Total newbie feeling overwhelmed >.<

[Enen 0]

(Analysis to paralysis) I've been reading up on things before actually getting into the game being completely new to WoW and all. I've seen so much on: racials for different classes (and how that can impact whether you get taken along for raids), addons/ui/keybindings/ macros and how clicking spells is ridiculous ( and how this could be the difference between life and death sometimes). I really want to get into the game and do well, but I am feeling a bit overwhelmed. Just to narrow things out a bit I'm rather interested in priest and/or mage. I'm leaning more towards priest mostly because I like the idea of healing a group/raid. Any pro tips from wow vets and such are highly welcomed, valued and appreciated. Thank you in advance.

[cybaster 31]

As a priest, you'll need to do something called downranking, as your healing power stat goes up.  Downranking is simply using a lower rank of the spell than the max one.

Downranking is a thing because +healing increase the amount of healing done by any given spell by the same amount regardless of rank, causing lower ranks to become increasingly mana efficient relative to the higher ones as your healing power goes up.

[khalismur 6]

13 minutes ago, Enen said:

(Analysis to paralysis) I've been reading up on things before actually getting into the game being completely new to WoW and all. I've seen so much on: racials for different classes (and how that can impact whether you get taken along for raids), addons/ui/keybindings/ macros and how clicking spells is ridiculous ( and how this could be the difference between life and death sometimes). I really want to get into the game and do well, but I am feeling a bit overwhelmed. Just to narrow things out a bit I'm rather interested in priest and/or mage. I'm leaning more towards priest mostly because I like the idea of healing a group/raid. Any pro tips from wow vets and such are highly welcomed, valued and appreciated. Thank you in advance.

Enjoy the game witout thinking much about all that at first.

The moment you start having this culture, the so-called theorycrafting, you will start to laugh and smile less while playing the game. If you wanna go for it really, read about mouse-over casting, downrnking, mana regen mechanism and mana efficiency.

[arbet 9]

If you're brand new to WoW completely - really, don't worry about all that. Just pick a class based on what you vaguely want to do (ranged, melee, weapons vs magic, damage v healing v tanking (or a combination of the three)) and roll with it. You will pick everything up as you go - the things you mention aren't anything you have to worry about while levelling from 1-60, which takes a good 200 hours of gameplay anyway. It's only at the higher end that you need to really try to min-max, worry about your damage output or how much you click.

 

I guarantee you, if you just get into the game and start playing, it'll come to you. Don't stress out over little things that don't matter for the first few hundred hours of the game :p  :)

[Starwind 0]

Don't worry much about the downranking thing until higher levels - as he said, downranking is (mainly) something to concern yourself with in late game when you start getting items that have the +healing stat. Which you're very unlikely to have much if any of while leveling.

This isn't ideal , but when it comes to keybinds what I prefer to do is play with "only" the keyboard. WASD and QE to move/turn/strafe as normal, then I bind all of my hotkeys to the number pad: 4 5 6 7 8 9 1 2 3 0 . + -

This means I play with both hands on the keyboard during combat, which means I can't turn as quickly in PVP (the fast way to turn for PVP is using the mouse), but for PvE it's very convenient.

When you need to add more spells at later levels you can put them on you upper left/right action bars (which you activate in the interface menu) and use CTRL + numberpad keys for extra spells, so you end up with 26 total keybinds that are easy to work and remember. I personally try to group my spells in a way that makes them easier to remember for me, like having 4 5 6 + as my most used spells, 7 8 9 - as less frequently used but still common spells, and 1 2 3 0 . as my lesser used spells. I also try to group the CTRL keybinds in a way that makes sense to me, like how my mana-effecient heal is bound to 6 and my fast heal is bound to CTRL+6.

It's important to start doing this at an early level when you still have few spells, that way you get the hang of it with just a couple spells and gradually add on to it so you don't get overwhelmed switching from clicking spells to keybinding later on when you have a large number of spells.

As for racial abilities when it comes to class - don't concern yourself with it unless you're really trying to min-max your stats to raid later on. Especially so with Priest. One the Horde, both Undead and Troll are more or less equal with pros and cons to both. Alliance is bit more skewed, with Night Elves getting a bit screwed in the racial ability department, but both humans and dwarves being relatively equal in the long run.

Finally for addons and macros, I honestly wouldn't even bother with them until you hit level cap. There are a few convenience addons to do with the auction house or helping with quests, but nothing really essential while leveling up. Macros can be helpful as well, but again, nothing you're going to be dealing with from 1 to 60 is going to require a macro.

So my advice would be to just play whatever race of priest you like, get your key bindings straight and get comfortable using key bindings over clicking as you level up. You can worry about addons, macros, ui tweaking and all of that later on.

[Canukian 0]

Dear Newcomer:

 

Welcome to a wonderful game :-) You're learning curve probably won't be as steep as mine because you are lucky: you have a ton of tools and resources available to you. So many, in fact, that yes, you can get overwhelmed.

Addons for Priest: Serenity. Get it on your first priest and learn to use it. Get Decursive. Learn to use it early. Get oRA and Clique. That's for when you raid.  I'm sure others will have their own preferences, but those, with downranking healing spells, if about the best extras I have used. I'm sure others, who are better than me, might have a different opinion, but this is my opinion and I'm sticking to it. I didn't heal Naxx. And I was shadow spec heals for raiding. Not a brag there, others have been there and done more :-)

But wait... first priest? Yep, run two. It helps your healing to practice different specs without having to pay the costs of respec. That gets prohibitively expensive. Yep, it will slow you down, but you will learn. And while you're at it, roll a tank, so you learn what damage hits when and how. Makes your healing better.

Get into battlegrounds soon and often. Healing on the run, under stress, and fast makes you a better PvE healer. Find some nice tank or DPS to tag along after and keep them alive. They, if they know what they're doing, will try to keep you alive if they can. Pocket healers are priceless. Learn from them.

Most of all, relax. Healing is great, but all this theorycraft stuff can play mind games with you. Min-max later, like after you get your mount. Read about it, sure, learn it, but don't sweat the small stuff.

And it is all small stuff while learning. You will make mistakes. People will yell at you, tell you that you suck, will lay there while you run back into instances solo and mob-dodge respawns so you can rezz them. Sigh, smile, and hope they stand in the fire so you can ignore them.

Play this song until you can blithely heal, hum it and keep on healing through the worst Chromie has to throw at you, and most of all... have fun.

 

Welcome to the World of Warcraft :-)

The Priest Song

 

[Papalok 1]

Unbind turn character from A and D and change them to strafe (pivoting is disgusting and people will know if you do it). Also, while I firmly believe there is always some extenuating circumstance to justify backpedaling, I always suggest to newbies that they unbind S from movement at least until they learn how versatile strafing is.

Edit-By changing strafing from Q/E to A/D, you open up Q & E to be used for key abilities/CCs. 

Edited January 11, 2017 by Papalok

[boonmike 9]

4 hours ago, cybaster said:

As a priest, you'll need to do something called downranking, as your healing power stat goes up.  Downranking is simply using a lower rank of the spell than the max one.

Downranking is a thing because +healing increase the amount of healing done by any given spell by the same amount regardless of rank, causing lower ranks to become increasingly mana efficient relative to the higher ones as your healing power goes up.

dont u know there are addons for that?

its called "smart heal" its an addon that will auto calculate the best rank and the best heal for you.... so you just click...

[boonmike 9]

4 hours ago, cybaster said:

As a priest, you'll need to do something called downranking, as your healing power stat goes up.  Downranking is simply using a lower rank of the spell than the max one.

Downranking is a thing because +healing increase the amount of healing done by any given spell by the same amount regardless of rank, causing lower ranks to become increasingly mana efficient relative to the higher ones as your healing power goes up.

dont u know there are addons for that?

its called "smart heal" its an addon that will auto calculate the best rank and the best heal for you.... so you just click...

[westomopresto 1]

Just don't pick warrior or paladin.
And you'll have a decent time.