The Priest: PvE (player vs environment) overview

[Bolty]

The Priest is the healer class of World of Warcraft. One of its core design goals is, unlike in other MMORPGs, to be a fully playable class while soloing. This makes balance issues difficult - how can you give a healer class enough offensive capability to solo well without making them into uber gods due to their power to self-heal? The answer: mana costs, which is what makes the class a real tightrope of balance.

I'm approaching level 40 with my Priest, so I'm giving a report on how they're generally played. At low levels, Priests are positively uber due to the fact that spirit provides a huge percentage-wise boost to mana regeneration. Someone should make a chart showing how spirit's benefits really level off at high levels, because it does play a significant factor. The view of any spellcasting class at level 10 is far different from that at level 40. Gaining 10 mana per second when you have 250 mana is a lot different than gaining 20 mana per second when you have 1700 mana - at that point, you're obsessed with mana efficiency.

OFFENSE

A priest's offense is primary made up of three spells and melee attacks. Holy Smite, a casting spell requiring a period of time to cast; Mind Blast, an instant-cast spell with a cooldown, and Shadow Word: Pain, a damage-over-time (DoT) spell. These spells do damage almost on par to that of a Mage (without talents), but drain huge gobs of mana without any real way to regain it quickly. While Mages can summon drinks and Warlocks can trade hit points for mana, Priests are *always* starving for mana due to no method of replenishment except for Spirit and purchased/found mana potions. As a result, while a Priest *could* smack down an enemy rapidly with its spells, it wouldn't want to, for the mana cost would mean a huge downtime post-fight and the loss of more drink(s).

This is why the Priest's main item is one-handed maces; Blizzard intends for the class to melee some instead of being a pure caster. This is the balancing factor that prevents Priests from dominating the game. Inner Fire is a 3-minute buff that can only be used on the caster, granting huge attack and armor bonuses. This, supplied with the melee weapon, is a significant portion of the Priest's offense while soloing.

Currently, it's usually better to train in staves and ditch maces. This is because staves can do just as much damage while providing bonuses to spirit and intelligence easily beating that of an off-hand item. I'd bet that Priest-specific quests, when implemented, will give out nice maces that have bonuses useful to the Priest class, mitigating the need to learn staves to be optimal.

Back to the spells - all of the Priest's attacks hit the target instantly. "So what," you might be thinking - but this prevents you from queueing up the next attack as the first one is travelling toward the target. Any Mage player can tell you that when starting off a fight, that's a very sweet thing.

A priest's offense is supported by a number of secondary spells. Mind Control allows the Priest to take over an enemy creature for a period of time, with a chance to break off at any moment; Mana Burn, which allows the Priest to drain the enemy of mana - great against casters, and crowd control with Psychic Scream, which can cause up to three attackers to flee from the player for a period of time. I don't consider Mind Control to be a crowd control spell, for when controlling an enemy, you are unable to take any action. The character is a sitting duck.

Again, a Priest CAN kill quickly if it needs to, but the downtime is very, very costly; to kill quickly also sacrifices your ability to defend you and your groupmates.

DEFENSE

You'll never have a hard time finding a party as a Priest, and it's because of the defensive abilities they possess. Holy Word: Shield is one of the most powerful and yet most dangerous spells in the game, giving the Priest the ability to make anyone essentially invincible for a period of time. Shields, aka "bubbles," absorb a set amount of damage dealt to the character, whether it be from melee, ranged, or magical attacks. It's an instant-cast spell that's a way of saying "for the next X damage dealt to you, you won't feel a thing." It also protect spellcaster classes from having their spells interrupted/stuttered by standard enemy attacks.

Problem is, it draws a lot of aggro as well. Newbie priests often run into trouble using Shield, because they spam it too much on their partymates in a fight and wind up drawing all the aggro on them. Shields should be used only when the situation warrants, such as *before* a fight begins and as a protective anti-stutter for spellcasting friends who are being attacked. Since it's instant-cast, it can also be the saving grace of a tank player being annihilated, granting you that time you need to get off a full healing cast. Learning how to use Shield correctly is a big part of playing a Priest. It's one of their best spells and can make or break a party's battles.

Priests have four choices for healing: Renew, Flash Heal, Heal (aka Lesser Heal, Heal, Greater Heal, etc), and a Group Heal. Renew is the most mana-efficient of the four, an instant-cast heal-over-time spell. For solo Priest players, it's much more mana-efficient than Shield to engage Renew during your fight with a monster as you whack away at it. Of course, it doesn't provide the big healing boost or instant protection that Shield does. Flash Heal is a "mini-heal" that has a much shorter casting time, but heals for less than the full Heal spells. Flash Heal is great for use in the heat of battle to heal up a hurt partymate. For situations when a large heal is needed, it's best to throw up a Shield and cast the main Heal spell, which can have a significant casting time but heal for a ton of hit points. Finally, the Priest's group healing spell is a mass-heal that affects everyone in the party, but be warned - the aggro generated by it shoots through the roof and will land a Priest in hot water almost every time. It's best to use it after a fight.

BATTLE

Priests need to be masters of aggro management. Newbie Priests, myself included when I was new to the class, will go overboard with the healing at first and wind up drawing aggro all the time. In groups, the goal of the Priest is to NEVER draw aggro. Priests even have a spell specifically designed to reduce their threat level, called Fade, and many of their spell descriptions detail how much threat (aggro) will be gained by using the spell.

A typical group battle by an experienced Priest player will have the Priest cast Shield on the primary tank before the fight starts, giving the group some extra time before any healings have to begin. If a caster draws aggro and needs help casting spells, the Priest can shield them as well during the fight. In general, healings should only be commenced well into the fight, if necessary. Otherwise, it's best to heal only when the fight is over. If you save your heals only for when they're necessary, the chances of you drawing aggro onto yourself lessens significantly.

Mana is everything. As long as you have mana, you and your party can survive an engagement. Successfully managing your mana level is crucial. Mages don't need to worry about mana management nearly as much - they can always chug their conjured mana to quickly and cheaply replenish themselves. When in large (5 player) groups, offense is no longer a priority from you. If you find yourself running out of mana often, don't even bother engaging in offense at all. It may seem like you're not "helping" the group this way, but you are in fact reducing downtime and allowing the group to safely go from fight to fight to fight without fear of getting wiped out. You are thus providing offense by playing defensively.

Generally, I limit myself to casting the Shadow Word: Pain damage-over-time spell in instance groups, for it provides a lot of damage for a small amount of mana. Other offensive spells suck up too much mana. When fighting enemy casters, the Mana Burn spell can be very helpful as well.

Soloing: the dynamic for a Priest changes significantly when soloing. I've mentioned before that a Priest CAN blast a creature fairly quickly if it needs to, but doing so will eliminate your mana pool each time and require downtime to drink up. My solo battles generally follow a script, when engaging monsters at or around my level:

1) Cast Holy Smite to start off, since it is a casting-time spell. Monster will immediately start closing the gap between it and me.
2) Cast Mind Blast to smack its hit points down some.
3) Cast Shadow Word: Pain to begin the damage-over-time spell. By this time, the monster has closed the gap.
4) Engage in melee. Beat the monster down with staff/mace while the Pain spell also slowly brings it down.
5) If necessary, cast Renew to counteract damage done to me by the monster. This depends on the "toughness" of what I'm fighting.
6) Cast Mind Blast again if Shadow Word: Pain has run out and there's still a significant chunk of hit points left.

By this point, anything I'm fighting is dead, barring special circumstances (monster much higher level than me, elite monster, etc). It also leaves me with enough mana to immediately engage another monster. This is good. But don't ever think you're a Mage - Priests kill slowly compared to some other classes.

BUFFS

Priest have a buff that everyone likes, Holy Word: Fortitude. It simply raises stamina. When I'm traveling around from place to place, I'll buff random passerby with it. About 1 in 5 players will thank me for the buff. 1 in 10 will buff me back, with Mages giving Arcane Intellect and Druids providing their buffs as well. It's a way to "spread the love." Priests can also provide resistance buffs against shadow and holy damage, which are only required in situations where those spell types are encountered from monsters, which isn't all that often I'm finding. The ultimate buff is, of course, Shield - but that only lasts 1 minute (thankfully, or it would be ridiculous).

TALENTS

Coming in the next patch! Should be interesting to see what Blizzard comes up with. This class is a balance tightrope, and they need to be careful or it will swing too far one way or another. Also, Priests have far more power in PvP than in PvE, for their healing and protective abilities have a much larger sway on battles when dealing with player vs. player combat. If they're nerfed for PvP, the PvE Priests will suffer egregiously.

Hope you enjoyed the read. Questions/comments?

-Bolty

[TheDragoon]

1) Cast Holy Smite to start off, since it is a casting-time spell. Monster will immediately start closing the gap between it and me.
2) Cast Mind Blast to smack its hit points down some.
3) Cast Shadow Word: Pain to begin the damage-over-time spell. By this time, the monster has closed the gap.
4) Engage in melee. Beat the monster down with staff/mace while the Pain spell also slowly brings it down.
5) If necessary, cast Renew to counteract damage done to me by the monster. This depends on the "toughness" of what I'm fighting.
6) Cast Mind Blast again if Shadow Word: Pain has run out and there's still a significant chunk of hit points left.

I'm not going to give my full-out description of my experiences with priests right now, but I WILL detail an alternate battle strategy.

First though, here's a quick critique of Bolty's battle plan. :) The really cool thing about Mind Blast and Shadow Word: Pain is that they are instant cast. You can actually cast them WHILE you're engaged in melee with mobs. Also, the time spent between spells tends to be less than the time my Priest takes to attack. Thus, I generally use Mind Blast and Shadow Word: Pain while in melee, not before. It's a bit more time-efficient that way.

For comparison, here's my usual battle set:

1) Pre-Battle: I like to shield myself before a battle. Particularly against multi-mob groups it's useful to have the extra time to use your nukes that shield provides (since your casting cannot be interrupted while shielded). I also keep Inner Fire up at all times since the defense and offensive boosts it provides are very helpful for when the mobs reach you.

2) Nuking Phase: Here, I tend to start the battle with a series of Holy Smites to cut off a good portion of the mob's health before it reaches me. Usually 2 Holy Smites are enough so that the mob has just reached me. However, sometimes if I want things done quickly I'll fire off as many as 4 Holy Smites to start the combat (though this drains mana and will eventually lead to some downtime). Since I shielded myself, this means that I won't get stuttered by the mob attacking me as I do this.

3) Begin Melee: Once I'm done using Holy Smite, my next action is to cast Shadow Word: Pain and then immediately engage in melee combat. I use Shadow Word: Pain before Mind Blast because that way the damage over time gets done sooner and, for a given set of casting, it does the damage a little quicker. Next, I let my priest get in one attack and immediately use Mind Blast. Again, since it's instant cast you don't lose any time in between the melee attacks to cast the spell.

4) Rest of Fight: From here, I generally just melee until the mob dies. I usually try to keep Shadow Word: Pain up at all times since it's rather mana efficient and effectively doubles my damage output of just meleeing. If I run low on life, I like to use Flash Heals since they heal a large portion of a Priest's HP (though less of a Warrior's) and generally only get stuttered once, if at all. I might start trying to use Renew here more, though, since it also seems like it might be a good solution. Also, if I'm up against two mobs at this point, I like to shield myself and cast the heals. This prevents me from getting stuttered and gives me a little extra room to cast should I wish to drop a few more Holy Smites (which, again, drains mana and leads to me needing to drink soon after) because things have gotten kind of hairy.


That's just my quick and dirty look at battle with a Priest. I'm sure I'll come back with more comments later when I'm more awake. :)

[Cryptic]

Missed this earlier. That's a great class summary, thank you!
:o

If possible, I'd really like to hear from Priest players on the logistics/tactics involved in a good 2-Priest party.

[Guest]

I wish you played all the classes. As a non-beta tester I find your summeries give me a better perspective only playing the game, than anything else I read.

[Jarulf]

I just recently started a priest myself (on the PvP server for some strange reason) and have only got to level 12 or so and was actually thinking about writing something up. You cover much of it though.

As for battle plans and the Shadowword: Pain, the most important about WHEN to get it of, is that it should be set of so that it just expires as it kills the enemy. Setting it of too late (like in possibly in TheDragoon's "plan") means you waste damage done by it. Of course, one can also go by setting it off as quickly as possible if one only plan to get 1 of any way and then just after the first Holy Strike (but before the first Mind Blas) is the best. Since it is instant and one can do spells pretty quickly afterwards, it is not a big problem. Just my thought.

[TheDragoon]

When you get into higher levels, it generally takes more than one cast worth of melee time to kill mobs for my Priests so Shadow Word: Pain doesn't get wasted. But, sometimes you can even get two of them to go for the full duration at which point this applies again. :)

[Bolty]

I wish you played all the classes.

I hope to, eventually. But since MMORPGs are such huge time sinks, it's very unlikely I'll ever get to until far after the game's release.

I've played Warlocks quite a bit now, but the class is so fundamentally broken right now. Any kind of review I'd give now would have zero resemblance to the class upon final.

I played a Warrior to level 16-17 in Phase 2 and was bored stiff with it, but that's no surprise since I've always found spellcasting classes to be more interesting.

-Bolty

[Artega]

I've got a Level 13 Warrior, but since I only get to play about once a week, and then usually without a party, anything I write isn't going to be about high-level play or large party-play. Still, once I get out and about, past the Barrens (perhaps once I reach Durotar), I'll write up a post detailing how the Warrior seems to play.

Excellent overview of the Priest, Bolty ^_^

[Nystul]

My phase 2 priestess often used the "smack em down with spells and rest later" tactic, as watching her try to get an effective amount of damage from her weapon was some sort of torture. In tough battles it became an interesting balancing act though, especially if you are facing multiple foes. As long as you have sufficient mana with a priest you are practically immortal, so mana conservation was obviously a consideration in getting through such a battle. But at the same time, one of the principles of fighting multiple enemies is to reduce the number as quickly as possible before they beat you to a pulp.

My typical 1v2 battle would be something like:
1) make sure shield is up (all other buffs as well of course) and mana high
2) smite foe I want to kill fast (foe A)
3) pain foe A
4) pain foe B
5) mind blast foe A
6) melee foe A, mind blasting when cool down allows, recasting pain on both foes when it wears out (only if mana supply is holding up well enough)
7) if shield breaks, let health go down some, cast renew, reshield if I am taking damage fast
8) if mana starts to get low, adjust tactics. Use fear and run (or just bubble and run) if needed.

With the bubble up, it is easy to cast smite during close combat. But you can't melee while you are casting it, so you get less total damage output and the mana efficiency compared to mindblast is not what it seems.

I don't know if any changes to the class would effect any of these ideas, as I haven't played her in this phase.