A Spoon’s Eye View: How to Priest by Deacon

Yeah I’m not even going to edit this Deac, muahahaha.

Thanks a lot for the submission! I read over it and feel like a have a better understanding of the Priest class. So for anybody who plays a priest or is aspiring to pickup the class then you should check out this post. It was written and turned in by reader Deacon.

I’m still looking for any and all class posts like this, you don’t exactly have to do a piece on the entire class, if you’re a resto druid for example then go ahead and just write about your thoughts of the resto druid. Try to not compare to other classes or make it into a class vs class argument, I’m just trying to figure out how people feel about their characters and maybe get some insight as to how the other side see’s things.

Soloing

Shadow: If your leveling I would go for Shadow, go for talents that increase dmg and mana regen and melt face and fear often. Trick to Shadow is to open with Mindblast or Vampric Touch, DoT and move backwards to keep LoS and create some space. As soon as the target is in range of your fear, which 5 yards, you push it, then run in the direction it moves and shield yourself if you didn’t before the fear, reapply DoTs instant cast, then hit it with another Mindblast, then Mindflay when it is coming back and Shadowword Death when it is near death. Tricks are to try to always have your shield up on you especially after you pull and are drinking.

Reason is, there are a lot of skills that are instant casts for other characters, but sadly it was only up until TBC that Priest actually got one, that is right all you ninja farming bastard classes, I am looking at every single other class, accept maybe the lock or pally. Shadowword death finally prevented that so you can do a quick pull on a mob if you trying to tag it before someone swoops in and snags it. If you do the rotation the way I said you will kill and not even get scratched and even if you do your DoTs will heal you back thanks to Vamp Embrace.

Discipline: Soloing as a Disc can be fun, just for the shear burst dmg that you can do on a single mob. The pattern is similar to Shadow, but you want to open with Holy Fire, and then do a quick Mind Blast, but here is the catch, you want to have your shield up with your weakened soul down on you and right have after the Mindblast hits. You should immediately Shadowword Death, if you’re far in Disc your Shield reflects half the dmg back to the target, so if you Death hits for 1500, you take 1500, but your shield absorbs most of the blow and then reflects an addition 750 back on the target. Essentially you just did a 2250 ranged instant cast attack on the target. You just got the target to half life before in 4 secs before it touched you once. OH NO it is going to hit you and your shield is down, push fear button. Then follow the target in the direction it is feared and reapply your shield, apply DoT.

If you want to conserve mana you can Wand until it is near death and Shadowword Death for the kill, if you want to rush it, just smite bomb it until its dead. The reason you run in the direction of the fear is because the Priest fear is multidirectional and will send a target anywhere but if you run in the opposite direction of the mob and turn around and cast, often your target runs out of range before your cast goes off. So to prevent that you run with the Mob instant casting on yourself or the Mob until your ready to cast an attack again.

Holy, Soloing is an Oxymoron the 2 words contradict each other like Girly Man. Holy is best for duel boxing or tagging along with a buddy, preferably a mage or a pally for the AoE grinds which can be insanely fun, Cause if your good you can keep you and your buddy up and kill 20 or more mobs in one go. If you dare Solo with a Priest as Holy your best bet is to just Holy Fire, back pedal DoT, Shield yourself, Renew if you low on health, then fear, reapply DoT, Holy Fire, Smite. Problem with Holy is most often your Shadow Spells cost a lot of mana and don’t yield much in the way of DPS per mana use. Use your Wand a lot, your one failing is that you take forever to kill something, but you probably will never die cause your heals can keep you up. You could go Smite spec which is a hybrid Holy/Disc but if you have a lot of Spell Haste gear you can Smite bomb pretty nasty and quick, I have seen Smites reduced to near .5 secs and with Holy Surge it can be nasty combo when he scores a free instant cast smite that cost no mana.

Raiding

Shadow: You are a Mana Battery, Welcome to DoT, DoT, DoT, with Mind flay and Mindblast in-between Flay when the CD is up. Key to being a really good Shadow Priest knows that you have to press the Fade button every 30 sec when the CD is up. Keep your Ticks going, Use your mobility to your advantage, if you’re going to reapply your DoTs use this time to gauge your distance from Mobs, trying to stay at max range. But you want to Fade, DoT, Shield, Vamp Embrace on the go. It is fun just cutting lose and being a DPS spec in a raid once in awhile. Just mindless button pushing though, you can grab a sick macro off curse gaming site which does a mana efficient Mindflay DoT rotation with just pushing 1 button…

Also use your Fiend early in the fight so you can take advantage of it 2 times in 10min boss encounter. If you find that you are pulling aggro to often even with your fade rotation, just keep your ticks up and Mindflay Channeling, don’t stop to Mindblast or Shadoword Death, with Vamp Embrace on the target it is these Burst moves that will cause the mob to look at you more closely. Lay off those 2 and keep up the Ticks and Flay and you will do respectable DPS and heals without pulling Mob onto you. If the Tank has a firm hold though or you’re near the end, Just lay it all out there and go for broke and hit him with all you got. BUT KEEP UP THE FADING.

Discipline:
If you are an amazing Priest and very well geared this is by far the most fun spec Raiding, the problem is most people wont appreciate it cause they want you healing or DPSin to the max of your abilities, so Unless you have a good group of friends or are decked out in Epics, this isn’t the best spec for Raiding. But it sure is fun. You have to have quick reaction times to be affective though. If there are fights which require a speedy heal this is the spec to have though cause your flash heal is ridiculous to cast in raiding because it costs too much mana for what it heals. It is fast but it is better to be a Preventive Healer than a Reactive one. Will get to that in Holy. But, Discipline is fun, If you have a Pally or a DK as your main tank, Power Infuse your tank. There Threat skyrockets and your entire Raid can open a can of Whoopass without fear of pulling aggro off the tank. Every Raid has some fool who pulls aggro when they aren’t supposed to pull aggro. Well that is where Pain Suppression comes in handy and you can reduce his threat and save him from death before he wipes the Raid. Dispel comes in Handy and if your Discipline you are the Dispeller for your Raid period. The problem with Disc is its mana efficiency is to low, you need a lot of Spirit, Mp5 gear and whole boat load of Potions to keep your mana pool a float. This spec for Raiding is a Reactive, if you have lag, or slow reflexes, or attention deficit disorder, this is not the spec for raiding for you. You need to react to situations and quickly to be an effective Raiding Discipline Priest. This is the best for PvP really but, it has some applications in Raiding, if you’re ever allowed in the front door. I hate how people who have never played your class can speak for your effectiveness in the raid based off your spec though. But that comes with the territory of WoW.

Raiding Holy:
Well going to have to learn a whole new bag of tricks in the expansion here. With the changes to no longer being able to downgrade spells, Priests are losing a lot of tricks for Mana conservation. The trick to being a good Holy Priest is being Proactive instead of Reactive. You heal when the tank is at full, not because haven’t been hit yet, nor when they’re at 50%, or when they spam there /healme macro. YOU HEAL WHEN THEY HAVE FULL HIT POINTS. Reason is you should be using Heal Rank 4 or a low end version of Greatheal, like Greatheal rank 1. This take 2.5 sec to cast so the idea is that the tank is at full and the mob will hit the tank in 2.5 sec, so when the tank gets hit, the heal goes off within .5 to 1.5 sec of the tank taking dmg. Just sit back and spam the low rank heal button, you should be getting 1500 to 2000 heals every 2.5sec for dirt cheap mana. Use your bigger Greatheal when needed. The mana conservation on these heals are amazing, if you are using flash heal to heal in circumstance when the tank has over 50% health you need to reroll a Shaman or Druid. Holy Priest is all about being in for the long haul for a fight. Why Greatheal 1 you say, well Holy Concentration which was a free Greaterheal would proc off the rank 1, so you spam rank 1 until the six second window came up and they you hit the tank with the Rank 7 Greaterheal for 0 mana. Tricks, for pulling is use Prayer of Mending on the tank before they go in on the Mob. The first 3 heals on a tank in pull, use Binding heal… you think I am crazy for saying that cause it is a waste of mana and your overhealing yourself when you don’t need to. But, hear is the trick, Binding heal highest amount healed for the least amount of threat in the game, no spell beat it by any other class, allowing for your tank to stay alive in those first few crucial threat building hits without pulling aggro healing him and keeping him up plus if you pull aggro, no big deal the binding heal keeps you up. But only do that binding heal trick if you’re having trouble keeping the tank up on the initial pull. Keep your Renew on all targets that will take dmg, hit all 4 tanks if you can, not just your own. But keep your tank up and cycle your renew on your assigned tank up and watch for it to fade before reapplying. Save you’re Fade in case you pull aggro or pick up a new Mob or someone does something stupid like DI’ing the main tank /fail… If you pull aggro use fade and switch to binding heal until the mob looks and some else, most priests freeze up when they have something hitting them and stop healing. That is very bad, need to react fast and think on your feat and you can stay up.

PVP
The key to PvPin as a priest and to be a really good one is thinking of yourself as Guerilla fighter. Use the enemy’s strengths against them, don’t fight battles you can’t win, stay at a distance at all times. Take what people give you and support others around you. That being said I will have to say that having 5 70’s the priest has to be the most difficult to master at PvP. I will give tips in each spec then tell you how I fight most classes

Shadow:
Melt Faces, your mindflay is awesome against Melee, you spam that sucker and by spam I mean Spam, just repeatedly push the button so it is a steady stream to the face. But again only fight when you need to you are basically going to kite people, DoT and run away, fight flay him, fear when close run away from target always and keep your DoT up, Burst them Down when you need to or have the opportunity.

Discipline:
All about the survivability and helping out others with your buffs and capabilities of debuffing friends and enemies. Heal over DPS always. Only DPS if it one on one. Otherwise you will have a better chance of wining the battle if you keep your friend and yourself up. Take away there mana and out last the target until you can kill them easily cause you wore them out. Spam shield, renew and keep on the move pausing only to heal others with flash heal, or Greater heal if no one is watching you.

Holy:
Stick behind your blockers and run, stay in a groups back pocket on Offense or, keep you and other guards up on Defense. You are strictly support as Holy; do not fight people you will only lose. Run and heal others or heal yourself until you get help, but you are better running away to heal another day than to stay and get killed in a one on one confrontation. Use lightwell and Spirit of Redemption to hold positions or to dig yourself in a trench. Hopefully this spec will become more viable come expansion, I hated respecting all the time just to PvP cause Holy blew so much unless you with a good group of folks.

Against Melee:
Rogues and Wars are troubles some cause they want to get up in your face and you don’t like them there… trick is use fear try to keep distance on them and use shield, renew, DoT on the run, if you have Mindflay spam on Melee. Otherwise try to kite as much as you can and DPS if you can get your fear to actually work… Holy Nova to find rogues if you have it. Shaman can be rough, dispel them and trick them with earth shock, use flash heal, if the earth shock it, use Greaterheal on you next cast, so they cant get off for 6 sec and you can get a big heal. Most will Purge you to death, If fear goes off, Renew, Shield, MindBlast, Shadoword death, might as well have your shield take the dmg he was just going to purge it anyways. Pallies = Mana burn and pawn face. Druids are tricky ones, you can’t mana burn them you got to soften them up to 50% health, then explode DPS on them so they can’t heal it.

Against Casters
Mages, DoT and keep healing through his DPS, move if you can and keep them close to you, Mass Dispel and Dispel there spell stealing ways. Burst them when they’re down to a little bit of health left. Locks, Dispel them, use Holy over Shadow spells, stop there pet if you can, fear them before they can fear you. Unload on them really fast, or stay in for the long haul and hopefully they will mana tap in time for you to burst them down. Keep DoTs off by dispelling
Death knight: Keep up Abolish Disease on yourself, they will attempt to interrupt a lot, use a lot of instant cases until the burn there interrupts then start healing yourself. Priest vs. Priest, Dispel, Mana burn race, Wand fight.

Some of my Favorite PvP moves, aside from throwing people off cliffs which they made very difficult now, last 1.5 sec for mind control on a person now. Is the Superman Ninja in AB. As a priest if you at Lumber mill, mount up and run at the node, jump off the cliff and hit levitate right away and you can sail from the top of LM all the way to right on top of the Blacksmith node. NINJA cap quickly, the opposite side won’t know where the hell you came from. This can also be done from BS run to mid cliff at the Goldmine and jump, sail to the node and NINJA the Gold mine. This is really fun thing to do. But you can only attempt in once before they get wise to you.