rejuv at all. (Healing Touch spam for them. Anyone who remembers throwing out lots of HoTs as a druid was either in a more casual guild or is conflating Vanilla with TBC.)

So no, most of your priests picked up imp renew, and dropping talents for it is bad advice.

[Gavll]

The meta has changed. Race class combos are now more closely understood than in retail vanilla and ally raiding guilds don't want priests without fear ward.

Most raiding guilds will take any priests they can get their hands on. It's not like there's an over-population of healers like there is DPS. Sure, the preference is for dwarfs but who wants to be a dwarf? :P

If you're good at healing you'll get a spot as any race

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Then you remember incorrectly. Renew was more powerful than Rejuv. And as HoTs did not stack on a target, it forced guilds to either assign groups for to specific healers or tell druids not to use Rejuv at all. (Healing Touch spam for them. Anyone who remembers throwing out lots of HoTs as a druid was either in a more casual guild or is conflating Vanilla with TBC.)

So no, most of your priests picked up imp renew, and dropping talents for it is bad advice.

Rejuv and Renew stack

[Shadowsgrace]

I saw that. I was also thinking Human could viable because of the spirit boost? Or still pales in comparison to fear ward?

I think it was more due to Fear being a big Tank Mechanic back then, that you had to have 1 that could withstand it, that or the priest themselves, so they could Dispel it.

[Heathy]

I enjoyed just being the healing back bone, I've said it before and ill say it again, I prefer playing my class today, it just has more fun abilities, disc/holy are a lot different today. I originally made a priest because I just wanted to play a class that wouldn't have much trouble raiding/being useful.

benediction is probably a lifetime transmog, most other staffs can't compare. the quest wasn't as difficult as the hunter one iirc.

I didn't really grind, herbs yes, quests and mobs, no, i'd run dungeons, over and over, strath/scholo/brs/dire maul tribute runs. there weren't many big gold sinks in the game so once you have a mount, your gold mostly just increases passively.

as for builds I settled on something like this in the end. the meta game was getting items with more int, that let you cast more spells before asking for innervate. that was what I did, healed, used a potion, healed a bit more, pressed my /yell 'OOM!' macro, get innervate, keep healing.

fear was annoying but I don't think fear ward was super important, most tanks worth their salt know how to stance dance for berserker rage.

I remember mostly using 4 buttons, renew, flash heal, wand and dispel, spells like holy shield and prayer of healing were used infrequently because they just weren't that good on the mana investment. holy shield didn't save ppl as well as it does today, its not worth pressing on cooldown.

I only started down ranking for razorgore, i had to down rank flash heal a bit 1 or 2 ranks because even with the threat reduction talents, the aggro on that fight was touchy as hell, combination of fade, fear bombs and popping swiftness potions and kiting with the kite train until fade comes off cd again. there wasn't any fights like that, before that, not fights with constantly spawning adds and adds staying on the threat list for the majority of the encounter.

from what i remember the whole idea was to try to keep inspiration up on the tank, thats the buff icon you'd look for, when the tank has inspiration they took noticeably less damage from melee swings, so the idea was to try to maintain inspiration on the active tank.

[Huntingbear_grimbatol]

i was human priest and we had no dwarf priests in our raid until we absorbed a smaller guild. We had no problems with no dwarf priest presence. This is not true.

"We had no problems" isn't to say that things could be made a lot better, honestly Fear Warding your 2-3 tanks and a couple healers makes a huge difference on some encounters!

[Kilee25]

I played a Human Paladin for Vanilla and absolutely fell in love with healing. I healed MC, BWL, AQ20, AQ40, and up to 4H in Naxx. I loved everything about Paladins. But in the back of my head I always wanted to play Priest. Over the last 13 years I've never actually played a Priest. And with Classic announced. I'm throwing the idea around of leveling a priest with the intention of healing in raiding.

My question for you Priest that played in Vanilla and hopefully raided. What were the things that made Priest fun for healing? Or was it a very boring class to heal with? Was your healing similar to Paladin in the regard of having to mix multiple spell ranks on your bars and having to determine on the fly how big of heals needed to passed out. Or was it just spam two heals for the entirety of the raid? What things did you hate about your priest? What was the lvling experience like? Was it difficult finding raid positions? At max lvl could you still grind very well with a holy spec or no?

Thank you very much for your time. And I appreciate anyone taking the time to speak on the matter <3

I played a priest in Vanilla. At the time I picked them, I had thought that they would be the most powerful healer by default, and thus indispensable. In truth I liked the idea of being a force multiplier, and to play a passive yet vital roll in making a group a success. I enjoy supporting others, and so the priest felt like the natural tool to that end.

In 5-mans especially, I believe that priest healers are perhaps the strongest healers. However, when you move to raid content, there are a few problems. Most notably that our good heals were slow, and many other classes would "snipe" the heals out from under us. I recall many raids where other classes would heal damage before I could. However, in long, drawn-out fights, I would always pull my weight, and in this sense I do feel that priests are perhaps the best healers in Classic wow.

One thing that always bothered me was that I felt that Prayer of Healing dictated what groups you could be in. I found this limitation to be aggravating to work around if you had a raid leader who wouldn't work with you and put you in a group where you could use that ability to its fullest. I was constantly wanting to get control of the raid's organization so that I could put melee and ranged in groups in order to make them easier to heal. This became a massive undertaking when dealing with multiple healers in large 40-man raids. But, I also enjoyed that aspect of the large raids, and I miss it.

[Sooba]

Most raiding guilds will take any priests they can get their hands on. It's not like there's an over-population of healers like there is DPS. Sure, the preference is for dwarfs but who wants to be a dwarf? :P

If you're good at healing you'll get a spot as any race

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Rejuv and Renew stack

In Vanilla, they did not. One HoT. That was it.

[Gavll]

In Vanilla, they did not. One HoT. That was it.

Evidence? Because they do on PServers and I'm pretty sure they research these things as thoroughly as possible. I played dps only back in the day so I don't know from memory but it seems unlikely - they're entirely different spells for one thing. You can't have multiple renews or rejuvs ofc

[Mage in Pajamas]

I remember having an easy time getting groups for dungeons as very few people would level as a healer. As a result I don't remember levelling as a terrible experience despite the long grind to 60.

[Kokolums]

Raid healing was a doddle as Priest back then because there were addons that let you spam one button and it would select the lowest health unit in range and heal with the perfect rank to top them up, was normal for me to top the healing meters by far and never go OOM.

This can still be done in a sense. You could design an addon that runs those calculations and pops up a message to SUGGEST the correct spell and rank to use. You just have to read the message and push the correct button. You just cannot spam 1 button.