Nostalrius Begins - Quality wow vanilla realm (1.12)

Hello, Priestly people!

Been playing a Raidtankadin, and it's fuckin' awesome. That said, he pretty much has all his ducks in a row gearwise, and my guild is still in the process of forming its raid core. It looks like it may take about a month or two before we have the man power to tackle a 40man without resorting to pugs, so I thought that in the meantime, I would make a primary alt around my other MMO passion, Healing.

Pallyhealing in PvP is one of the most intense situations one can find himself in, in this game, and I highly recommend that those of you with Pally alts try it. In PvE, however, it's like playing a Frost Mage, except when you go AFK to grab another beer mid fight, people will cry. I tried a Healing Druid, and although they have more buttons to press, my understanding of them in raids compared to hpallies is like going from a Frost Mage to a Fire Mage; more buttons to press in a fight, but you're still mostly spamming one.

That leaves me with Priests. Back on p99, I played an epic Dwarven Cleric, which is much like a Holy Priest that wears Plate and has the nukes of both a Priest and a Pally. So I rolled a Dorf Priestess here. I scored a non-misspelled name from David Eddings for her, too. She's almost 10 now, and it's awesome.

I know the standard leveling route involves going Shadow until 58-60 when you either stay Shadow and become a spriest, or you spec Holy and start making the bars go right, instead. For flavor reasons, I'd prefer to avoid any more than 5 points in Shadow (for Spirit Tap), and try leveling with something like this: https://en.nostalrius.org/talents/pries ... 0000000000

The idea is to Heal in groups, but still be able to solo quest when I have to. I know it's not optimal, but if it can get me to 50 or higher in 2 months of regular play, I don't care. Inordinately long for me would be 4 or more months of growing a festive neckbeard at my keyboard to ding 60. Will it take me that long, this way? Have any of you done it? If so, would you modify my build to make it more effective without putting any more points in Shadow? I'm not interested in optimizing myself for Healing prior to level 58, I do this solely for flavor reasons.

Any feedback from those of you who leveled as non-Shadow would be super, but your comments are welcome, too. Thanks!

From reading this forum, the consensus seems to be that up to lvl 40 it's whatever, get spirit tap, but when you can have Shadow Form, shadow reigns supreme.
With a paladin for +holy dmg judge and aoe tanking, holy can probably work decently. You still need to make sure to get killing blows for spirit tap.
This will be your first goal: http://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#bVMhsZ0xtZx then going into searing light. Or respeccing Shadow.

The goal in early leveling is to balance mana and hp expenditure with clear speed. On my priest im going +mana by doing holy fire, mb, swp, wandwandstaffwandwandstaff, mb, wandwandstaff until dead.

I remember while leveling my Pallytank, I pretty much lived in instances once I got my free mount. He was a Ret spec with Consc + Redoubt until DM E, when he respecced full Prot. Once I got serious with him (@ around 17), it took me about one and a half to two months to ding 60. How long wpuld you estimate that taking with a spec like your's vs going Shadow now and respeccing full Holy once high enough for DM E?

I can't say much about how long it'll take, but I'd estimate I loose tops 15% dps from not having mindflay.
Hmm quick-calcs: a decent want like Gravestone Scepter (29 dps), +25% from wand spec is 36 dps.
lvl 28 (rank 2) MF is 42 dps.
I also use my melee weapon (since autoattack swing counts while wanding you can use a slow staff for good effect) adding ~ 50 damage every 3 seconds, but reducing wand dps slightly. so, say 32 dps from wand, 15 from staff, + more MB, since if you're using MF, you'll have a hard time affording more than 1 MB per mob as well.

Lingon wrote:Gravestone Scepter (29 dps)

Gravestone Scepter is insanely OP for its level and you'll NEVER get anything comparable until lvl 60 (unless you spend a hundred+ gold on some world drop).
Also you compared it to rank 2 Mind Flay which is garbage Mind Flay scales very poorly until rank 4.

@OP
You'll basically just wand stuff till 60. If it doesn't drive you insane, by all means go for it.
Experience from dungeons is abysmal once you hit lvl 40ish, unless you run them with a very small group (3 people max).

I actually really liked leveling as Holy post 40, and found it could reach almost the same kills per hour as shadow. I posted this in the leveling guide sticky:

I've done the same leveling to 39, but I actually prefer to switch to holy dps then. (hear me out) At 39 you can go 0/25/5, with the 5/5 spiritual guidance for +25% of spirit as magic damage/healing and 5/5 spirit tap. So you gain spell power based on your spirit, and spirit tap doubles your spirit for 15 seconds. That converts to a nice damage boost after every mob. It's essentially the same strategy, moving from mob to mob quickly and never drinking. And the standard holy dps talents include useful bonuses for healing 5 mans (casting time, crit chance, holy nova). The rest of the points go into disc while leveling eventually getting spirit buff at 60, where you can keep the spec while healing pre raid dungeons and still have excellent farming capabilities. Probably slightly less kills per hour but definitely viable!

Final build looks something like this: http://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#bVMusV0oZfxt0bbVZx

Ana wrote:

Lingon wrote:Gravestone Scepter (29 dps)

Gravestone Scepter is insanely OP for its level and you'll NEVER get anything comparable until lvl 60 (unless you spend a hundred+ gold on some world drop).
Also you compared it to rank 2 Mind Flay which is garbage Mind Flay scales very poorly until rank 4.

Case in point, wanding rocks until lvl 40.
Got a starfaller for 5g today, so I'm set for a few levels.

Don't listen to nay-sayers, it is ENTIRELY viable to level 1-60 as Holy - it's not like levelling a prot warrior. I did it on Nost and got to 60 with 12 days /played but that included maxing tailoring, enchanting and cooking as well as doing almost every instance/elite quest in the game so I certainly wasn't hurrying along.

Your talent choices look good. Go for Spirit Tap first, then max out Wands, after that it's your choice how to proceed. I went with Holy at that point to get Holy Specialization, Divine Fury and Searing Light to improve my damage output.

As for killing mobs, put PWS up, open with Holy Fire, put SWP up, cast one Smite, then wand to death. Based on mob level, you can skip the SWP occasionally and/or the Smite. I always used SWP because PvP realm. If I was ambushed, I'd usually run away and that is quite feasible as a holy spec priest. Unless a rogue stunlocks you, in which case you're pretty much dead.

Healing instances is dead easy, even if the group is crap, because your talents help out so much. Always safe Inner Focus for emergency PWS (when soloing) or last-chance max rank Greater Heal (in instances).

Good luck and enjoy the ride!

Very viable to level as holy, I did it I got into dungeons under leveled.
Finished dungeon quests and got some nice exp from the runs also did dungeons even when I did have quests but only to avoid STV as long as possible or if I were bored of doing quests I went into a dungeon and had smooth runs cause of me being holy instead of shadow healing , another thing I always did was finding a partner in every new zone I went into which were on the same stage as me while leveling preferably a warrior or rogue so you can pull as much as you want and aoe it sweeping strikes/bladeflurry and you get friends that way aswell.
They don't need to eat when they got your heals so they can keep chain pulling all the time.

Took me 10 real life days to get 1-60 as holy.