Post by Chiv
Welcome, new Priests!
If you wanna do some leveling, check another guide.
Patch 4.0.1 has officially ended the Energizer spec.I'll leave this thread as it is, for history, until the mods lock it as outdated.
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A Priest is one of the best classes in World of Warcraft. (Yes, I'm biased.) We can
tank heal, we can
raid heal, we can
top DPS meters and provide
some excellent group utility. In PvP, we can even
tank - don't you just love a well-played opposing Discipline Priest in a BG?
(Shame gnomes can't be priests. You'd love them even more.)But hey, before you can do all that fancy stuff, you have to pass through all those low levels one way or another, and I have seen lots of complaints from different people that it is hard, slow, or boring. Or all together. Well, whatever. I'm not buying that, as I tried levelling a Mage. :)
I
ntroducing: the Versatile & Easymode Energizer™ Priest Levelling Spec, a.k.a.
"OMG I can't go OOM while spamming Holy Nova while keeping Renew on my entire group and some DOTs on boss" spec. Some general advice is also included to make this joke of a guide somewhat complete; you can find similar things in other threads though.
What this guide is NOT: If you are already level 50 or higher, this is probably not the place you want to be at. Although the spec absolutely does its job (heck, it was used in a 25-man raid to do over 3k DPS by
Sunius), I won't warrant it to be quickest at the higher levels due to Shadow spells scaling better when you have tons of SP and some really good talents on the high end of the Shadow tree. It's the lower levels that often pose a C-block to a Priest's progression. This guide tries to make those lower levels
the most thrilling WoW experience you had so far much less frustrating and more manageable. It also gives you better tools in case you take a healing job here or there along the way,
without forcing you to sacrifice any progression-speeding talents.3.3 addendum: Dungeon Finder!I find the Dungeon Finder to be the most significant addition to the game Blizzard has made for a long time. With it, you can
level all the way through instances, without having to do a single quest. (Yes, that was possible before. I did it on my first char, the paladin. It just required much more hassle, which was not a problem for me at that time as the game was new and shiny.)
Anyway, I am pretty sure the vast majority of Priests will now combine questing with instancing. If you are one of them, this makes this Energizer™ build
the single best Priest build for all your needs before level 40 - it is the closest thing to a dualspec-in-itself. At 40, you get dualspec, so you can grab a proper healing build for your healing needs... while Energizer
continues to remain your best bet for soloing until at least level 50. True story, I tell you. ;-)
From now on below, the "old" part of the guide continues, and when I refer to "levelling", I mean questing/soloing.
Why? Because I'm too lazy to rewrite the entire guide! :-p
First of all: Why not level shadow all the way?-
Leveling as shadow is slower and less versatile. Look at the Priest's abilities. The only spammable Shadow spell is
Mind Flay, and it's not efficient for soloing mobs at low levels - first, its damage per second sucks, second, you're losing ticks if you are attacked without PW:S on you, and its damage per mana begins to suck too. The DOTs are also inefficient unless they do run their full duration, and it cannot be warranted while leveling.
(C'mon, do you really want that mob to last the full 18-24 seconds?) Mind Blast is on a 8 sec CD, improvable to 5.5 sec which is small consolation. Your most efficient spell is
Holy Fire, and your most reliable spammable spell is
Smite. Yes, they are both Holy spells, so they get
zero benefit from your Shadow talents. So instead of improving your worse tools, focusing on the better ones seems a good idea, n'est ce pas? And you improve your healing abilities as an added bonus.
The Basics.First of all, you must
hit Level 20. Just do it, whatever way you can.
Get a wand, and upgrade it as often as you can afford. You are cheating; the melee classes HAVE to upgrade their weapon all along as they're leveling, while you will need the best wands available up to your mid levels... at worst.
This is a good time to learn a core mechanic of Priest leveling:
Pre-Shielding.1. Put
Power Word: Shield on ya body
2. Nuke mobz
...
3. PROFIT
!You do not lose casting time while the mobs are still bashing at your shield instead of your face. Don't let the mana cost of PW:S scare you:
The mana you spend on your shield is the mana you save on your healing later. In addition to that, it makes killing mobs quicker (no pushback), and safer (
Captain Obvious here).
A trick for even more efficiency: If you expect the mob(s) to destroy your shield mid-fight, then
Pre-shield early! You don't want your soul to be
weakened when
da shield be down! You will want to re-shield, and resume your uninterrupted nukage. Easy, huh?
Inner Fire is another spell which will help a LOT. Keep it on at all times. I laugh at people who say "Ooh, my Priest is a clothie, he gets hurt much". With some
smart tweaking,
Priests have the best physical mitigation in the game until level 40 (where warriors and paladins start to wear plate).
Inner Fire => PW:S => Renew can keep you alive in almost all situations, and Psychic Scream will allow you to escape combat without dying if things get dire 99% of the time. In "normal" combats, you won't ever use healing spells other than Renew.
Okay, okay, let's leave the basics and move straight to teh business.
The Spec and the Rotation.At level 12, your spec should look like:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#bZZh.
At level 20, it is
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#bZ0xhZh:u. Now is the time. Get a
Glyph of Smite. The fun starts now.
Rotation: Pre-shielded, you open with Holy Fire => spam Smite.
Serious business, huh? See the numbers flying around. Let them speak for themselves.
There won't be any new techniques anymore. This "rotation" will cut the mustard.
At level 24, your spec is
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#bZbxxZh:u.
At this moment, you are to ask yourself a question:
Does my mana situation satisfy me? (i.e.
Should I sacrifice some DPS for mana longevity?)
- If the answer is yes (as it almost always should be at this level), you are going to your trainer. Pay 1g, and respec into
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#bVcbhZZh:u. (Add Inner Focus if you feel you want it, it's just one talent point.)
Now you got all the mana you can ever have.After this, start putting back your Holy talent points.
- If the answer is "No, I are sincerely pleased with me mana!", then plow deeper into the Holy tree for more dee pee ess.
At level 30, get a
Glyph of Inner Fire for you second major slot if you're mostly questing, or
Glyph of Holy Nova if you're a Dungeon Finder junkie.
The spec reaches its maximum at Level 52. It now looks like
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#bVcbhZfxt0bbabZh:u, and you can't really do anything to improve the efficiency of your Smiting any more. (Bar Inner Focus, you know the drill.)
From now on, you have several options:
- Improve your shielding and overall efficiency through going into the Discipline tree;
- Improve your healing through the Holy tree;
- Or respec shadow at all, as it becomes perfectly viable at level 50 with the acquisition of
Vampiric Touch. You will still miss the versatility (and the unlimited mana!) of your Smite build when you decide to heal an instance. ;)
Gearing Priorities: 1)
Mana.
This mostly means
Spirit. Yes, Intellect is a nice stat too and it contributes to both mana pool and regen. However, as soon as you get Spirit Tap you are essentially a
Double Spirit Priest™. As a crude rule of thumb, aim to
keep your Spirit at same or higher level than your Intellect.
Once you can't run out of mana, proceed to item 2.
2)
DPS.
More DPS = less mana wasted to kill same mob. Hence, DPS = Efficiency, both time- and mana-wise.
- Spellpower is king.
- Crit Rating is nice for
Surge of Light procs & better overall nukage. It will never be as good as SP, but it's FUN. Therefore, stack is as soon as you start encountering Crit pieces, but not at the expense of SP.
- Hit Rating is only good if you level on mobs higher than you. If you want the fastest leveling experience, don't do that.
- Haste... meh. Not really needed for leveling. It does speed up the nukes, but not much enough to justify stacking it.
- At later levels, Spirit also becomes a
DPS stat. (You are already bathing in it, right?)
3)
Stamina.If PvP (including Battlegrounds) aren't one of your priorities,
do NOT gear for Stamina. There will be More Than Enough of it on your gear anyways, and you have a
phat Stamina buff on top of that. Instead, get as much efficiency out of your Item Points as you can. (It has already occurred to you that Spell Power is an
effective health stat for you, right?)
But I wants moar trickz!When bored, try this. Pull a lot of mobs, kill the weakest one, get a surge of spellpower via
Spirit Tap +
Spiritual Guidance, then spam
Holy Nova into oblivion.
Addendum: Heirlooms.The best combination is:
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Enjoy, my brethren. Any comments are welcome.
Post by Chiv
You will slow yourself down if you spec into Discipline before hitting Surge of Light as you suggest. 2.5-second smites are slooooow, and 5% crit is a hell of a lot. At level 50 you should be respeccing to Shadow, anyway, since at that point Shadow out-does Holy for efficient levelling.
See
here.
I agree that your point is valid if a person doesn't do instances. You can question the worth of 13 points in Discipline for 17% regen under Spirit Tap, and 50% regen while killing your first mob in a series.
But if you do instances reasonably often, I am pretty sure my spec wins.
Maybe it's just me, but I would have quit the game long ago if there were no instances. I cannot imagine my game without them.
(Yes. That includes leveling.) There are a whooping lot of single-player games that have arguably better solo gameplay than WoW. The point of playing an
online game is
to play with others IMO. And the only
meaningful way to play co-operatively while leveling is... You knew it. :)
(And not that 5% damage/healing from instant spells and more survivability via Improved IF / PW:F are really a waste of talent points while soloing, either.)