Nostalrius Begins - Quality wow vanilla realm (1.12)

Since there seems to be a lot of misinformation about Priest leveling floating around, and since threads are constantly popping up about the subject, I'm putting up a guide to what I found to be the easiest way to level.

Quite often, I've heard people say that Disc or Holy are the best for leveling 1-40, but in my experiences, I've found that to be false. Yeah, you CAN level as Holy or Disc, but it's slower and less efficient, and continues to get worse in comparison to Shadow, the higher level you get. Shadow provides quite a few very good benefits that simply aren't matched by the healing specs.

BEFORE YOU BEGIN

Wands are absolutely critical to leveling a Priest. They make your life so, so much easier by saving you tons of mana. You can find the Enchanting-crafted wands for fairly cheap on the AH. The level 5 and level 13 wands should only be about 5-15 silver each, due to really cheap mats. Sadly, their damage was not buffed until patch 1.8, but when that patch does drop, the four Enchanting wands all become super OP and do almost double the damage of similar level green wands.

You'll definitely want to make a pilgrimage to BFD around level 24-25 to do the quest to get the Gravestone Scepter, it's really nice. I also found that the blue BoE wands were not too expensive either. I bought Earthen Rod, Wand of Allistarj and Wand of Arcane Potency for about 5 gold each.

Also, don't worry about being Shadow for healing dungeons. You can heal them just fine, so long as the tank isn't a complete scrub. I healed every single dungeon (except WC and RFC) as Shadow, all the way up to and including Sunken Temple. No dungeon really posed much of a challenge, healing-wise. But bring a couple mana potions along, just in case shit hits the fan. Once you get to BRD though, you'll definitely want to be in a healing spec. You might get away with shadow healing the first half of the instance, but the latter half is much more difficult, in terms of healing. Especially the last couple of bosses.

SPECS

Pretty straight forward; most of the talents are self-explanitory. Start off with 5 points in Improved Wands, then 5 points in Spirit Tap and continue down the Shadow tree from there.

At level 40, you'll want to respec and go full Shadow to get Shadowform, then add 5 points back into Imp Wands and continue down the Disc tree from there. It's not absolutely necessary to do this, but I found it to be easier.

Here's the builds:

Level 20

Level 30

Level 40

Level 50

Level 60


GEARING

In general, you'll want to stack spirit. With Spirit Tap giving a fat +100% spirit bonus, you can easily recoup most of your mana after killing a mob, and the more spirit you have, the more mana you get back after each mob.

You really won't find much damage gear while leveling. Almost all of the green gear you'll come across will be raw stats. Just take whatever Int/Spirit pieces you can get. Stam/Spirit and "Of the Whale" pieces are good if you want to have higher health for world PvP. Can be pretty nice to not get 100-death'd by a rogue stunlock.

A couple of shadow damage pieces you can get early on are the Shadow Hood and Hands of Darkness. Both crafted by Tailoring, but they shouldn't be TOO too expensive; their mats are only about 3-4 gold each.

There is also the Shadoweave set which requires levels 37-44, but a lot of pieces are just stamina+shadow damage, with no Spirit on them. A couple of the pieces have Spirit, and a couple of the pieces have Stamina. Go for the ones with Spirit on them. If you want to craft the whole set though, it's about 115 shadow damage total. Pretty nice. Shouldn't cost too much either, as long as you get the 5 stacks of Mageweave cloth yourself. I find that the various spider silks are pretty cheap on the AH.


ROTATION / GAMEPLAY

The pre-Shadowform rotation is:

1. Power Word: Shield before you pull
2. Mind Blast (use Smite during the levels before you get Mind Blast)
3. Shadow Word: Pain
4. Wand the mob until it's dead

It's kinda slow killing, but wanding allows you to regen mana, and you'll often be able to go 8 to 12 mobs (depending on int+spirit) before having to drink, compared to other casters having to drink every 2-3 mobs. Shield + MB + SWP will cost around 15-25% of your mana, but with wanding and Spirit Tap, you'll regen most or all of it back by the time you're at the next mob.

The post-Shadowform rotation is:

1. Mind Blast
2. Shadow Word: Pain
3. Mind Flay
4. Rank 1 Psychic Scream
5. Mind Flay and/or wand until the mob is dead

Now, why fear instead of shield? Because rank 1 fear costs much less mana than shield, and gives the same desired effect: allowing you to mind flay without spell pushback. However, if there are enemy players around, it might be wiser to use shield, in case they attack you.

You can still use the pre-shadowform rotation at 40+, but I find that the strength of wands decreases quite a bit past 45 or so, even if you're using 40+ blue wands. It's still nice to have a wand for finishing off mobs though, so if you can find an Allistarj's for <5 gold on the AH, go for it.

TIPS / TRICKS

-Mind Control can be very useful for dealing with situations where there are 3 or 4 humanoids close together. If you pull with Mind Control, the other mobs will start attacking your mind controlled target. With a bit of good timing, you can drop the mind control when the mob is at low health, then finish it off with a quick Mind Blast or something, and run away to make the other mobs reset.

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That about covers it for Shadow leveling. If there's anything I missed, or additional tips/tricks you want to share, just say so.

Good guide, lots of good key points.

You can enter BFD @ lvl 18. Have a lvl 60 guildmate run you through for your Gravestone Scepter, and 60% chance for a Rod of the Sleepwalker. Both of which im STILL rocking @ lvl 42

A couple things I would disagree with on your build path. Are you building a PvP or PvE shadow priest?

If PvP, then your you dont need 5/5 Shadow Focus, and you ABSOLUTELY need imp psychic scream and silence. so your final build should be something like this, with the last 3 points going into your choice of Imp Inner Fire, Imp Mana Burn (my choice), or Blackout

If PvE is the thing, then something more like this is in order, with focusing on threat reduction and 3/3 Meditation for mana regen. (good luck getting those KBs)

Why are you even putting a point in mindflay in the pre-shadowform build if you're never gonna use it?

I agree with everything but power word shielding yourself. Isn't it more mana efficient to renew yourself or cast a heal after the mob is dead?

Botmaster5 wrote:A couple things I would disagree with on your build path. Are you building a PvP or PvE shadow priest?

This is really just a leveling build, it's not made with endgame play in mind. You could do endgame with this, it just wouldn't be the most effective build to use.

I put 5/5 Shadow Focus because you'll often be fighting mobs that are 3 or 4 levels higher than you, and the 10% spell hit is an insanely huge boost against those mobs.

If you really want me to though, I could add in a bit more for endgame builds.

Ana wrote:Why are you even putting a point in mindflay in the pre-shadowform build if you're never gonna use it?

It's not used in standard leveling rotation, but comes in handy for PvP, or if you feel like killing something quickly. It's certainly more useful than 1 more point in Blackout.

varth wrote:I agree with everything but power word shielding yourself. Isn't it more mana efficient to renew yourself or cast a heal after the mob is dead?

Ehh, you could, I suppose. I just feel safer completely absorbing all damage, especially on a PvP server. And with shield, you can just do it pre-pull, then hit MB SWP and wand and then tab out and browse (insert favorite website here) while you wait for the mob to die

Very good guide, a solid start. I do however agree with Botmaster that you should go for Improved Psychic Scream and Silence. Yes...even in a "leveling" build. With almost 7000 people playing...a very good portion of your leveling will be fending off the other faction, unless you happen to be really lucky and play only during non-peak hours. The world PvP is crazy on this server. Pretty much everything after level 20 is contested...

Ashenvale > Stonetalon > Hillsbrad > Arathi > STV > etc etc etc

gotmilk0112 wrote:you'll often be fighting mobs that are 3 or 4 levels higher than you

Again, if you find yourself fighting mobs 3-4 levels higher than you, you're doing something wrong.

AgentMulder wrote:Pretty much everything after level 20 is contested...

Ashenvale > Stonetalon > Hillsbrad > Arathi > STV > etc etc etc

From 20 -> 30 I usually find myself doing a mix of Redridge, Duskwood and Wetlands. The first two really don't have any horde outside of the odd town-camper every few hours, and Wetlands is pretty much the same too I guess.

It's past 30 that things start getting gank-y. STV has the absolute most quests from 30-43/44, but it's also the undisputed gankiest leveling zone in WoW. Shimmering Flats has considerably less ganking, but still some. Desolace is...desolate, yes. Some decent questing, but barely anyone there. I never did Arathi; couldn't really find any quests there.

Ana wrote:Again, if you find yourself fighting mobs 3-4 levels higher than you, you're doing something wrong.

And you've yet to explain why killing 3-4 higher level mobs is a bad thing.

gotmilk0112 wrote:And you've yet to explain why killing 3-4 higher level mobs is a bad thing.

Because your MB / SWP damage is inadequate (might require to pop another MB or reapply SWP = bigger downtime), because you take more damage than you should (might require healing = bigger downtime), and because +hit talents don't affect wands so your main dps is going to do half / quarter damage or outright miss half the time, so you're going to take twice as long killing a mob.
Yes, you can fight mobs 4 levels higher than you. You can also go into SM Cath at 40 and solo it all the way up to last boss. Or any number of other crazy things. But you know, I've always been under the impression that the point of following a guide is to learn how to do things more efficiently. Fighting orange / red mobs isn't efficient at all.

Ana wrote:Because your MB / SWP damage is inadequate (might require to pop another MB or reapply SWP = bigger downtime)

No? I never had to use a 2nd SWP on orange mobs. Why would you even do that, anyways? Casting SWP on a mob under 30% is a huge waste of mana.

Ana wrote:because you take more damage than you should (might require healing = bigger downtime)

Again...no, not really. Orange mobs don't hit that much harder than yellow.

Ana wrote:and because +hit talents don't affect wands so your main dps is going to do half / quarter damage or outright miss half the time, so you're going to take twice as long killing a mob.

A bit longer depending on luck, yes, but "twice as long" is a massive exaggeration. You'd have to have absolute shit luck and like...get resisted 10+ times to have a "twice as long" kill time.

Ana wrote:Fighting orange / red mobs isn't efficient at all.

Where did I ever advocate fighting mobs 5 levels higher than you? I didn't. So I'm not sure why you're mentioning red mobs.