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Saturday, January 16, 2010

Priest love

Heh heh it's not what you think you perverts! *wink*

Nah, it's just that these past couple of days I've become re-acquainted with my low level priest and I'm starting to like the class and the gameplay.

I started this guy a very long time ago, I don't remember when. For a long time he remained at level 4. Then I brought him to 9 and it wasn't very easy. Priests are fragile at low levels, you see. But then, a miracle happened. I discovered the joy of heirlooms.

Since my Hunter main was engaged in the Argent Tournament dailies, he had acquired a large amount of Champion's Seals. I had already bought chest and shoulder heirlooms for my Warlock so it was only fitting that I would pass them on to my priest. Besides, I set my eyes on a couple of trinkets which proved to be awesome. With these 4 heirloom items, my priest transformed from a sheep to a demon... well, figuratively speaking. Suffice to say that leveling is much easier and quicker now.

He started wearing these heirlooms at level 15. Less than a couple of hours later he was 17, of course, with fully rested XP. Here are the heirlooms that he's wearing now:

Shoulders: Tattered Dreadmist Mantle, cost 60 Champion's Seals
Chest: Tattered Dreadmist Robe with +100 HP enchant, cost 60 Champion's Seals
Trinkets: 2x Discerning Eye of the Beast, cost 2x 75 Champion's Seals
Total: 270 Champion's Seals

The next thing I'm working on is the Dignified Headmaster's Charge, a very nice caster staff. Unfortunately weapons are very expensive, costing 95 Seals and I have run out of them. So I need to do the dailies for another week or so before I can get my sweaty hands on that shiny shaft... erm... got carried away there for a second. OK, I promise this is my last pervy lame joke.

So if someone like me decides to deck their young spellcaster in all the heirlooms they can get their hands on, it will cost them a total of 365 Champion's Seals. Here's a piece of trivia: if you gain 1 Champion's Seal a day, you will get all of them in exactly 1 year. Only a genius like me would figure that out. Seriously now, you should gain these Seals at the rate of 10 a day if you do all the dailies, perhaps more if you choose the reward bags instead of rep tokens. That means you should be able to get all 365 seals in roughly 36 days, or a little over a month.

All this assumes that you have at least a level 80 character capable of doing the Argent Tournament dailies.

Now going back to the priest, I'm leveling him as Shadow, obviously. I'm aiming for this 13/0/53 build which also happens to be very popular. At level 17, thanks to Spirit Tap, Improved Spirit Tap and the two trinkets, I'm getting all of my mana back after a fight. Right now I don't have a lot of mana so I only get about 16-19x2 mana back after a kill from the trinkets, meaning 32-38 total but it's not bad at all since it adds up with the mana regained from talents.

Here's a roadmap of what my priest will look like at levels 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 and 80.

Level 20
0/0/11
Key talent: Mind Flay, the Shadow Priest's signature spell which melts faces.

Level 30
0/0/21
Key talent: Vampiric Embrace, which is an awesome buff that heals the Priest when he does damage.

Level 40
0/0/31
Key talent: Shadowform, the Shadow Priest's signature ability, which is too awesome for words.

Level 50
0/0/41
Key talent: Vampiric Touch, an ability which has all kinds of awesome written over it.

Level 60
0/0/51
Key talent: Dispersion, which is mostly a talent useful in groups but it can also come in handy while solo-ing. During leveling it should be particularly useful for mana regeneration and, of course, for clearing various snare effects.

Level 70
3/0/58
From 60 to 70 it's mostly filler talents and I've moved on to the Discipline tree. I have left out Improved Vampiric Embrace, well, because I've seen people recommend against taking it. I'll wait and see how my mana regen is at higher levels and if it's bad, I will get this talent.

Level 80
13/0/58
The final few points go into Discipline and the goal here is to gain access to Meditation which provides even more mana regen, even while casting.

And that's it for my future Shadow Priest's spec. I like this build because not only is it great for grouping, but it is just as good for leveling and solo-ing.

I'm anticipating a different play style than either Warlock or Mage. I also plan on trying my hand at some healing and hopefully I will start doing some of that in the Deadmines. Sorry guys but the grouping aspect still appeals to me because it's a different game than playing on your own. While solo-ing you can only DPS but in a group setting you can heal and you can tank. These are totally different experiences and I want to try them all. Who knows, I might even like healing.

At any rate, I will probably get Dual Spec at 40 and build a Holy off-spec but until then I will try to heal as Shadow. From what I hear, early dungeons can be successfully healed with a non-optimum spec so I'll see how that works for me.

Now I'm off to level my Shadow Priest some more. Hopefully by the end of this weekend he'll be at least 20.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Either buy the heirloom staff with triumph badges at the heirloom vendor in sunreaver sanctuary, or spend your stone keeper shards on the pvp heirloom staff (almost as good) from the wintergrasp vendor.

Darth Solo said...

Yeah you know what, you're right. I've got plenty of Stone Keeper's Shards anyway. Though I'm gonna miss the Int on the other staff...

Unknown said...

Defiantly keep the pvp items in mind.

Gyldenfeax said...

Spare a thought for those trying to get the unique faction based mounts at 100 seals each plus the 2 hippogryphs at 150 each. That's 800 seals, 900 if you want the new paladin mount.

Darth Solo said...

Well... vanity has its price, innit? I truly pity those who need to decide between heirlooms and mounts. Fortunately I don't collect mounts (yet) so I don't feel the pain.

Skaut said...

My Priest just hit level 40 yesterday, but I haven't had time to try out any questing with Shadowform yet. Looking forward to it.

I don't have any heirlooms, don't have a level 80 on her realm. Course I haven't bothered with heirlooms on the realms where I do have 80s. But then on the realms where I do have access to Champion's Seals heirlooms, I don't have any alts that are low enough level to benefit from them. I have run out of room on my main realms and am leveling on 3rd and 4th realms-without much help. No biggie though, it's just how I like it. :)

But yeah, the higher she gets, the more fun she is to play. =D

Darth Solo said...

@Skaut oh boy, level 40! That's where most classes start to shine, priests included. BTW my priest has hit 20 last night but unfortunately I've long since run out of rested XP. I'm telling you, those heirlooms make a world of difference. At level 20 I can handle 3 mobs of the same level at once and I'm a goddamn priest not a warrior!

jarnow said...

Second on the pvp staff. Clearly it's not as good for leveling in pve as the pve one, but it is still way better than almost anything you will find elsewhere. And now that you have started running dungeons you will find that you accumulate the shards faster than you can figure out anything useful to do with them. Sure you can convert 'em to honor and then to gems, but you have more than enough gold already, right?

I'm almost done leveling my druid. I actually bought cloth armor (the pvp shoulders and the and the pve chest) because I also have a lowbie mage, and I got the PVP staff for the reasons I mentioned.

BTW, I also got two of the caster trinket; I can't recall the name, but it's the one that has a lot of SP and returns mana when you kill anything. If you are gonna be leveling in the world as opposed to as a healer in dungeons, that's a very nice choice. You buy them with Emblems of Heroism I think, so you'll probably be wanting to wait till you've got your hunter everything he wants with pve emblems.

Darth Solo said...

@jarnow I think you're talking about the same trinkets that I'm using.

Exelon said...

You must be leveling on a PVE server if you're skipping Silence, and later Psychic Horror. These spells are lifesavers when someone tries to take a bite out of you while you're in combat. DK's are especially difficult without them. It seems like a hard choice, but I've found that Improved Spirit Tap is next to useless while soloing, since it gets overwritten by the much more useful Spirit Tap each time you kill a mob. It's only 33% anyway. Also, Improved Devouring Plague is not great, I barely ever cast DP since the dot is so slow. I also haven't yet maxed out Improved Mind Blast just yet, since you can fit 2 Mind Flays between casts with no overlap with just 2 points spent.

Darth Solo said...

@Exelon yeah it's a PvE server. I hate PvP. I think you might be right about Imp. Spirit Tap. Thanks for the tip. I'll probably end up respeccing.

Anonymous said...

Great post shiny shaft and all!
:-D