What is it like committing to priest?

[Milarepa 1]

This is part question and part my own experience.

 

My question to Nost priests is what was it like on Nost PVP?  Is it possible to play a priest from MC all the way through Naxx without feeling the need to reroll?  Or does it get boring eventually?  Do the perks outweigh the fun of a pure dps class?  I ask because some recent polls indicate that there will be a shortage of healers on both horde and alliance, not to mention that this usually happens anyway.  Thanks.

 

Coming from a release date vanilla hunter who mained a priest around AQ, these are my thoughts on rolling a priest:

 

Leveling:

1) Leveling is a satisfying uphill struggle which really pays off at lvl 40

2) You can get into any dungeon groups, even being 4 levels below the requirement

3) You can help people out, buff and res people while questing, which can be a good feeling

4) It is not easy to die while leveling

5) No buffs or spells that increase speed, which is bad

6) I got into UBRS groups at level 58, the same UBRS that took me an hour to find a group as a 60 hunter

 

At 60:

1) You are very powerful, and basically royalty, people go out of their way to message you to offer dungeon/raid spots

2) You can have great influence over who wins a battleground just by queueing, which has always been true in retail

3) Healing raids is not challenging, which can be a good thing if you want to relax or a bad thing if you need an adrenaline rush

4) Soloing can be difficult, but it isn't common, notably because healers make friends

5) The priest toolkit is incredibly useful, fun, and varied:  levitate, mind control, mind soothe, offensive dispel, mana burn, and to a lesser extent shackle undead, mind vision, unique racials.  These can't be underestimated:  mind soothe DM North speed tribute runs, mind control world pvp when bored, etc.

6) Again, rotation whether healing or dpsing will never be complicated

7) There will be a lot of competition with loot among other priests, paladins, druids, even mage and lock, these classes alone could easily consist of 3/4 the raid

Edited December 7, 2016 by Shridevi

[gotmilk0112 10]

I've leveled a couple Priests to 60 across Vanilla servers, and you've kinda got it right.

 

Priest leveling is slow, but very efficient. You rarely need to drink. You can just go mob to mob to mob to mob without ever having to stop, by using SWP + Wand. You do this even after you get Shadowform, as your Shadow spells don't really start getting good until the late 40s / early 50s. Even so, "slow" is relative, because when I went 1-60 on Nost, it took me 9 days /played, and that is including doing every single dungeon while leveling (some more than once) and also raising two professions over 200 skill. So if you just focused on questing/leveling and only doing dungeons for quests, you could easily go 1-60 in 6 or 7 days /played.

 

Yes, you get into dungeon groups really easily for being a healer, and you can easily heal as shadow all the way up until Sunken Temple / BRD.

 

Healing raids, I found to be very, very boring. Granted, I only did MC and ZG, but 90% of my time was spent just spamming rank 2 Heal and getting sniped by Paladins. It was mind-numbingly boring.

 

Once you hit 60, you can spec into Holy Nova and farm lashers in DM E for easy gold. (I say 60, because you need a certain amount of mana to ensure that you don't OOM before the lashers are dead)

Edited December 7, 2016 by gotmilk0112

[Haestingas 30]

Make sure you obtain the zg class trinket, makes a lot of trash far more enjoyable since your greater heals are as fast as those damn paladins so you don't get sniped as much.

 

Honestly priest healing is the most engaging in vanilla, you generally spam R3-4 heal when tank healing and keep renew up if you are the only priest on that target. If you are raid healing you are pretty much forced to either trinket + heal or flash heal so you don't get sniped. If your group is taking a lot of dmg (best examples are growing flames from hatchers in suppression, vael) then using holy nova is insanely powerful once you have a lot of +heal. You have shield for your oh фекал button to try to save people that are super low, inner focus max rank greater heal for a huge bomb that hopefully crits and procs inspiration for more armor on tank.

 

I've played Shaman, Priest, and Paladin in vanilla and priest was by far the most fun for PvE healing. If only the buffing wasn't pure cancer....

[Docholy 4]

Buffing is cancer and just like cancer its expensive.

[Milarepa 1]

Make sure you obtain the zg class trinket, makes a lot of trash far more enjoyable since your greater heals are as fast as those damn paladins so you don't get sniped as much.

 

Honestly priest healing is the most engaging in vanilla, you generally spam R3-4 heal when tank healing and keep renew up if you are the only priest on that target. If you are raid healing you are pretty much forced to either trinket + heal or flash heal so you don't get sniped. If your group is taking a lot of dmg (best examples are growing flames from hatchers in suppression, vael) then using holy nova is insanely powerful once you have a lot of +heal. You have shield for your oh фекал button to try to save people that are super low, inner focus max rank greater heal for a huge bomb that hopefully crits and procs inspiration for more armor on tank.

 

I've played Shaman, Priest, and Paladin in vanilla and priest was by far the most fun for PvE healing. If only the buffing wasn't pure cancer....

 

Thanks for the info.  I think this is the stuff that people want to know.  It helped me because I didn't play the other healer classes in vanilla or on Nost.

 

 

I've leveled a couple Priests to 60 across Vanilla servers, and you've kinda got it right.

 

Priest leveling is slow, but very efficient. You rarely need to drink. You can just go mob to mob to mob to mob without ever having to stop, by using SWP + Wand. You do this even after you get Shadowform, as your Shadow spells don't really start getting good until the late 40s / early 50s. Even so, "slow" is relative, because when I went 1-60 on Nost, it took me 9 days /played, and that is including doing every single dungeon while leveling (some more than once) and also raising two professions over 200 skill. So if you just focused on questing/leveling and only doing dungeons for quests, you could easily go 1-60 in 6 or 7 days /played.

 

Yes, you get into dungeon groups really easily for being a healer, and you can easily heal as shadow all the way up until Sunken Temple / BRD.

 

Healing raids, I found to be very, very boring. Granted, I only did MC and ZG, but 90% of my time was spent just spamming rank 2 Heal and getting sniped by Paladins. It was mind-numbingly boring.

 

Once you hit 60, you can spec into Holy Nova and farm lashers in DM E for easy gold. (I say 60, because you need a certain amount of mana to ensure that you don't OOM before the lashers are dead)

 

Cool thank you.  Yeah that is what I was expecting.  Priest is still have a few beers, watch TV, and heal MC in the background.  The feeling is totally different in vanilla, people really appreciate healing and ressing.  Probably because by Cata or MoP most classes had plenty of self-heals, and the graveyard runs in vanilla are painful as hell.

[cryofsorrow 5]

Maining a priest is a smooth experience. Can farm properly even in Holy spec, OS gear is not hard to get. Priests have good raid presence and utility in both specs, a bit more as Holy ofc. Doesn't get boring in any patch, Mind Control can't get boring. Becomes a little expensive consumables-wise if you go shadow. In PvP a good Priest is pain in the попа for the opposing team.

Edited December 8, 2016 by cryofsorrow

[Haestingas 30]

Nothing cheered me up more than riding the boat and MCing people off at the last second. You are also very strong in pvp while leveling, the only matchup you straight up lose is to smart hunters once they have viper sting assuming you are close in level.

[gotmilk0112 10]

You are also very strong in pvp while leveling

If you're Horde, that is.

 

If you're Alliance, then 90% of your opponents will be Undead who will just racial out of your fear and destroy you.

[Pmizz 0]

I've played

 

Mage, Shaman, Warrior, Rogue, and Priest as my main classes that have over 20 days /played on 1.12

 

 

I have never been able to play Druid because I just hated how pidgeon holed you were into doing one thing, total personal anesthetic distaste with them.

 

Priest is likely my favourite class now because it just fufills that roll of Papa heals. The Shamans or Paladins get stacked because they have superior HPS but Priest just have almost like a well oiled machine affect to them. If you have 3 or 4 Priests one of which shadow, the buffing of Stamina and Spirit is gonna be strained and take some time inbetween wipes, I feel having core strong Priests to buff these things with the paladins are just as req as Druid or Paladin.

 

As well as Shadow Protection.

 

Priest doesn't show up on the meter just like Power Word Shield doesn't but you can feel the difference with them.

 

Like say ur in a 5 man with a lowbie and they pull. A good healer of any class can save the day but a Priest just has such an easy job popping a few renews and a prayer of healing and they stabilize the damage so well.

 

Also they can shackle UD, with scholo and Strath  Ud being some of the most annoying 5 mans to pug.

 

 

 

Id say Paladin/Shaman is the pure best healer.   Priest is somewhere in the middle with tons of outside raid utility even though Druid with gear can be better.  Druid can have tons of non healer fun, while Priest is kind of stuck with Shadow which kicks asss, or smite priest control spec which is also really fun

 

A good way to describe Priest is I farm Demonic Runes in Felwood as heal spec with some SP gear on and specifically go for PvP duels and try and out last them while spamming renew wand spam and power word pain.  Losing to really only enchane shaman. Just pure stam and amount of mana regeneration makes you like impossible to take down and it just gets more and more obvious how gear rounds out the survivability that was 5 stam on robes of the exalted.

Edited December 10, 2016 by Pmizz

[Shayss 43]

Well, it's like this man.

 

My first char was a rogue, got it to lvl 35. Decided it was cool, but just didn't fit. Swapped to priest.

 

That was back in 2004.

 

Now it's 2016 and priest is STILL my main. I have 5 retail priests, 1 main (Healer 570/days played), 3 alt healing priests and 1 shadow priest.

 

I have played the other classes aswell (except max lvl DK and max lvl Hunter). Nothing comes close to the feel I get with priest.

 

You will just have to find your own way on this bruh.

[saraghtera 0]

 

3) Healing raids is not challenging, which can be a good thing if you want to relax or a bad thing if you need an adrenaline rush

 

Care to elaborate? O__O I never raided in Vanilla and I find that statement surprising! What points in healing especially make you feel that way? Are the raid bosses not doing enough of damage? Are adds not targeting healers at all? No AOE damage dodging?

 

I was leveling as a human priest, Camomile, back in Nost. Going to continue from level 40 on release!

[gotmilk0112 10]

Care to elaborate? O__O I never raided in Vanilla and I find that statement surprising! What points in healing especially make you feel that way? Are the raid bosses not doing enough of damage? Are adds not targeting healers at all? No AOE damage dodging?

 

I was leveling as a human priest, Camomile, back in Nost. Going to continue from level 40 on release!

Raid healing isn't very challenging because 90% of the time you're just spamming single target heals on people, and maybe hitting a dispel once every so often.

 

The hardest thing about it is getting used to which spell ranks to use for which healing amounts required.

Edited December 10, 2016 by gotmilk0112

[saraghtera 0]

Raid healing isn't very challenging because 90% of the time you're just spamming single target heals on people, and maybe hitting a dispel once every so often.

 

The hardest thing about it is getting used to which spell ranks to use for which healing amounts required.

Oh okay then! =P 

 

I was just remembering my last raid experience in retail against Malfurion and I think that encounter was quite difficult as a healer. Took a few tries to down him but we eventually got there! =P Haha. The biggest challenge for me in the fight was the fact that there was so much stuff going on. Had to dodge all kinds of shoit and still keep targets at range for heals. It was really quite fun in my opinion!

[Milarepa 1]

Care to elaborate? O__O I never raided in Vanilla and I find that statement surprising! What points in healing especially make you feel that way? Are the raid bosses not doing enough of damage? Are adds not targeting healers at all? No AOE damage dodging?

 

I was leveling as a human priest, Camomile, back in Nost. Going to continue from level 40 on release!

 

Others here with more priest experience might be able to respond better, but...

 

When I played priest there were around 9 priests in the raid, 5 pallies, 2 druids.  The comp is different now, but similar number of healers.  So there is VERY little accountability unless you're assigned to something specific like tank healing and the tank dies, or if you're a dwarf priest and mess up a fear ward rotation.

 

You mostly cast/cancel-cast lower rank healing spells which have a 2-2.5 sec cast, and as others have said there is a lot of heal sniping.  Sometimes you use renew, PW shield, prayer of healing, or flash heal.

 

The raid mechanics aren't designed to make healers strategize and think creatively yet, that starts around WotLK.  I'm not convinced that this made the game better btw, it is just a different system -- the transition of WoW to an esport.

 

In the old days CTRaid had a feature that showed the health of the lowest HP raid members in the center of the screen, and you just clicked to target them and heal.  It was stupid easy.  People would fight over it so we were assigned to heal the first, second, third, fourth lowest HP raid members who flashed up.  Not sure if it was like that on Nost, but yeah.  Very little accountability.

 

It is more about timing, brute force healing numbers, and mana conservation if anything.  It's not like MoP where I could hit a haste cap for my Mistweaver's renewing mists, preemptively cast it before massive raid damage, save chi and AOE heal at the perfect time, and have the raid wipe if I fail.  It's just whack-a-mole in vanilla.

[Euronymous 2]

It is a life of endless toil and hardship, inevitably resulting in a drinking habit.