Power Word: Priest

Next on the list of favorite classes is the Priest! Priests are awesome because if you like to heal, like I do, they offer 2 specializations of healing and one for damage. They were originally designed to be healers, so their healing specs excel far beyond their DPS spec.

Class Information

Class : Priest
Available Races : [A] Draenei, Dwarf, Gnome, Human, Night Elf, Worgen | [H] Blood Elf, Undead, Goblin, Tauren, Troll | [N] Pandaren
Role : Healing, Ranged DPS
Specializations : Discipline, Holy, Shadow
Gear Type : Intellect Cloth
Resources : Mana
Alternate Resources : Shadow Orbs (Shadow)
Useable Weapons : Dagger, 1-Hand Mace, Staff, Wand non-shield Off-hand

 

Rating

Levelling Speed : 7/10
Survivability  :7/10
Gameplay : 7/10
Utility : 7/10
Soloing Capability : 5/10
Transmog Options : 9/10
Overall : 7/10

 

Review

Priests are primarily a ranged class, so there is no real need for them to be in melee range. They have a lot of awesome abilities, and if you like to dungeon crawl , they can level relatively quickly. However, priests have minimal soloing capabilities, as they cannot sustain as much damage as other classes.

Leveling Speed

Leveling as a Priest has always been a very slow and painful process for me. In the beginning you only get smite and Power Word: Pain for about 15 levels. If you choose to pick up a healing spec at 10, your offensive abilities never really grow from that. Shadow does not get interesting until around level 70 when all the “good” offensive abilities show up in your spellbook. Since priests have 2 healing specs, I prefer to just chain-run dungeons until I hit 85, then switch to shadow to quest to 90. I have read that a lot of priests stay as Disc or Holy and just smite spam their way to 90, but I personally find that extremely dull.

Survivability

Priests are a bit tricky to review in the survivability aspect. In PvP they are very difficult to kill while in their DPS spec (Shadow) due to an ability called Dispersion. It reduces incoming damage by 90%. Unfortunately it is exclusive to the Shadow spec. If you choose to level as Holy or Discipline, you will rarely die as long as you have enough mana to heal yourself, but it will be a very slow process. I personally prefer not to solo anything as a priest because it either takes a long time, or you die a lot….which also takes a long time. Priests just take a lot of time.

Gameplay

If you manage to get your priest up to max level, they become so much more fun and rewarding. I guess it’s a pretty good trade off for the leveling experience to be so mind numbing. Since priests were originally designed to heal, and only heal, naturally their two healing specs are the best designed.

I personally switch between both Disc and Holy depending on how lazy I want to be. Disc was designed to turn damage into healing, while Holy is just raw healing with little to no damage. In LFR I prefer to play Disc because it’s the lazy-man’s way to topping the healing charts. Though if you put in the time to research Disc, it is a very rewarding spec that actually is considered to be one of the top healing specs in this expansion.

 

Utility

Priests have some awesome utility abilities. One of their abilities, Leap of Faith, grabs another player and yanks them to your location. Some people like to mess with party members by using it to get them killed…..while the good priests use it to save lives.

Void Shift is also an interesting ability. It swaps your health with your target’s health. Again this is another ability that can either kill someone or save their life.

Disc priests have some awesome abilities that add to their preventative healing utility. Abilities such as Pain Suppression, Power Word: Barrier and Spirit Shell are my top 3 favorite Disc abilities. Pain Suppression reduces the target’s threat as well as the amount of damage they will take while the ability is active. Power Word; Barrier creates a golden dome on the ground that if players are inside of it, reduces their incoming damage. And finally, Spirit Shell is an ability that places an extremely strong absorption shield on the target.

Holy priest get a neat ability called Divine Hymn. Divine Hymn is a massive AoE ability that acts much like a druid’s Tranquility, healing all targets in your party for about 8,000 health every second. It also increases all healing received by 10% for 8 seconds. Next up on Holy’s ability list is the Lightwell. The Lightwell is a little well that players used to be able to click on to receive heals, but due to a lot of priests complaining that no one EVER clicks the lightwell, it was transformed into Lightspring. The Lightspring does the same thing as the Lightwell, but it does not require players to physically click on it.

 

 

Soloing Capability

As I said earlier, I hate soloing things on a priest. It takes forever. Maybe I’m just a bad priest, I don’t know. I primarly heal on all of my priests, so maybe I have never fully experienced the awesomeness of a shadow priest’s damage, but this blog is about my personal opinion is it not? I just don’t like it. Either things refuse to die because I don’t do enough damage, or I die because I can’t heal myself or take much damage. Either way, I do not recommend trying to solo things as a priest.

Transmog Options

Oh Transmog…my favorite part of World of Warcraft. Priests get the BEST looking gear as well. They can be creepy, heavenly or just plain epic. A lot of cliché priest transmogs include white, gold, blue etc, but there are some really awesome ones available due to the sheer volume of cloth armor in the game. It’s safe to say my Paladin is jealous of how awesome my priest looks on a daily basis. Unfortunately I did choose an undead priest, and nothing looks nice on an undead, that’s for sure.

Here’s some examples of my favorite priest Transmogs done by other players

Overall

Overall I really enjoy healing on my priest. He’s my third most played character in the game, and if you can master them they are a lot of fun. Unfortunately he doesn’t really do much but raid because well, I don’t like doing anything but raiding on priests.

So if you are looking to heal, or want a challenging DPS spec, my third most favorite class is a priest. They have a LOT of healing utility, but have something to be desired in their DPS abilities.