[Priest] Leveling to 85

[sherck]

I am planning on healing as Holy on my Priest but am undecided on my other spec as my "questing" and "farming" spec.

On one hand, I know for sure Shadow will be more effective to do those tasks; however, I just have a bad mindset about Shadow. Priests are GOOD in my book, aligned with the Light, not the Shadow.

On the other hand, how far behind will Disc DPS be for leveling. Surviability should be good but it make take a long time to kill anything. Having Pennance along with Smite, Holy Fire and Holy Word: Chastise as single target nukes seems to be a good thing. Throw in Holy Nova as an instant finisher and then the two shadow DoTs for higher health targets and you have a nice set of spells. But will the DPS be sufficient.

I like that I can share the gearing 100% between Holy heal and Disc DPS sets unlike under 3.0 where Spirit was pretty useless for Disc. I assume that the Spirit goes to waste if I end up 2nd spec Shadow.

Obviously, this is for leveling only. I am not trying to say in any way, shape or form that Disc DPS will be okay for raiding at 85.

Thoughts on leveling as Disc?

Cheers,

[bldavis]

as long as you keep mana you will be fine

just heal yourself as needed and smite away
using your holy set will help with mana regen

[Zalaria]

I like that I can share the gearing 100% between Holy heal and Disc DPS sets unlike under 3.0 where Spirit was pretty useless for Disc. I assume that the Spirit goes to waste if I end up 2nd spec Shadow.

http://www.wowhead.com/spell=47577

[Shoju]

Yeah, my healing gear is also my shadow gear right now, as it is in every way shape and form better than any shadow gear I had accumulated. Anything that wasn't part of my healing set had +hit on it anyway, and with twisted faith, I'm rocking so much hit that saying the number out loud will make me cry. Lets just suffice it to say that I have enough hit rating for myself, and for you, and I might have some extra after that... I even have a couple of pieces that aren't +Spi (chest and gloves) and I'm still around 1k mp5 out of combat, and ~600 in combat.

Disc DPS will probably be fine to level, though people in dungeons might complain if they aren't lurkers, but you will never hear a lurker complain about that, as long as the group can do the instance.

[sherck]

...and with twisted faith...

Oh yeah, I had forgotten about the Spirit -> Hit conversion talent. I assume that Shadow gets no regen benefit out of Spirit since they lack Meditation...

Disc DPS will probably be fine to level, though people in dungeons might complain if they aren't lurkers, but you will never hear a lurker complain about that, as long as the group can do the instance.

Hmmm...I almost never actually instance as my DPS spec since the queue for healers is typically much, much shorter...and with the 4.0 healer changes, I expect a ton of only "okay" healers to get out of the game and go DPS so that ratio may get even more lopsided.

But that is a good point.

Perhaps I need to look at Shadow and see if there is anything about it I can like. I have not specced him Shadow for even 1 minute of his life so I know virtually nothing about it.

Thanks for the input.

Cheers,

[Shoju]

Well, I can tell you what keeps me shadow for farming my skyguard rep.

Shadowy Apparition

It is an absolute blast. I roll into an arrakoa camp,and just never stop moving. SW:P every mob in the camp, keep running and loop around to start looting.

I am my own little mobile convention of hot hair and Frankenstein jokes.

Because that is all I'm really doing in shadow spec right now, I can't really tell you about how my dps is in anything. I hit 2500 dps for the run in a Heroic UK over the weekend, but with Hypotrophy and Tacdriver dropping 8k dps as melee on things, I never really was able to get much going before it was dead from melee anyway.

I can pull 5k on a dummy self buffed, so I know that the heroic was just because the dps of the 2 melee monsters was huge.

[Lieris]

Anymore thoughts on Disc levelling? Like the OP, I don't like the idea of Shadow Priests but if Disc is noticeably slower I will put up with it.

[Amirya]

I levelled from 64 to 80 as disc pre 4.0, had a blast.

I would recommend picking up Reflective Shield for when soloing, and Glyph of Power Word: Shield.

If memory serves, it went pretty quick; certainly quicker than my 40-64 as Shadow.

[Dantriges]

You don´t get chastse as disciplin, that´s the holy special spell.

[Aanar]

Matticus over at world of matticus blog had an article about disc leveling. Basically, disc worked fine until he got to one of the higher level quest zones, then the mobs damage was high enough that they'd take too much mana to kill. If he got an add, he was pretty much toast. He switched to shadow and said it was much easier.

[Korola]

Well, I can tell you what keeps me shadow for farming my skyguard rep.

Shadowy Apparition

It is an absolute blast. I roll into an arrakoa camp,and just never stop moving. SW:P every mob in the camp, keep running and loop around to start looting.

I am my own little mobile convention of hot hair and Frankenstein jokes.

Because that is all I'm really doing in shadow spec right now, I can't really tell you about how my dps is in anything. I hit 2500 dps for the run in a Heroic UK over the weekend, but with Hypotrophy and Tacdriver dropping 8k dps as melee on things, I never really was able to get much going before it was dead from melee anyway.

I can pull 5k on a dummy self buffed, so I know that the heroic was just because the dps of the 2 melee monsters was huge.

This post has placed my priest at 3rd in the queue to level to 85.

[Brute]

I'm leveling as disc and it is insanely easy. Penance is an awesome spell. Shields, smite, consume your Evangalism stack regularly to get mana back and then rebuild it on the next mob with straight Smites. Usually 3-4 casts kills things once I have the stack up; Smite->Holy Fire->Penance->Shadow Word: Death. (Maybe another Smite in there if they're not low enough to kill with SW: Death yet). Keep in mind I'm leveling w/ a Rogue buddy, but we frequently split off on quests if they're pick up item quests so we can finish faster, and I'm killing about as fast as he is (Muta build rogue) when we're both alone.

And I'm having no trouble keeping groups alive too. I use shields all around, use that 45-sec free heal CD on a macro w/ Prayer of Healing to get a nice emergency button. Penance is your go-to heal as its both extremely strong and relatively cheap. When you have shields on everyone you can Smite to build up Evangelism to get some mana back. Having Smite heal is nice, too, since it allows you to sometimes keep DPS'ing in periods of light damage (don't depend on it for healing though; it only hits one target for about the same as a renew tick).

The only thing I'm wondering is if I should have two gear sets. I have a spirit/haste set for healing (I don't know if that's right) and some peices w/ more crit for questing. Any thoughts on that? I don't have the first clue how to gear him and the patch messed up all the caster gear. I'm finding peices at a lower iLvl that have straight up more stats than higher iLvl peices.