World of Warcraft
Made by: Blizzard Entertainment
Price /month: $15 (souls are an optional payment method)
Class: Priest
Recently I stumbled back into my old habit of playing World of Warcraft. Damn me and my weakness, I'm sure it'll be the end of me. However, despite this horrendous happening, I think I might have come up with an idea to at least turn "OMFG SHOOT MEEE" into something mildly entertaining. I'm one of those people on WoW who enjoys leveling quite a bit, and as such has many, many alts. Given that I have a lot of alts, I play a lot of different classes, and I thought, "What the heck, why not make an anthology of class reviews."
Alrighty, my first class I played and still suffer with today, the Priest is first on my list of classes. Priests are a tad hindered due to having two healing trees (Discipline and Holy) and one damage tree (Shadow), setting them aside as the only class who seems to be more healing-oriented than anything else. Despite this, they tend to have their own little niche here and there and are even fiercely debated as being overpowered in the forums with regards to PvP. Let's break it down.
The Basics
The basics of the priest are fairly simple; you can either work as a single-target oriented healer (Discipline), group-wide type of healer (Holy), or a damage-dealing bad ass who... also has the ability to heal through his damage (Shadow). The tricky part is utilizing each and every one of the the little nuances and "toys", as I prefer to call them, of each class effectively. I'll get more into that later, however.
Priests are clothies, meaning they are squishy. Lacking many damage-lessening talents outside the Discipline tree, I'd argue that priests are the squishiest class of them all, but I know there are plenty of people who argue the use of possibly the most notable of the priest's arsenal, Power Word: Shield (aka, "Bubble"). Yes, the bubble is wonderful and you can cast something that effectively works as preventative healing by x amount, but truth be told until you get into high levels and lots of epic gear, the bubble doesn't do much except give you a few precious seconds to live. That being said; if you're looking for a class that can take many monsters at once without much trouble, then steer far away from the priest, due to their lack of ability to deal damage to more than one enemy before level 74.
There are other notable abilities of the priest available to every specialization, however, including the ability to levitate over things (which also works as a slow-fall), plenty of healing arsenal, a buff to grant more Stamina, and some basic damage attacks to grind your way through the mundane early levels. Truth be told, I didn't really start enjoying myself as a priest before I got into the more juicy talents that allowed me to melt faces and summon many things to my rescue, truth be told it just felt like a grind and button smash of casting the same two (maybe three) spells until a monster died.
The Specs
Ahh... my favorite part of priests. As I mentioned before, the three specs (specializations for those of you non-WoWspeakers) available for the priest are Holy, Discipline, and Shadow. Holy and Discipline are healing-based, while Shadow is more damage based. Let's go into details however.
Holy
I'm sorry to say I didn't play around with the Holy spec much as I leveled. Well, no, that's a lie, I actually leveled my priest to something ridiculous like... 60 just by instance grinding. And yes, truthfully if you plan to level as a Holy priest, this is what you'll be spending most of your time doing; healing instances (dungeons). Holy has almost no damage output potential aside from the famous "Lolsmite" spec which revolves around casting the spell Smite and getting potential PROCs (Programmed Random OCcurrences) to cast instant-casts of the spell. However, in higher levels you gain such toys as Divine Guardian, which increases healing done to the target, and (while still active) will sacrifice itself to heal the target for half their health should they be hit with something that would otherwise kill them, Circle of Healing, which heals allies within a certain radius, and generally improving your normal healing spells.
Holy is the group-healing spec. This makes it so you have in your arsenal things like Circle of Healing, improved Prayer of Mending (which hops from player to player healing them after they take damage), and improved Renew (a heal-over-time spell or HoT). However, in recent patches, this spec has been abandoned by many in higher levels due to Blizzard adding cooldowns which made Holy Priests a bit out of date and making them lag behind terribly in the healing meters. Also, another big "problem" with Holy priests is that they hinge greatly on Mp5 (Mana (regeneration) per five seconds), and without proper regen, they will find themselves out of mana very quickly.
Discipline
Discipline spec used to be more of a PvP oriented deal. The tree has many damage-reduction talents, preventive healing tools, and even the dreaded Reflective Shield (deals damage to attackers when they attack your PW: Shield). Discipline is a force to be reckoned with even at lower levels, and is often coupled with priests trying to level Holy for a more efficient survivability factor. Unfortunately, Discipline doesn't have any real big-time damage buffs, and remains a very heal-oriented tree. The most notable of tools is the spell Penance, a channeled heal or damage spell that works depending on whom you target and has a default three "charges" during it's cast period that do damage or heal. Other "special buttons" of the Disc tree include things like an ability to make your next cast almost guaranteed to land a critical hit (Inner Focus), reducing cast time and mana cost (Power Infusion), and reducing damage taken as well as increasing resistance to dispell mechanics (Pain Suppression).
Disc is a very widely hated/loved spec. In recent history, they've found their spot as both a deadly and effective healer in PvP, and a coveted healer in the Raiding/Dungeon environment. The Disc priest also hinges quite a bit on Mp5, but not as much due to having many more "preventative healing" capabilities, and faster, more potent heals. However, what they gain working as a single-target specialized healer, they lack desperately as a group healer. Disc priest's point of contention comes in when they are forced to try and heal multiple targets which puts tools like Grace (Reduces damage taken by target by x amount and stacks) into nearly useless being.
Disc in PvP is where the spec shines, however. Being a sturdy opponent, (once the rather steep "requirement" of 900 resilience rating is met) the Disc Priest becomes an opponent's worst nightmare, being able to keep themselves and allies up with the use of fast heals, bubbles, and the most dangerous: Penance. The spell has gone through many nerfs recently, constantly increasing the cast time, but it still remains the spell that makes and/or breaks matches in the Arena because of it's ability to heal massive amounts very quickly. Coupled with things like Grace and Divine Aegis (absorbs some damage like PW: Shield) that easily proc of each "tick" of the cast, the discipline priest becomes a force to be reckoned with.
Shadow
My heart lies with the Shadow tree, I admit. Despite it's seemingly out-of-place exterior comes a sort of weird hybrid of healer and damage dealer that works fairly well with it's own synergy. The idea of the Shadow Priest is to steal from your opponent and give to yourself. This comes in when you stumble down into the token talents Vampiric Touch and Vampiric Embrace. V Touch gives you a buff that returns your mana upon casting another spell, Mind Blast, while the DoT is on the target. V Embrace, however, returns a percent of your health in direct proportion to how much damage you deal to the target while they have the debuff on them. Coupled with the likewise notorious Mind Flay spell that channels and deals damage for each "tick" in the cast, Damage Over Time spells (DoTs), and "burst" damage spells like Mind Blast and Shadow Word: Death, the shadow priest is able to take a beating while returning his health and mana.
Oh, of course. Leveling as Shadow is the more popular way of doing things, or at least it's the easiest if you don't want to be spamming the looking for group channel with "LFG SM, Healer, PST" to level your character. Shadow tree is fairly boring until you start getting into some of the toys I mentioned earlier, like the Vampiric spells and more importantly, Shadowform. Shadowform increases the damage you deal, decreases the damage you take, and makes you look all cool to boot. The catch? You're unable to cast any Holy spells while in this form, or else you'll be yanked out of it. This usually isn't a big deal, however, because between your bubble and the healing from Vamp Embrace, you should be able to keep yourself up against the majority of enemies. However, just like every other spec, until you reach about level 74, you're nearly useless against multiple attackers unless you feel the need to put up DoTs on each and every one of them, which is not only mana inefficient, but takes a lot of time.
Shadow in Raiding is where I come in the most knowledgeable. Spriests are fairly notable because they have a great deal of outgoing damage. In earlier versions of WoW, they were used as mana batteries (Vamp Touch used to return mana the same way Vamp Embrace returns health), but sadly now we lie in relative ruin among the other caster DPS classes. However, this isn't to say that Shadow is a bad class, in fact it's probably one of the more entertaining damage dealing classes in my humble opinion. As a spriest you don't have a "rotation" of spells like many other classes do, rather you have a priority list of what to keep up on the enemy. This means a lot of continuous casting, and almost all your spells require cast times, and that's often something you don't have in the raiding environment because you're to busy dodging out of the way of the boss's next attack. If a spriest can sit in one area, stay on a single target and be constantly casting, then he is a happy spriest and will do well on the damage meters. If a spriest is forced to move around and isn't given much (if any) time to sit and get some of his spells off, he is going to pale very quickly in comparison to other DPS. Furthermore, the spriest is always caught waiting on the GCD (Global Cooldown), which makes them even more frustrating to play because of the lack of the ability to really get casts off in quick succession and then move. But I suppose that's just my griping.
Shadow doesn't have a place in PvP. There are rumors of people who can do it, but I've not seen more than two in the entire 2000+ Arena Rating brackets because they have such shitty ability to deal with opponents. A spriest has two, (arguably three if they're a caster) forms of crowd control (CC) to use on enemies; Psychic Scream, a fear that lasts 8 seconds, Psychic Horror (talented), an ability that fears the target for five seconds and makes them drop their weapons, and Silence. All these three have horrendous cooldowns (30 seconds, 2 minutes, and 1 minute respectively), and are easily broken forms of CC (use of the trinket, resist to fear, etc), meaning that your squishy butt isn't safe for long if you're lucky to get one of these off. The only other point to mention about spriests in PvP is the disappointing 51 point talent Blizzard made for Wrath of the Lich King expansion; Dispersion. Dispersion allows your character to become a little floaty cloud for 10 seconds, regenerating a vast percentage of your mana, and taking 90% less damage. This might sound all well and good, but as it turns out all it's good for is the mana regeneration bit, because as soon as those 10 seconds are up, you've got enemies hounding you down that will kill you all the same.
Overall View
All in all, the priest is a fairly set-in-its-own-ways kind of class. Despite what spec you chose, you'll always be healing to some extent, and truth be told, despite the awesomeness Shadow spec might tempt you with, the class is so screwed over it's better to just pick up a warlock if you're interested in some gothic character. I personally find that the warlock does everything the spriest does, just better.
If you're interested in becoming a healer for hire, stock your patience and try a priest out. Given enough time and practice, you can probably find yourself with a good deal of success in the World of Warcraft. Otherwise, I'd suggest you move onto a more... less-pain-in-the-ass-ish class such as Warlock or Paladin if you really want something to start your romp through Azeroth and the worlds beyond.
I give you fair warning; don't play this as your first class unless you're ready for a metric shit tonne of pain, sorrow, and almost-heals.
Melting Faces Half-heartedly,
~Sui
P.S. Seeing as this is the first that I plan to do of a series, tell me what I can improve and such! I'm looking at you, WoWfans.
Made by: Blizzard Entertainment
Price /month: $15 (souls are an optional payment method)
Class: Priest
Recently I stumbled back into my old habit of playing World of Warcraft. Damn me and my weakness, I'm sure it'll be the end of me. However, despite this horrendous happening, I think I might have come up with an idea to at least turn "OMFG SHOOT MEEE" into something mildly entertaining. I'm one of those people on WoW who enjoys leveling quite a bit, and as such has many, many alts. Given that I have a lot of alts, I play a lot of different classes, and I thought, "What the heck, why not make an anthology of class reviews."
Alrighty, my first class I played and still suffer with today, the Priest is first on my list of classes. Priests are a tad hindered due to having two healing trees (Discipline and Holy) and one damage tree (Shadow), setting them aside as the only class who seems to be more healing-oriented than anything else. Despite this, they tend to have their own little niche here and there and are even fiercely debated as being overpowered in the forums with regards to PvP. Let's break it down.
The Basics
The basics of the priest are fairly simple; you can either work as a single-target oriented healer (Discipline), group-wide type of healer (Holy), or a damage-dealing bad ass who... also has the ability to heal through his damage (Shadow). The tricky part is utilizing each and every one of the the little nuances and "toys", as I prefer to call them, of each class effectively. I'll get more into that later, however.
Priests are clothies, meaning they are squishy. Lacking many damage-lessening talents outside the Discipline tree, I'd argue that priests are the squishiest class of them all, but I know there are plenty of people who argue the use of possibly the most notable of the priest's arsenal, Power Word: Shield (aka, "Bubble"). Yes, the bubble is wonderful and you can cast something that effectively works as preventative healing by x amount, but truth be told until you get into high levels and lots of epic gear, the bubble doesn't do much except give you a few precious seconds to live. That being said; if you're looking for a class that can take many monsters at once without much trouble, then steer far away from the priest, due to their lack of ability to deal damage to more than one enemy before level 74.
There are other notable abilities of the priest available to every specialization, however, including the ability to levitate over things (which also works as a slow-fall), plenty of healing arsenal, a buff to grant more Stamina, and some basic damage attacks to grind your way through the mundane early levels. Truth be told, I didn't really start enjoying myself as a priest before I got into the more juicy talents that allowed me to melt faces and summon many things to my rescue, truth be told it just felt like a grind and button smash of casting the same two (maybe three) spells until a monster died.
The Specs
Ahh... my favorite part of priests. As I mentioned before, the three specs (specializations for those of you non-WoWspeakers) available for the priest are Holy, Discipline, and Shadow. Holy and Discipline are healing-based, while Shadow is more damage based. Let's go into details however.
Holy
I'm sorry to say I didn't play around with the Holy spec much as I leveled. Well, no, that's a lie, I actually leveled my priest to something ridiculous like... 60 just by instance grinding. And yes, truthfully if you plan to level as a Holy priest, this is what you'll be spending most of your time doing; healing instances (dungeons). Holy has almost no damage output potential aside from the famous "Lolsmite" spec which revolves around casting the spell Smite and getting potential PROCs (Programmed Random OCcurrences) to cast instant-casts of the spell. However, in higher levels you gain such toys as Divine Guardian, which increases healing done to the target, and (while still active) will sacrifice itself to heal the target for half their health should they be hit with something that would otherwise kill them, Circle of Healing, which heals allies within a certain radius, and generally improving your normal healing spells.
Holy is the group-healing spec. This makes it so you have in your arsenal things like Circle of Healing, improved Prayer of Mending (which hops from player to player healing them after they take damage), and improved Renew (a heal-over-time spell or HoT). However, in recent patches, this spec has been abandoned by many in higher levels due to Blizzard adding cooldowns which made Holy Priests a bit out of date and making them lag behind terribly in the healing meters. Also, another big "problem" with Holy priests is that they hinge greatly on Mp5 (Mana (regeneration) per five seconds), and without proper regen, they will find themselves out of mana very quickly.
Discipline
Discipline spec used to be more of a PvP oriented deal. The tree has many damage-reduction talents, preventive healing tools, and even the dreaded Reflective Shield (deals damage to attackers when they attack your PW: Shield). Discipline is a force to be reckoned with even at lower levels, and is often coupled with priests trying to level Holy for a more efficient survivability factor. Unfortunately, Discipline doesn't have any real big-time damage buffs, and remains a very heal-oriented tree. The most notable of tools is the spell Penance, a channeled heal or damage spell that works depending on whom you target and has a default three "charges" during it's cast period that do damage or heal. Other "special buttons" of the Disc tree include things like an ability to make your next cast almost guaranteed to land a critical hit (Inner Focus), reducing cast time and mana cost (Power Infusion), and reducing damage taken as well as increasing resistance to dispell mechanics (Pain Suppression).
Disc is a very widely hated/loved spec. In recent history, they've found their spot as both a deadly and effective healer in PvP, and a coveted healer in the Raiding/Dungeon environment. The Disc priest also hinges quite a bit on Mp5, but not as much due to having many more "preventative healing" capabilities, and faster, more potent heals. However, what they gain working as a single-target specialized healer, they lack desperately as a group healer. Disc priest's point of contention comes in when they are forced to try and heal multiple targets which puts tools like Grace (Reduces damage taken by target by x amount and stacks) into nearly useless being.
Disc in PvP is where the spec shines, however. Being a sturdy opponent, (once the rather steep "requirement" of 900 resilience rating is met) the Disc Priest becomes an opponent's worst nightmare, being able to keep themselves and allies up with the use of fast heals, bubbles, and the most dangerous: Penance. The spell has gone through many nerfs recently, constantly increasing the cast time, but it still remains the spell that makes and/or breaks matches in the Arena because of it's ability to heal massive amounts very quickly. Coupled with things like Grace and Divine Aegis (absorbs some damage like PW: Shield) that easily proc of each "tick" of the cast, the discipline priest becomes a force to be reckoned with.
Shadow
My heart lies with the Shadow tree, I admit. Despite it's seemingly out-of-place exterior comes a sort of weird hybrid of healer and damage dealer that works fairly well with it's own synergy. The idea of the Shadow Priest is to steal from your opponent and give to yourself. This comes in when you stumble down into the token talents Vampiric Touch and Vampiric Embrace. V Touch gives you a buff that returns your mana upon casting another spell, Mind Blast, while the DoT is on the target. V Embrace, however, returns a percent of your health in direct proportion to how much damage you deal to the target while they have the debuff on them. Coupled with the likewise notorious Mind Flay spell that channels and deals damage for each "tick" in the cast, Damage Over Time spells (DoTs), and "burst" damage spells like Mind Blast and Shadow Word: Death, the shadow priest is able to take a beating while returning his health and mana.
Oh, of course. Leveling as Shadow is the more popular way of doing things, or at least it's the easiest if you don't want to be spamming the looking for group channel with "LFG SM, Healer, PST" to level your character. Shadow tree is fairly boring until you start getting into some of the toys I mentioned earlier, like the Vampiric spells and more importantly, Shadowform. Shadowform increases the damage you deal, decreases the damage you take, and makes you look all cool to boot. The catch? You're unable to cast any Holy spells while in this form, or else you'll be yanked out of it. This usually isn't a big deal, however, because between your bubble and the healing from Vamp Embrace, you should be able to keep yourself up against the majority of enemies. However, just like every other spec, until you reach about level 74, you're nearly useless against multiple attackers unless you feel the need to put up DoTs on each and every one of them, which is not only mana inefficient, but takes a lot of time.
Shadow in Raiding is where I come in the most knowledgeable. Spriests are fairly notable because they have a great deal of outgoing damage. In earlier versions of WoW, they were used as mana batteries (Vamp Touch used to return mana the same way Vamp Embrace returns health), but sadly now we lie in relative ruin among the other caster DPS classes. However, this isn't to say that Shadow is a bad class, in fact it's probably one of the more entertaining damage dealing classes in my humble opinion. As a spriest you don't have a "rotation" of spells like many other classes do, rather you have a priority list of what to keep up on the enemy. This means a lot of continuous casting, and almost all your spells require cast times, and that's often something you don't have in the raiding environment because you're to busy dodging out of the way of the boss's next attack. If a spriest can sit in one area, stay on a single target and be constantly casting, then he is a happy spriest and will do well on the damage meters. If a spriest is forced to move around and isn't given much (if any) time to sit and get some of his spells off, he is going to pale very quickly in comparison to other DPS. Furthermore, the spriest is always caught waiting on the GCD (Global Cooldown), which makes them even more frustrating to play because of the lack of the ability to really get casts off in quick succession and then move. But I suppose that's just my griping.
Shadow doesn't have a place in PvP. There are rumors of people who can do it, but I've not seen more than two in the entire 2000+ Arena Rating brackets because they have such shitty ability to deal with opponents. A spriest has two, (arguably three if they're a caster) forms of crowd control (CC) to use on enemies; Psychic Scream, a fear that lasts 8 seconds, Psychic Horror (talented), an ability that fears the target for five seconds and makes them drop their weapons, and Silence. All these three have horrendous cooldowns (30 seconds, 2 minutes, and 1 minute respectively), and are easily broken forms of CC (use of the trinket, resist to fear, etc), meaning that your squishy butt isn't safe for long if you're lucky to get one of these off. The only other point to mention about spriests in PvP is the disappointing 51 point talent Blizzard made for Wrath of the Lich King expansion; Dispersion. Dispersion allows your character to become a little floaty cloud for 10 seconds, regenerating a vast percentage of your mana, and taking 90% less damage. This might sound all well and good, but as it turns out all it's good for is the mana regeneration bit, because as soon as those 10 seconds are up, you've got enemies hounding you down that will kill you all the same.
Overall View
All in all, the priest is a fairly set-in-its-own-ways kind of class. Despite what spec you chose, you'll always be healing to some extent, and truth be told, despite the awesomeness Shadow spec might tempt you with, the class is so screwed over it's better to just pick up a warlock if you're interested in some gothic character. I personally find that the warlock does everything the spriest does, just better.
If you're interested in becoming a healer for hire, stock your patience and try a priest out. Given enough time and practice, you can probably find yourself with a good deal of success in the World of Warcraft. Otherwise, I'd suggest you move onto a more... less-pain-in-the-ass-ish class such as Warlock or Paladin if you really want something to start your romp through Azeroth and the worlds beyond.
I give you fair warning; don't play this as your first class unless you're ready for a metric shit tonne of pain, sorrow, and almost-heals.
Melting Faces Half-heartedly,
~Sui
P.S. Seeing as this is the first that I plan to do of a series, tell me what I can improve and such! I'm looking at you, WoWfans.
)
