Tell me about priests

[RTM]

Some background:

Lured by the thought of 3x XP gain and some potential dual-boxing goodness, I created a trial account for my wife and linked it to mine via the recruit-a-friend thing. We've started a warrior/priest duo which, while not the most "efficient" levelling duo, is trucking right along due to the XP bonus (almost level 8 after finishing the Orc/Troll starting area!).

Anyway.

My wife looks to me for advice since she isn't really into the mechanics of things and frankly, would probably be happy running around smiting critters in the starting areas for the entirety of her WoW career. She's never gotten any one toon over level 30 or so, and I would like to show her the world. Once she hit level 10 last night and went to place her first talent point, however, it occurred to me that I know jack squat about priests. The highest I've ever gotten one was 28, and this was right after the game released back in 2004. I figured that there wouldn't be much synergy between a shadow priest & a warrior, so I decided to head down the Holy tree for some nicer heals and maybe some hot hot Smite action. Respecs aren't an issue, so that can all be changed.

I know there are some very VERY experienced priests on this board.:)What do I need to know to help ease someone into priesting? While I would like to keep addon usage as close to the default UI as possible, are there any addons that are essential? End goal here would probably NOT be raiding or even necessarily 5-mans. Just a nice leisurely tour through Azeroth with the occasional ill-advised pull to keep things exciting.:)

[WimpySmurf]

I don't play a priest, but isn't Spirit Tap the #1 leveling talent to get right off the bat?

-WimpySmurf

[Kevin]

I'm not the best priest player either. But Treesh and I have done 2 warrior/priest duos. The first started around L10 and produced Gnolack and Aleri. These two toons are almost as old as Mogo and Marn (Taranna and Etheramwen were made before them alliance side). Probably created mid Decmember of 04 and hit L60 around May of 05 I would guess. So they were old school. Gnolack was always prot, Aleri was always holy. They survived a lot of stuff, but they didn't move quickly at all. :)

We also have Bini (warrior) and Gnoldren (priest). Bini is a DPS spec, Gnoldren is shadow. They are only L38 or so and haven't really been played much since TBC came out. They were probably started in March of 05 so that we could each experience the other side of the coin (this time I was the priest). The difference was they had pretty much the same survivability in the world and doing the elite quests, but they killed a lot faster. They were able to duo SM Library at L31-33, back when Doan was L36-37 (he's been reduced in level now). Yes they went in twice, there was a server crash the first time they went in after they were about 8 pulls from Doan so they did pick up a few levels. Much of that was done with me simply VE healing via mind flay with the occasional gheal. I didn't have shadow form so DPS to healing transition didn't mean anything to me.

The VE healing you can get from the mobs that will stay up long enough goes a long way to keeping the warrior healthy. We communicated on attacking to generally let the priest get the killing blow so that they could spirit tap and we could keep on trucking. Mind flay slowing the runners so the warrior could still get at them and execute if need be was a quite nice. But a DPS warrior and a shadow priest can still easily go tank and heal if need be out in the world, there just isn't that much that is dangerous to a duo. I'd pull 6+ mobs a lot just so we would have a bit more fun and so that I would have a reason to actually tank, but mowing through single targets really rapidly worked well too.

Taiza and Kam also did a fair bit of duo quest at L70 (I'm not exactly sure why they ended up together but a lot of Blade's Edge and Netherstorm got duo'd by those 2). Kam was of course prot, Taiza was of course her holy DPS spec. When Taiza had spirit tap I would again try to make sure she got the killing blows as spirit tap was more powerful than victory rush. :) There was a lot of "hamstring" tanking by Kam since I would generally be in my DPS gear, charge in, not have time to do anything and see a holy fire and surge of light hit the mob. So I would hit it was a hamstring so it wouldn't hit her and then move on to the next mob with a bit of lead time so that a few of my devastates would land and then I would have aggro on that one. We of course could duo most anything, especially when Kam got up around 400 block value because at that point if I didn't want to get hurt I could put on stripped down version of my tank gear and avoid pretty much all damage by blocking. I sometimes solo like that if I'm in a mood where eating will annoy me more than killing really slowly. Kam does around 500 - 750 DPS soling in DPS gear but needs to eat/bandage every 5 - 10 mobs (it depends on what I'm killing). I can put on tank gear, dropping down to 300 or so DPS but pretty much never having to stop because the OOC health regen will get me back the 200 or so that I might lose after killing 5+ mobs.:)

But it was fun, we'd look at what we were killing and I would decide tank or DPS gear and she would decide healing or DPS gear. Taiza changed gear less than Kam. But we duo'd everything in Nagrand, including Durn (this was after Kam was Kara geared though), and most everything in Netherstorm and didn't even stop to think about it. Heavy tank + solid healer worked. But again she stayed in DPS gear more than going healing gear because her DPS was generally always higher than mine. :)

It's a fun duo. Not the most powerful, and certainly not the fastest moving, but it's fun and there is pretty much nothing it can't handle, but there isn't a lot of variety. It wasn't like hunter shaman where sometimes you plan on the shaman off tanking for a bit or have to plan trap usage out or burst down this mob while the pet keeps those 3 on it and that one is trapped. The hunter shaman could still deal with pretty much everything (though this is getting harder as they make shaman and hunters weaker and weaker at tanking) as well but you had to think a lot more about it. And the DPS burst of hunter shaman was nutso stupid too.:) Our rogue druid was a lot of fun and killed rapidly but the tank and healer being the same toon couldn't always be dealt with because some mobs can't be stunned, blinded, or gouged so the healer couldn't always safely heal. But I know that duo did a lot of L60 kills of the dude in BRD that dropped the random fire resist bracers and we stealthed to some other bosses and had fun with them, which other duo's couldn't always do because the instance trash was too much at times or was simply too slow to make it worth the time.

[Mordekhuul]

I leveled as a duo with my priest and my wife's hunter up to about level 57.

I found that shadow was pretty weak in a duo, because mobs died way too fast for DoTs to be useful, and I could actually both do more damage and get more killing blows (for spirit tap procs) with a Smite build.

I took spirit tap, and then continued up the holy tree until I reached 2/2 Surge of Light, which gets you a nice mix of Smite-enhancing talents and buffs to your healing.

After that things are a bit up in the air until close to 60 when you can contemplate dumping 13 points into Discipline for the regeneration buff and other such fun things.

[Treesh]

Quick reply before I get ready for work.

Spirit tap is where the first five points should go, even in a duo. You'll just have to watch to make sure she can get the killing blow otherwise it's useless. It'll be easier for her to get the killing blow once she makes it all the way up to shadow word death, but she'll still get a fair number of killing blows without it. Just make sure she gets the spirit taps when she really needs them.

With the changes that have been made to priests over the years, the only real difference in leveling as shadow or leveling as DPS holy is gearing. It's much easier to find lowbie shadow gear (thanks Warlocks;)) than it is to get decent holy DPS gear (which is a combination of crit, damage and spirit). Other than that, the kill speed isn't a whole lot different now.

As for mods, you really can do a lot with just the default UI nowadays, especially if she's not going to be doing raiding or even five mans. Honestly, if I weren't even planning on doing five mans, I probably wouldn't even bother with any of my current addons besides my tradeskill mods. The default UI has been improved enough that you aren't completely shackled by using it anymore. Oh! One thing that has definitely helped is Yuri's macro for crowdcontrolling. Love that thing for shackle and mind control, but it may be a bit advanced for her since you do have to pay a bit attention to what is set as your focus target and I don't know how comfortable she would be with that.

GG covered our little priest/warrior duos that we've done so I won't go over them again. They were a hell of a lot of fun though. :) Just a word of warning. You are in plate. She is in cloth. Do not go running through enemy towns saying "Oh don't worry. They'll all stick to me and you'll be fine." That will end up with her dead and you laughing as you run through. This frustrates a wife. ;):D