Leveling as Priest

[Nurvus]

Obviously alot of you noticed, Shadow is -still- inferior to the 2 healing specs in damage dealing while leveling, at least below lv50 or so.

- Discipline gets the awesome Penance (great dps), while Evangelism and Archangel further improve it.
- Holy gets fast Smite/Holy Fire, as well as Holy Word: Chastice - wich does great dmg, specially for an instant, and Disorients.

Shadow gets Mind Flay, an increase in spell damage and 2x crit damage (instead of 1.5x), yet you don't crit much at lower levels...
The DoTs are often wasted and often never get past half their duration.

I find it silly that you are greatly encouraged to ignore certain specs while leveling because they are clearly inferior, but even worse when while there is already a big advantage as a healer in queues, you are also a better dpser in either healing spec than damage spec.

Any thoughts?

Inb4 - Then don't roll Shadow - just give constructive criticism or ignore this thread.

[Somerandomhobo]

Holy and shadow both "trade" for 1st place on almost a level by level bases.... Sometimes both your smite and penance will level up, and other your core shadow spells will go up.

The most important things to note is speed of a kill, mana useage and regen. Disc easily recoups 90% of lost mana thanks to archangel, while fully dotting a target as shadow expends 20% mana and is overkill. If you find the right spells to cast as shadow you out-do disc.

After level 32 you open with mind blast, cast shadow word pain then mindflay (normally only takes 2) till its kill-able with SW. After 49 you open with VT, mindblast, mindflay then shadow-word death (if your mindblast crits, you can drop the mindflay and just death).

If you just fully dot a mob you'll run out of mana, have to drink and then be slower then disc. If you don't fully dot you conserve mana (and still kill equally as fast as dotting), and are then faster then disc.

Edit; Dual spec is only 100g now, pick up both disc and shadow and have both specs for questing/leveling, and disc for instances as well. But obviously if you only had the choice of one spec, go for disc purely for flexibility.

[Kirish]

Only thing I could say is try leveling the same way an affliction lock would. Shields and dots, lots of mobs. Single target low-level makes the dots pretty much useless, but if you're pulling many mobs the duration and mana isn't as wasted.

[Somerandomhobo]

Only thing I could say is try leveling the same way an affliction lock would. Shields and dots, lots of mobs. Single target low-level makes the dots pretty much useless, but if you're pulling many mobs the duration and mana isn't as wasted.

Your require all 3 dots on a target to fully kill them, which stops you doing this pre level 49, and its incredibly mana intensive. A pre-4.0 aflic warlock had 2 ways of getting mana back, both of these were simple 1 click no backlash (expect for life tap which costed health, although that was easily negated by insane regen from siphon life +fel armor) spells. As a shadow priest you need to kill a mob with SW;D just to get 1% mana per second for 12seconds.