If you want to be accepted by any guild or pug there is, go dwarf priest. Fear Ward is OP, and everyone wants them.
Yeah, I remember SWP because I was one of those Holys We used to have 4 Holy Paladins coming out of BT: one respecced to Prot, one respecced to Ret, one stayed Holy and I made my Warrior to new main. In retrospect the best decision I ever made but it really sucked to shelve my pre-SWP BiS-geared Paladin at that time.
#MakeBlizzardGreatAgain
You'd think with modern day knowledge, everyone would roll a dwarf priest on Alliance, but human priests and night elf priests are still very common. Night elf priest is the worst out of the three though. Human at least you can make an argument that the spirit buff is useful later on, especially when you're not on fights that have fears. I don't think Naxx had any fear fights, but Dwarf priest and Human priest both have Desperate prayer, which is also helpful.
Immersion is immersion. When I finally had the chance to race change my Shaman to a Dwarf, I suddenly found myself playing him a lot again. My Paladin I've never wanted to be anything but Human, and I can't imagine him as a Dwarf. I presume many Priests operate with the same preferences. Sometimes the things we like we can't explain. /shrug.
Some, if not most, people play what they prefer the looks of and don't min/max for raids though. Though going Dwarf in Classic is a bit more than simply min/maxing. A friend of mine back in Vanilla got into a really good raiding guild the second he dinged 60 because he was a dwarf priest, and they needed a fear ward.
So with that knowledge, I'd roll a dwarf priest if I where to play one for sure. But I honestly don't think that many care, and just end up playing what they enjoy.
They arent really a alternative to the paladin, since you want 4 paladins for the buffs, then 1 druid for the buff / hots, rest being priests.
The problem of the druid is not that they arent powerfull healers, they are, i look at them being equal to paladins. The problem is that they fill the exact same niche as the paladin does, but the paladin brings powerfull buffs in addition to the healing, thats why more than one druid is not necessary, cause they arent competing with the paladin for the raid spots, but the priests, and since you will already have 5 players filling the druid/paladin niche, you will always pick the priest unless you got no other choice.
Although, if the choice was between a 5th paladin or a 2nd druid, i would take the druid, but its a priest spot they would be taking.
But this is looking at a optimal comp, it is perfectly viable to go with both less priests and paladins in favor of more druids, as long as you got competent players behind the keyboards. But you will lose out on buffs and overall healing power.
I think a lot of people are forgetting that Hots do not stack in vanilla when comparing druids to paladins. Having too many druids in your raid actually can nerf overall raid HPS.
This why Paladins are superior in raids to druids.
Back to the OP play what you enjoy. I think you may be a bit unrealistic expecting to accomplish all you have listed with only 10 hours of play a week. Levelling is fun, just enjoy it.
If you want to heal in PvP - I'd go Paladin because you are pretty much indestructible. Abilities like Divine Shield are complete and total shut down of any attempts to dispatch you and you can freeheal a ton during that time, while Blessing of Protection, Freedom and Lay on Hands are also pretty damn big and of course you are having plate and shield too, so you are considerably tougher to bring down to begin with.
I think this is especially true if you do not play much, because in PvP it means you will be bottom of the barrel gear-wise and better geared players will steamroll you to dust in a blink of an eye and the only real way to prevent that would be Divine Shield - this way you can be useful no matter what, simply because you can't be killed outright and at least will be able to toss quite a few meaty heals out on your team.
Besides nothing more satisfying to see some derps overextending trying to kill you only to crash on that DS wall and get slaughtered instead achieving nothing. It really happened a lot back then.
I would advise going with a Priest for a few reasons:
- Leveling - Leveling as a Paladin is, well, painful. Ret is the way to go (Prot isn't TOO bad, as you can gather up several mobs at once, but it takes forever to kill them), but even Ret is slow. As a Shadow Priest, you can still heal effectively enough in small group content, including dungeons, as long as your group is willing to take things a little slower as you'll need to drink a lot to replenish mana.
- Dungeons - As stated above, run leveling dungeons as Shadow, then switch to Holy at 60. You will find all of the groups you want as a healer, and your toolkit is well suited to 5-player content. Holy Priests are, arguably, and in my admittedly biased opinion, the best small group healers in Classic.
- Raiding - Despite what some may tell you, mana does not have to be a problem for a raiding Holy Priest. My Priest and my co-class leader differed in our spec and gear. I went for throughput with heavy +healing, while he went for regen with lots of +Mp5. By the time we had Rags on farm, neither of us needed to be Innervated in raids. (Note: If you go for throughput like I did, you'll be downranking your spells most of the time. Learn how to do that effectively by running leveling dungeons as Shadow.) Beyond mana, HPs were incredibly strong as both tank and general raid healers. I filled both roles over the course my heavy raiding time, and I filled both roles very well. If I can be that effective, I think I have to give the bulk of the credit to the class.
- PVP - Shadow Priests were very effective in PVP (the "SPs melt faces" meme had a strong basis). Still, I think I'd have to give the edge to Paladins here, as all three specs were strong, and all were difficult to kill. And you could always bubble-hearth if things got too bad.
Does anyone know any PVP Paladin BIS lists?
One thing that always bothered me is the appearance of Paladins in Vanilla, while Priests are looking cool in almost every tier.
Now I know that PVP Paladins will wear Plate because armor actually matters versus other players, but I don't know which pieces they would wear. Tier gear? Special PVP gear?
Any oldschool Paladin PVP'ers around?
Last edited by Malacrass; 2019-03-29 at 08:14 PM. Reason: Yes I used google, can't find anything
These were the two classes I leveled in vanilla, while neither was a walk in the park, priest went a little better, though not having to pay big for the level 40 paladin mount was nice.
/s
When asked a question like "best over all experience" from someone else and then being expected to give a correct answer is nuts. Both classes are great and if healing spec will be in very high demand. If you plan to go off the healing road Paladin probably is where I would go. At least there you have healing and then a DPS and a tanking role to mess around with instead of just healing. and dps. Not to say these things are super end game viable but that might not be the objective all the time.
Raidwise I can offer you my experience; the main reason I actually started a paladin as main once was because I had burned out on all the consumable farming etc, and just wanted an easy class, not having to flask, not having to chain pots, not having to use shit like nightfin etc and just heal away on relaxxing raids not worry about mana drunk as hell with a gin tonic next to me.
Ofc in the end slacking just isn't in me, and I became tryhard because it turns out I loved the class not because of the lack of preparing (because the more tryhard you get...yeah as paladin you too will actually use flasks and manapots and bla bla bla) but the layed-back playstyle I simply enjoyed, more focussed on your surroundings always being prepared with BoP or in extreme cases DI (in case of ninja pulls), no worry about mana (most times), rebuffing ppl with barely any manacost etc. As a paladin, moreso than priest (I played both) I never felt stressed for raids though since even with no time to farm this week (you mentioned your time is limited to 10h) you can still perform very well as a paladin without feeling frustrated, something that a priest caused me more of when I slacked for a while, having no manapots or gold as a priest did hurt me more than paladin for sure.
Even if you're a healmeter freak (you shouldn't be, but most times pushing everything you got out of your class will simply translate to hps anyway, which is why a paladin is mostly a wotlk style holypriest, the more sustained high hps you blast out the better/safer for your raid, overhealing included) paladin isn't being snowed under at any progression period. My guild had a really strong paladin team with 3 main paladins (one of the most fun 'team' I had, discussing small stuff every day) and always competed with druids/priest equally (whereas in most other guilds it was usually the priest taking the brunt of healing, we had utilized paladins as spambots chaining major manas perfectly), so it can be done. Sure your tools will often feel limited, to the point of watching your tank die with FoL not keeping up and your single CD not being ready, but you just need the mindset as a paladin that you're there to lay the healing foundation, a solid constant hps on tanks and people in danger and that the priests and druids go from there, know your role so to speak. To me personally, spamming heals is more enjoyable than constantly wanting to retract your priest heals and worrying about mana on bosses and trash, but for others spamming fol is extremely boring, to each their own.
Oh and who wouldn't wanna roll on things like Ashkandi, Ashbringer and Sulfuras etc, the meme pvp weapons are often up for grabs for rets as well.
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Yeah even on the 'meta defining' pvt servers everyone is whining about who got it all 'figured out', you'd still have a lot of people play either nightelf or human priests (I don't blame them, some people find looks important and hate the dwarf) because while fearward is very useful there's often 1-2 dwarf priests in your raid anyway so the 'damage' isn't as bad as for example being an undead mage and seeing your fellow trolls popping a rune+berserking on the pull and casting their frostbolts 30% faster (which is mega annoying for yourself not being able to compete). Somehow healers always get away with stuff like this more, since I guess it's harder to actually get a proper healing team than it is to replace a dps rolling a race hurting himself and not being able to compete properly with others no matter what he does.
Personally I played human once and was pretty anoyed in 5mans already, or ZG raptor boss that my raid didn't have fearward, but not everyone plays wow to nerd it out like that and has different goals or things of importance to them.
Race isn't as limiting for healers as it isn't numbers or dps focussed and more about skill and vision, for high end guilds for example race wasn't an issue for healers, but it sure was for tanks, not taking in Taurens as maintanks on pvt servers for example (them lacking threat, which actually does do dmg to your overall raid) or not wanting an undead warrior if you could just as well pick an orc warrior who would almost always come out on top just by having his racial used.
For Paladins though humans vs dwarves never matters, for every moment your racial would be more useful (and there's almost never such a moment) to be a dwarf there's a poison resistance elixir to pop. Our entire Pala team was human even when we were the nerdy tryhards. Just go for 'looks' on that point, and boy is dwarf ugly to me.
Last edited by Outofmana; 2019-04-05 at 09:17 PM.
Paladins are better at pve.
Priests are better at pvp.
Priests have a higher skillcap in all gameplay regards compared to Paladins.
Maybe a dumb Q - but ill there really be a high demand for Paladin healers as I plan on going learning/trying Holy-P as a longtime Ret from Cata-WoD and I would imagine I'm not alone in wanting to stay Pally but switching to Holy as its the viable spec. Could a many doing the same.
Thanks for the mixed feedback guys. It's good to hear various opinions.
Everybody seems to be singing the praise of priests in general in terms of getting in to groups which does sound nice - i've always thought Paladins would be equally as desired in group content as priests (PVP/Raids/Dungeons) - Are paladin buffs/auras not reason enough to bring them to all content?
Demand will be high. Usually everyone wants all the blessings. Minus like Salv on tanks and wisdom on warriors for a couple examples. A couple should be light and wisdom judging as well. Aura spreading for resistant fights can be pretty huge too. I say you can get by with 3 and the pallies won't be having headaches along with most everyone getting what they want. But about 4 or 5 is where I would suspect you want to be for maximum coverage of all blessings, judgements, aura spreads, and insane constant healing on tanks.
Big thing about pally in classic is team work with the raid and the other pallies. You will want one with improved might and using it, another with improved wisdom, one with kings. So on and so on. Then one that is the light judged and another which is the wisdom judgers. Understand who back each other up if someone dies or if an encounter has 2+ targets so is judging what where. Then understanding your auras and which is better for fights. Understanding and working together if you have 2 pallies in a group of who is doing what or if you get spread out why.
The worse paladins in classic will be chart humping no team work asshats that don't play ball. Their bar will likely end up the biggest in heals but the team will suffer and the raid will be needlessly more challenging.
I can't judge since I have no vanilla experience, but usually people say it's the other way around. Paladins are generally more valuable in PvP as the content progresses, since most clothies get two or three-shot by geared physical attackers (while Paladins have plate and more oh-shit buttons to counter the gear getting out of hand, especially after Naxx).
Last edited by Malacrass; 2019-04-08 at 07:30 PM.
define painfull. I'm a holy paladin on unnamed servers. you can easely start building the holy specc from lvl10 and use a 2hander. allot of damage comes as spelldamage so intellect is usefull for dps (it gives spellcrit) once you get that holy shock.....well see for yourself. I don't see a problem in lvling.