A Little Clarity

I see comments about how DS doesn’t stack with any other raid buff thrown around a lot, here most recently.  I want to clarify a small point.

Improved Divine Spirit doesn’t stack with any other spellpower increasing buff.

Non-Improved Divine Spirit is the best Spirit buff in game.

The moral of the story?  Blizz basically made Imp DS a talent that is only reasonable to take for soloing or 5-mans without certian classes.  It is no longer a raid talent unless you run regularly with a very strange raid make up.  However, take the 2 points out of Imp DS and put them somewhere else, all of your Priests, Druids, and Warlocks have the best Spirit buff in game. 

If I understand the mechanics correctly, even if you have the Imp DS buff the Spirit part of it remains active even if the spellpower part is overwritten… but why waste the 2 points? 

In conclusion:  Please don’t take away my Disc Priest justs because you don’t think I need a Spirit buff.

Leveling in Wrath

Since all of us are going to be leveling again with the expansion coming out, we’re all going to need to respec for leveling.  In almost all cases raid specs are not optimal for leveling.  Most of the time raid specs are cookie-cutter with very little variation because everyone needs to optimize their raid viability.   There are so many different styles of play when soloing you should choose your talents to augment what you really like.

There are a few things you will want to consider when choosing your leveling spec. What is your desired role? Are you going to be soloing/questing only?  Soloing a lot but still want to be able to heal instances?  Mostly instances with a little soloing?  You should design your spec with your play style in mind.  Don’t worry about taking that red-headed-stepchild talent if you really like it.  If you are going to be doing a lot of soloing (which is where I think most of us will fall in the spectrum) you should consider augmenting your damage output (to kill mobs faster), mana regen/efficiency (for less downtime), reduction of incoming damage (also for less down time).  If you are on a PvP server you might want to consider PvP talents to help deal with the asshats who like to go on ganking sprees.  You can usually pass on talents that increase your chance to hit as you won’t be fighting over level mobs as often as you are while raiding (though the mana reduction component of Shadow Focus will probably make me add it to my leveling spec anyway).

Here are some specific specs you can consider.  Each can be adjusted to fit your play style.

Shadow (17/0/44) – This is a basic Shadow build.  It’s got 17 in Discipline for some help with mana and focuses on increasing damage output and decreasing mana cost.  [Edit: See comments, some are saying that you don’t need both Meditation and Spirit Tap]

• Discipline
  • 5/5 Twin Disciplines
  • 2/2 Imp PW:F
  • 2/2 Martyrdom
  • 1/3 Imp Inner Fire (just need one more point to get to the next tier, put it wherever you like)
  • 1/1 Inner Focus
  • 3/3 Imp PW:S
  • 3/3 Meditation
• Shadow
  • 3/3 Spirit Tap
  • 2/2 Imp Spirit Tap
  • 5/5 Blackout (I really like Blackout, but you can move these points elsewhere, Shadow Power is a good option if you have plenty of Crit)
  • 2/2 Imp SW:P
  • 3/3 Shadow Focus
  • 5/5 Imp Mind Blast
  • 1/1 Mind Flay
  • 2/2 Shadow Reach
  • 3/3 Shadow Weaving
  • 1/1 Vampiric Embrace
  • 2/2 Imp Vampiric Embrace
  • 3/3 Focused Mind
  • 2/2 Mind Melt
  • 5/5 Darkness
  • 1/1 Shadowform
  • 3/3 Misery
  • 1/1 Vampiric Touch

The Next 10 Points – I would probably continue into the Shadow Tree at this point.  You could also go get Divine Spirit.  If you do get DS, put your last few points into Twisted Faith so you can double dip on your Spirit

Shadow (9/0/52) – This build gets you Dispersion.  I happen to like the Disc talents too much to get this one at 70, but I can’t fault you if you want to go this deep into Shadow.  I will caution that you’ll probably have mana issues with out Inner Focus and Meditation.

• Discipline
  • 5/5 Twin Disciplines
  • 2/2 Imp PW:F
  • 2/2 Martyrdom
• Shadow
  • 3/3 Spirit Tap
  • 2/2 Imp Spirit Tap
  • 5/5 Blackout (same as above, you can put these points elsewhere if you prefer)
  • 2/2 Imp SW:P
  • 3/3 Shadow Focus
  • 5/5 Imp Mind Blast
  • 1/1 Mind Flay
  • 2/2 Shadow Reach
  • 3/3 Shadow Weaving
  • 1/1 Eampiric Embrace
  • 2/2 Imp Vampiric Embrace
  • 3/3 Focused Mind
  • 2/2 Mind Melt
  • 5/5 Darkness
  • 1/1 Shadowform
  • 2/5 Shadow Power
  • 3/3 Misery
  • 1/1 Vampiric Touch
  • 5/5 Twisted Faith
  • 1/1 Dispersion

The Next 10 Points – I would go fill out the Disc tree at this point, Inner Focus and Meditation will help a lot with mana regen.

Shadow with PvP (9/0/52) – This looks similar to the previous one but with a few changes to get PvP oriented talents.

• Disc
  • 5/5 Unbreakable Will
  • 2/2 Imp PW:F
  • 2/2 Martyrdom
• Shadow
  • 3/3 Spirit Tap
  • 2/2 Imp Spirit Tap
  • 5/5 Blackout
  • 2/2 Imp SW:P
  • 2/2 Imp Psychic Scream
  • 4/5 Imp Mind Blast
  • 1/1 Mind Flay
  • 2/2 Shadow Reach
  • 3/3 Shadow Weaving
  • 1/1 Silence
  • 1/1 Vampiric Embrace
  • 2/2 Imp Vampiric Embrace
  • 2/2 Mind Melt
  • 5/5 Darkness
  • 1/1 Shadowform
  • 2/5 Shadow Power
  • 2/2 Imp Shadowform
  • 3/3 Misery
  • 2/2 Psychic Horror
  • 1/1 Vampiric Touch
  • 5/5 Twisted Faith
  • 1/1 Dispersion

The Next 10 Points – Just as before I would put the rest of your points into Disc.

Holy (17/33/11) – This build is for the Priest that heals a lot of instances (or heals a group a lot) but doesn’t want to be gimped while soloing.  It goes far enough into Shadow to get Mind Flay and takes some of the damage reduction talents in Holy.  The rest is dumped into healing talents.  (I know it looks wierd… this is a “jack of all trades – master of none” type build)

• Discipline
  • 5/5 Twin Disciplines
  • 2/2 Imp PW:F
  • 2/2 Martyrdom
  • 1/3 Imp Inner Fire (just need one more point to get to the next tier, put it wherever you like)
  • 3/3 Imp PW:S
  • 1/1 Inner Focus
  • 3/3 Meditation
• Holy
  • 3/3 Imp Renew
  • 3/5 Holy Specialization
  • 5/5 Divine Fury
  • 1/1 Desperate Prayer
  • 3/3 Blessed Recovery
  • 2/2 Holy Reach
  • 3/3 Imp Healing
  • 2/2 Searing Light
  • 1/1 Spirit of Redemption
  • 5/5 Spiritual Guidance
  • 2/2 Surge of Light
  • 2/3 Holy Concentration
  • 1/1 Lightwell
• Shadow
  • 3/3 Spirit Tap
  • 2/2 Imp Spirit Tap
  • 2/2 Imp SW:P
  • 3/3 Shadow Focus
  • 1/1 Mind Flay

The Next 10 Points: If you’ve taken this spec, you probably do a little bit of everything.  Use your next points to augment whatever you have the most fun with or what you have the most difficulty with.

Holy (23/38/0) – I’m going a little deeper into Disc with this build to get Divine Spirit and Mental Strength for some stat boosts.  The rest are in Holy taking the damage reduction talents and healing talents.  This will benefit someone who plans on running instances all the way to 80 only doing enough soloing to get Dungeon quests (and before you ask, yes this is a viable option).  Will also work well for someone who just doesn’t care that they’re going to have a tough time soloing… everyone loves a healer, right?

• Discipline
  • 5/5 Twin Disciplines (you could take Unbreakable Will if you like it better)
  • 3/3 Silent Resolve (I’m not sure how necessary this talent will be in Wrath, but it can’t hurt espcially since you’ll probably be running with a lot of off-spec tanks)
  • 2/2 Imp PW:F
  • 1/3 Imp PW:S
  • 1/1 Inner Focus
  • 3/3 Meditation
  • 5/5 Mental Agility
  • 1/1 Divine Spirit
  • 2/2 Imp Divine Spirit
• Holy
  • 3/3 Imp Renew
  • 5/5 Holy Specialization
  • 5/5 Divine Fury
  • 1/1 Desperate Prayer
  • 3/3 Blessed Recovery
  • 3/3 Improved Healing
  • 1/1 Spirit of Redemption
  • 5/5 Spiritual Guidance
  • 5/5 Spiritual Healing
  • 3/3 Holy Concentration
  • 1/1 Lightwell
  • 3/3 Serendipity

The Next 10 Points: I would recommend continuing in the Holy tree.

I highly recomend you spend some time playing around with a talent calculator.  All of these specs could be changed in several ways.  By no means do I think these are the “best” specs, just what I would do if my goals were those I’ve listed for each spec.  Think about what you want to get out of your talent choices and focus on talents that will help you acheive your goals.  This is also a good time to take talents that you really like but aren’t normally raid viable.  When leveling you are normally playing for your self and don’t need to worry about supporting a raid.  Remember, this is a game, have fun

Warlock Demonology Leveling Spec

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m leveling a Warlock with my hubby (who is playing a Druid).  We dinged 40 last night and he respecced from Feral to Boomkin.  We’ve been using the Voidwalker for a tank and it’s not working so well any more.  Since neither of us currently has a threat dump we need a better tank.  I’m looking at respeccing from Affliction to Demonology to make the Blueberry a better tank for us.  Since we are working as a pair we are often fighting +4 or +5 mobs where spell hit can be a problem and it takes quite a while to kill them.

Below is the spec I’m looking at taking.  For those of you who might be new readers here’s how I’m going to explain this.  I want to get to my 31 point talent so I need 5 points in every tier to get to the next.  I’m looking at each Tier placing 5 points and moving on to the next.  Sometimes those 5 points will be backfilled into a previous Tier.  Doing it this way also shows what order I would take the points in if I were leveling from level 10 while using this spec.  Surf on over to a Talent Calculator and follow along with me!  If any warlocks happen to be reading I’d love some feedback!

Goals:  Want a better Void tank.  At current level (40) want to get to Demonic Empowerment.  Also going to take talents to improve Sta, threat, and damage of my minion.

• Tier 1 – Levels 10-14
  • 2/2 Imp Healthstone – We use the HS a LOT so the points are worth it to me.
  • 3/5 Demonic Embrace – Sta increase is always nice for a ‘Lock
  • Notes: Passing on Imp Imp since I don’t currently use him.
• Tier 2 – Levels 15-19
  • 3/3 Demonic Brutality – Increases effectivness of all Void spells
  • 2/2 Imp Health Funnel – This will allow me to heal the Void without loosing too much my self
  • Notes: Fel Vitality is a good place for talent points and I’m going to come and backfill here later
• Tier 3 – Levels 20-24
  • 1/1 Soul Link – Requirement for Demonic Empowerment and will share the damage I take when I pull aggro or get an add.
  • 3/3 Fel Vitality – Told you I was going to come back and take this one!
  • 4/5 Demonic Embrace – Backfilling here to get the next point to move on to the next tier
  • Notes: Fel Domination seems like a PvP talent.  I’m mostlikley going to be summoning my minion OOC.  Will backfill later.  Don’t use Succy so passing on  Imp Succubus.  Demonic Ageis seems good but passing for now, may come back later.
• Tier 4 – Levels 25-29
  • 5/5 Unholy Power – Increase to Minion damage… all good
  • Notes: This is the only option in this tier since I didn’t take Fel Domination
• Tier 5 – Levels 30-34
  • 2/2 Master Conjuror – I find these very usefull and an increase in stats is all good
  • 3/3 Demonic Ageis – Back filling to get this talent
  • Notes:  This is an interesting Tier.  I don’t think Priests have any place where there aren’t 5 points available in that tier.  You have to go back and put at least 3 points on an earlier tier.  Seems to work… just haven’t seen it before.  Also, I’m passing on Demonic Sacrifice since I’m not doing anything with a tank I’ll never be able to sacrifice my minion.  Seems like a raiding talent anyway.
• Tier 6 – Levels 35-39
  • 5/5 Master Demonologist – Required for Demonic Empowerment
  • Notes: Have yet to use Enslave Demon so there’s no point in improving it, Mana Feed looks nice, but don’t have points for it yet… may come back later
• Tier 7 – Level 40
  • Demonic Empowerment

That gets me to level 40!  Here’s a link to the finished spec.  I’m not really sure where I’m going to put talents from here on, need a little more time to think on that one.  As I said before I’d appreciate feedback from anyone more knowledgeable about Warlocks!

Hope everyone has a great weeknd!  I’m off to Kansas to see my nephew get baptised.  I’ve got my iPhone to respond to comments but I won’t be posting until next week.  Plus I’m working on a guest post for Matt since he’s swamped 🙂

Vladvin: Dr. Boom

So I was flying around Netherstorm doing some herbing and I decided to go do some experiments with Dr. Boom. I’ve never done anything with this guy… let me say, he is really cool! Perfect for testing shot rotations and specs! Here’s what I did:

• I used my normal shot rotation (SW:P Rank 1 until 5 stacks of Shadow Weaving, VT-SW:P-DP-MB-SW:D after that recast MB and SW:D when CD’s are up and reapply SW:P when it runs out.
• I continued until I ran out of mana
• I was competly unbuffed 

Here’s some #’s:

• Current Spec 20/0/41 without cutting MF when cooldowns come up – 790 DPS, 807 DPS
• Current Spec 20/41 with cutting MF when cooldowns com up – 780 DPS
• Old Spec 14/0/47 with out cutting MF when cooldowns come up – 870 DPS, 860 DPS

Dr.Boom isn’t a raid boss and isn’t raiding conditions, but it seems fairly cut and dried… my previous spec gives more DPS, despite what I observed previously.  Why did I think my DPS had improved?  I wasn’t using any hard data.  I was simply comparing myself to another player.  I’m guessing he had an off night and I had a good one so that despite the difference in specs we evened out.  Now that I’ve done some expirementation I think I can safely say that my old spec was better for DPS for me.  I will say that with the 20/0/41 spec I seemed to have more longevity with the reduced mana cost, but I think I’ll take the 60-80 DPS instead!

As you may have noticed, I also did some testing with MF and clipping the end off.  I wasn’t able to complete that part of the test, but it seems to be that despite what Elitest Jerks and Shadowpriest.com say, it is not better to cut MF when your MB and SW:D cooldowns come up.  I plan on doing some testing on that one before I put it to rest though.

Before I close this post, a small disclaimer.  What works for me may not work for you.  I highly encourage this kind of testing to see what spec/gear/rotation will work best for the way YOU play.  The eternal caveat, be sure you’re having fun! 

Vladvin: Shadow Specs

Since there were many of you curious about the change in my spec, here they are.  I’d love to tell you why my DPS has gone up but I haven’t got a clue.  I’m just going to be happy that it worked 🙂

Current Spec

Old spec

Vladvin: New Spec

It amazes me what 5 talent points can do…

The other SPriest that usually raids with us has been grinding me into the dust on the damage meters.  At first I thought it was gear, but we were talking #’s the other day and we’re comparable now.  I’ve got all the Tailoring epics and he’s got a mix of T4 and T5.  Both of us have the usual smattering of Badge, Kara, and other raid gear.  So I took a look at his talents… he’s got 5 more points in Disc than I do and about 4 of the remaining points in Shadow are different.  I got tired of having 1/2 the damage with similar gear so I matched his spec.  I really don’t get it but it works.  I was within about 5% of him instead of the usual 50% below.  I’ll post both specs when I get home tonight since I can’t do it from work.

I’m totally baffled but I’m not going to argue with a 45% increase in damage.  I think it’ll be even more when I get used to the differences in spell rotation.

Leveling Your Priest: Sidone at 25

Sidone is FINALLY at 25, so here goes!

Talents – (0/0/16)

The first 11 are the same as last time, but for a recap:

• 5/5 Spirit Tap
• 5/5 Shadow Focus
• 1/1 Mind Flay
• 2/2 Imp SW:P
• 2/5 Imp Mind Blast
• 1/2 Shadow Reach

I am now seeing mobs die before SW:P times out, I think this is largely because I’m fighting 1 and 2 over level mobs, but whatever the cause, I filled in Imp SW:P. Next I took 2/5 in Imp Mind Blast, and 1/2 in Shadow Reach for the increased range.

Spell Rotation

I have 3 spell rotations that I’m currently using. The first is for killing mobs that I don’t have the room to fear, the second is for killing 2 mobs at the same time while fearing them, and the third is for killing overlevel mobs espcially ones that hit hard.

Normal Spell Rotation (fear is not available/possible):

1. Pull with Mind Blast
2. SW:P
3. Shield
4. Mind Flay x2 (x1 if substantially under level)
5. Wand until death

With this rotation I get enough mana regen that I don’t have to stop and drink very often.

Fear Juggling (if you are a regular reader, you’ll have seen this allready but I’m posting this here again anyway and I now know for sure that this will need to change at later levels, but that’s another post!):

1. Pull mob A with MB and SW:P
2. Shield
3. Pul Mob B with SW:P
4. When it’s in range, fear both
5. MF Mob A until dead (I can usually get 2 MF’s off before the fear wears off and if it’s not dead a 3rd will kill it before it gets back)
6. Kill Mob B however you like, it should be at about 1/2 health (if I’m trying to conserve mana, I’ll do SW:P and wand, if not MB then Smite will do the job)

Overlevel mobs, the most recent ones that I had a hard time with were the raptors in the archaelogical dig site in the Wetlands. They were 2-3 levels over me and hit hard for that level.

1. For this I pull out Holy Fire, it does a good amount of damage and adds another DOT that helps taking down the tough mobs
2. Shield SW:P
3. Mind Blast
4. Fear if possible
5. Mind Flay x 2 (and a 3rd if the shield is still up)
6. Mind Blast

The last Mind Blast usually kills off the mob, if not I’ll throw a Smite. For this rotation I like to kill with a spell instead of wanding. I’m not really concerned with mana efficency, this is for guys that hit hard, have a relativley large amount of health and therefore need to die quickly.

Where I Played

I started out by trying the Absent Minded Prospector quest in Darkshore… I was not able to solo it and after SEVERAL tries gave up. Then I tried the escort quest from Grove of the Ancients to Myathstra’s Post in Ashenvale and a stupid Tauren kept killing my NPC…. gave up again. I think you can understand I was a bit discouraged at this point. I moved on and did some more questing in Ashenvale, moved on to Stonetalon Point for Pridewing venom sacs and killed some Venture Co. peons. Then back to Ashenvale to work on getting Dartol’s Rod of Transformation (haven’t finished that one yet) and on to the Wetlands. Killed some murlocs, young crocolisks, raptors, and currently collecting war banners.

Professions

I’ve picked up Fishing and Cooking, I’m going to pass on First Aid for now. I’m probably going to want it later on since I’ll be Shadow but it’ll be really easy to power level later and I want the cloth for leveling Tailoring. A great way to level fishing is to do the fishing quests in Darkshore. On a side note, I got Galadria’s fishing up to 298 last night before I had to go do Arena (that’s another story for another post).

Gear

I’m slowly replacing the greens that I picked up from Azuremist and Bloodmist with Tailoring greens. I’m still not finding much in the way of quest rewards that is better, but the tailoring peices are nice. Although I picked up my first pair of shoulders last night!

SuperCoolPoints

This one is easy… but it’s one of my favorite movies (my husband proposed while we were watching this one!)

“Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”

Happy Thanksgiving!

Spell Review: Psychic Scream

Psychic Scream aka Fear, if I use PS I’ll feel like I’m writing a million Post Scripts!

Tooltip – Rank 4 (as of 10/25/2007)

• Cast Time: Instant
• Cooldown: 30 sec
• Duration: 8 secs
• Mana: 189 mana

” The caster lets out a psychic scream, causing 5 enemies within 8 yards to flee for 8 sec. Damage caused may interrupt the effect.”

Mechanics – What does the tooltip mean?

• One thing to remeber about Priest Fear is that it will wear off before the cooldown is up. Chain Fearing is not an option so you should have a plan for what to do after 8 secs.
• I’m not sure about this, but I do belive that they will build aggro while feared.
• In most cases damage will break the fear early but it seems to be burst damage that will do it. In my experimentation SW:P and MF won’t break the Fear but MB will.

Between the Lines – What the tooltip doesn’t say

• You can Fear enemy players as well as mobs!
• When you Fear a mob you can’t control where they run (I know some ‘Locks that can fear in a general direction, before you scoff I’ve actually seen it, but Priest fear isn’t that controllable). If your feared mob happens to run into another mob, it can aggro onto you. Because of this it’s usually a good idea to have a good amount of open space to fear into so you don’t risk adds.
• Another neat thing is that a Feared player will not stop when they come to a cliff, if the Fear takes them in that direction they will fall off of the edge. A Feared mob will turn before falling off.

Tips, Tricks, and Pitfalls

• Fearing into other mobs and getting adds is the big one here. This is the main reason I recommend extreme caution when Fearing in an instance. It’s just too easy to bring another group of mobs down on top of you.
• Sidone has herbalism and I use Fear to farm for herbs and not have to kill anything. As long as the mobs are on level or close you can run towards your herb node, Shield to keep the incoming damage to a minimum and stand directly over your herb. Fear the mobs you have aggroed and the duration of the Fear is just long enough to pick the herb and if your quick, usually time for another try if you fail. Then Shield again and run until the mobs turn around. This works better as you get higher ranks, the lowest will only Fear 2 targets, but the highest will Fear 5 targets in range.
• Warlocks are known for what’s called Fear juggling. For them, the idea is to aggro a few mobs and put DOT’s on all of them and fear all of them. If done correctly, they will be dead before the Feared mobs come back. Priests can do something similar but I’ve never seen anyone able to fear juggle more than 3 mobs and 2 is much more common (a Lock can usually handle 5 or 6). It’s pretty much mandatory to have Mind Flay in order to make fear juggling work for a Priest since we really only have 1 DOT, it’s just not enough damage to kill anything before the fear wears off. The way I do it with my Shadow priest (she’s just a wee-baby right now so it may work different at higher levels) is like this

1. Pull mob A with Mind Blast
2. SW:P mob A
3. Shield
4. Pull mob B with SW:P
5. When it reaches the 8 yard range Fear both
6. Mind Flay mob A until death
7. Mind Flay Mob B until death

The Fear will probably have worn off by the time you get to #7, so kill mob B however you like, but it should be half dead by the time it gets back to you.

[Edit: See comment below by Thames, he gives a spell rotation for Fear juggling up to 5 mobs, do-able with spell damage upwards of 900 and I’d assume you would need the points in Imp SW:P, thanks for the comment Thames!]

Related Macros

I don’t use any, but if anyone out there has a macro, please leave a comment!

SuperCoolPoints

“The whole purpose of places like Starbucks is for people with no decision-making ability whatsoever to make six decisions just to buy one cup of coffee. Short, tall, light, dark, caf, decaf, low-fat, non-fat, etc. So people who don’t know what the hell they’re doing or who on earth they are can, for only $2.95, get not just a cup of coffee but an absolutely defining sense of self: Tall. Decaf. Cappuccino.”

From one of my favorite movies… the price on the coffee should give you a hint on when this movie was made 🙂

Leveling Your Priest: Sidone at 20

Sidone dinged 20 last night, Yay! This series is going to record my progress leveling her to 70. She is a Dranei Priest. I’ll be perfectly honest, I don’t pick races for their racials… I pick them on looks. I have a NE Priest, my Warrior is Human (and I don’t really like the human voice, dance, jokes… part of the reason I don’t really play her any more, besides the fact that I hate tanking) and my Druid is obviously a NE… no Dwarves or Gnomes… sorry, not my cup of tea. I find the Dranei to be very actrative, tails and all, so I took the plunge. I think I’m going to write a post every 5 levels so as she gets higher they will necessarily be farther apart. Here goes!

Talents – 0/0/11

To start with I took 5/5 in Spirit Tap. I think Blackout is not a terribly usefull talent (maybe PvP… not sure) and I LOVE Spirit Tap (see my post here on Spirit Tap). The mana regen is great. Next tier I took 5/5 Shadow Focus. I kill things before SW:P times out so I don’t need to lengthen it, there will be no advantage to it and since I’m soloing I don’t need threat reduction yet. When I get to the point where it’s timing out before mobs die I’ll go back and get it. Lastly, 1/1 Mind Flay. The bread and butter of any Shadow Priest. I’m still trying to decide if I should go get some Disc talents here or keep on in the Shadow tree… I’ll let you know next post!

Spell Rotation

I’m still working on the spell rotation now that I’ve got MF and Holy Fire. Haven’t worked out the kinks yet. Before hitting 20 it was something like this: pull with MB, SW:P, Shield, Smite, (depending on the mob maybe another Smite) wand until death.

Where I Played

I leveled to 20 in the Dranei starting areas and I highly recomend that for any race actually. The areas are smaller and the quests are very easy to do in loops. Also there are a LOT of green items that drop off of the mobs, seems to be much more than the other areas so you’ll go out into the world with better gear. I’m now doing a few quests in Darkshore before moving on to Ashenvale.

Professions

I’ve chosen Herbalism (currently 84) and Tailoring (currently 57) for Sidone. I really wanted a Jewelcrafter, but the entire point of this character is to help with farming… so Herbalism is a must. I chose Tailoring because I don’t plan on doing many instances. I don’t like PUG’ing and the guild doesn’t have anyone my level for me to play with. Besides which Azeroth instances seem so much longer and complex than the Outland ones. With Tailoring I’ll be able to get decent gear with out having to run Instances, and if I need to Galadria can feed cloth to Sidone to keep her Tailoring above her level. I’m still deciding if I want to bother with Fishing/First Aid/Cooking while leveling or try to power level them when I hit 70. I would like to have a cooking alt so I think I’ll try and level that as I go along. Besides the well-fed food is nice at any level. Fishing goes hand in hand with the Cooking so I think I’ll have to do that one too. First Aid… I’ll decide on that one later. I didn’t use it while leveling Galadria and it’s still sitting at about 150 on her… I’ll probably pass on the First Aid and decide if I want it when she gets higher. I’m going to want the cloth for Tailoring.

Gear

I’m not wearing anything specatcular, but the cool thing is that almost everyting I’m wearing is green. I don’t remeber that being the case with my other toons, at least not at this level. The +Shadow dmg on the Dagger is very nice. I considered linking all my gear here but I don’t think I’m going to do that at this level. I may when I get a little higher.

I think that’s about it for now. Look for the next installment of Sidone’s progress soon!

Leveling Your Priest – The Lighter Side

Since Kirk stole my idea… just kidding, he wrote an article about talents for the leveling priest, up to level 40. I had a similar article half written, waiting for some polish when I read his this morning. This will be more of a companion piece. I’m going to give a possible talent build for the leveling Holy Priest. What I would suggest is to use Kirk’s recommendations (or whatever floats your boat over in the Shadow tree) until you reach a point where one of a few things happens;

1. You find yourself healing in a group more than soloing.
2. You like to run instances or group and play the healer, but don’t feel like you can handle the load with the Shadow build.
3. You realize that you just want to be a BAMF healer no matter how hard soloing is (this happened for me at about 60)

I’m going to follow Kirk’s lead here and give a possible build up to level 40. You can jump in at any time you decide to respec. I’m also going to include some talents in the Disc tree, I will give the Holy talents first, then Disc because I think that’s how you should do it, but you could take some of the Disc talents part way through if that’s what works for you.

Here goes:

Start with 3/3 in Improved Renew, then 2/2 Healing Focus.  I’m not a huge fan of Holy Specalization, I don’t like to rely on crits, they never come when you really need them.  Holy Specalization is a good back filler, throw points there when you are just trying to get to the next tier.  Moving on, I’m not a big fan of Spell Warding either, seems like weak sauce…  I don’t have any hard facts but I think I take a lot more melee damage than spell damage.  I can see it being a good PvP talent though, so you can consider it if you do PvP.  5/5 in Divine Fury, .5 secs won’t seem like a lot, but add it up and it’ll be substantial.  Next Tier: 1/1 Holy Nova, just because it’s fun!  Seriously, every little bit can help in AOE pulls, espcially if you only have one AOE class in your group.  It’s also the only group heal you get before Prayer of Healing at level 30.  Plus, no threat = good in my book.  3/3 Blessed Recovery.  This doesn’t seem like much, but I’ll take every little bit when soloing as a Holy Priest.  You could also go 3/3 in Inspiration, but at these low levels I don’t think it’s worth it.  Since it’s a percentage boost, your tank probably isn’t stacking enough armor yet to make the boost terribly useful. The last point for this Tier, put wherever you want, Holy Specalization, Spell Warding, or Inspiration.  This one is just back fill, take what you like.  Next take 2/2 in Searing Light.  Even though you are going Holy because you want to heal, you will be soloing at least some of the time, why not make it a little easier.  I’m going to recomend you stop here and move over to the Disc Tree to get some mana efficency.  5/5 in wand specialization.  Even though you don’t have Spirit Tap, it’s still a good idea to finish with a wand to get a little time OFSR for mana regen.  Next 3/3 Imp PW:S and 2/2 Martyrdom.  This one is nice, since like I said earlier, you will be soloing at least a little and the immunity to interruption is nice.  Next is 1/1 Inner Focus.  Know it, Love it, Use it every time the cooldown is up!  3/3 Meditation… need say more?

That my dear friends brings us to level 40!  Like I said earlier, you could go get the Disc Talents earlier than I recomend, but I think they’re most beneficial where I’ve put them.  Now that you are 40, should you so desire, you could go respec 0/31/0 and get Lightwell, but I think that one is best reserved for later levels.  I would go a little farther in Disc, get Imp PW:F and DS if you want to go that far then go back to Holy.

These are all my opinions, feel free to disagree with me… as Kirk said in his article “take this with the appropriately sized salt shaker for your taste, and go play.”

The  moral of the story is:

• do what makes you happy, choose your talent points to accentuate the areas you like most about your character.

Tune in next week for:

•  Maybe Guild Management, or maybe some more about Leveling Your Priest…  must ponder…

*** For 10 SuperCoolPoints  “If DaVinci were alive today, he’d be eating microwave sushi, naked, in the backseat of a Cadillac with the both of us.”  Name that Movie!