Alterac Volley » Priests

I’ve Retired From The Hunter Pew Pew

Nance — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 14:57:39 +0000

Just weeks after gushing about the new Hunter loot I had acquired I’ve decided to put that character on the back burner and switch to my Priest full-time.

The Reasons

This happened for two specific reasons. Number one, I was just tired of playing a pure DPS class. At some point you reach a level of gear and proficiency with your rotation that things just become kind of boring. In the last few weeks, when playing my Hunter, each instance run has kind of felt like the same old thing run after run. I felt like a switch was necessary to maintain my interest in the game.

Number two, I joined a really cool guild that gives me opportunity to heal some Heroics from time-to-time. As the Priest, I can go Holy to heal or Shadow to DPS so there’s a variety there that I just didn’t get with the Hunter.

Gearing Up

My Priest was a strictly PvP character until I decided to put my Hunter on the shelf more often so it’s been a bit of a struggle to gear up to heal Heroics. I’m getting more Shadow drops than Holy ones it seems so I’ve basically been grinding for Emblems and praying for drops in Regular ToC.

Moving Forward

So you might see more Priest related posts here at Alterac Volley. I’ve been really swamped with work as of late (which is why you’ve seen a few guest posts over the last month) but I’m hoping to get back into the swing of things soon. Thanks for everyone’s patience.

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The State Of My Priest

Nance — Mon, 25 May 2009 14:43:02 +0000

I haven’t written much about my priest, Swiit, here lately and since I recently crossed the 1,000 Quests Complete mark I thought it might be time for an update.

When I hit 80 on Swiit I immediately blew a ton of gold on new gear for him with no real plan on what I was going to do next. I also ended up buying Dual Spec and going with Holy and Shadow builds so I can have a little flexibility in my gameplay. Here’s what I’ve been up to since I dinged 80:

Gear

I’ve more or less sworn off instance running for Swiit but, since I’m so attached to PvP with this character, I’ve been trying to build up full sets of the Hateful Priest gear for him instead. This is nice because I can go at my own pace and get rewarded for doing things like Wintergrasp and Battlegrounds that I enjoy anyway. It’s win-win for me.

PvE

I’ve been doing Argent Tournament dailies with Swiit when he’s specced into Shadow and it’s been a lot of fun. Shadow is a great spec for solo play as you are pretty much an unstoppable force with tons of health and mana regeneration. The Tournament quests are pretty easy and quick to finish so it’s been a great source of gold and companion pets as well. And yes, for those of you wondering, I do these dailies in my PvP gear.

PvP

I absolutely love healing in large PvP environments like Wintergrasp and Alterac Valley. It’s not so much fun in the other Battlegrounds for me but when that’s the case I just switch my spec and gear for Shadow and do my best with that. I’ve even done ok on the healing charts when specced into Shadow but I’m trying to ween myself out of that so I can get better results for my team as a healer.

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My Priest Hits Level 80

Nance — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 05:43:08 +0000

My Priest, Swiit, hit level 80 over the weekend. As soon as I dinged in Sholazar Basin I headed to the good old Auction House in order to get some new swag.

Four thousand gold later I had pretty decent gear for my Holy spec and had managed to level my Tailoring profession above 440. I’m using a lot of crafted gear right now but I did throw down some money on new shoulders, a ring and a necklace.

Where I plan to go from here with this character is anyone’s guess. I’ve run a few battlegrounds with him using the Holy spec and it’s been a lot of fun. I was caught in a long-running game of Alterac Valley earlier today and I managed to do just over 1.6 million healing before it was all said and done.

I’m slowly losing interest with my Hunter so this is a nice opportunity, I suppose, to switch to something else. Since healing is such a totally different gameplay dynamic than the standard DPS situation you get with a Hunter this might be a lot of fun. Or a total disaster.

I thoroughly enjoyed healing instances in Outland when I was leveling up but after a few really, really rotten experiences in Utgarde Keep and the Nexus I pretty much swore off group healing while I finished the journey to level 80.

Regardless, don’t be surprised if you see some more posts about healing and Priest topics. My secondary spec right now is Shadow so I’ll probably be rambling on ignorantly about that and my Holy spec in the near future.

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Tips For Leveling A Holy Priest

Nance — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 15:50:49 +0000

I’ve been shaking things up a bit and spending most of my WoW time leveling up my Holy Priest. I switched to Holy spec when I hit level 60, after the Recruit-A-Friend experience bonus was over, and as of this morning I’m over half of the way to level 74. Since leveling Holy isn’t usually something most people probably try and do I thought I’d give two simple tips to help you with the challenge:

Run Instances
Before I got to level 68, and moved onto the Wrath content, I was running heals for Burning Crusade instances every chance I got. I bet my ratio of time spend in instances compared to doing solo quests was 3-to-1 or even higher. Running an instance is an extremely easy and quick way to level yourself up as a Holy Priest. It’s very easy to find a group needing a healer even with the “low level” content that the Burning Crusade has to offer. There are Death Knights all over the place looking to level just as fast as you are. A few minutes on the LFG channel and you should be in a group in no time.
Buy Heirloom Items
As soon as you can afford it, look into buying some of the Heirloom (or Bind on Account) items that are available to you at level 80. The BoA weapons are very good for leveling but the best items are the BoA shoulder pieces that offer a 10% experience bonus for killing mobs.

Each variety of BoA items are available for purchase with either Emblems of Heroism or Stone Keeper Shards. The Emblem gear is more PvE oriented and the Shards gear is obviously PvP centered. If you’re like me and have way more Shards than you do Emblems there’s nothing wrong with buying some BoA PvP gear for your alt while it levels. That’s what I did in the case of the shoulders and it’s working out fine so far.

If you combine those two strategies together you can just rip through the leveling process on your way to 80. You’ll also see yourself making more gold (or getting more materials through disenchanting) because a lot of quest reward items won’t be good enough to replace your BoA gear that you already have. It’s a small extra bonus to this approach.

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My PvP Priest Rolls Holy

Nance — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 19:10:02 +0000

With a dead computer and a brutal cold it was hard to find time to do any of my usual WoW activities over the last week and a half. When I wasn’t in a drug-induced stupor I did manage to bust out my old laptop and cruise around a bit on my Priest alt I have named Swiit.

Swiit is a Troll Priest I rolled when I talked my girlfriend into giving WoW a try with the excellent, and highly recommended, Recruit-A-Friend program that Blizzard offers. As we leveled our way on to 60 I had Swiit specced as Shadow all the way. When the benefits of triple experience from Recruit-A-Friend went away I put Swiit on the back-burner and started back on my main.

Being stuck on a low-end computer that can’t handle much that Wrath has to offer gave me an excuse to work on Swiit a bit. Instead of leveling though I chose a much different course of action. I respecced as Holy and went on a two day battleground rampage. It was like learning how to play PvP all over again with a whole new set of tools and it was great.

By the end of my run I had enough battleground marks to get my very own Swift Warstrider that I’ve always thought would be perfect for a Troll Priest to have.

I think that in the long term I’d like to get Swiit up to level 80 some time during this summer. Greymane is always hungry for more healers and it’s a side of the game I’m much more interested in seeing than something like tanking, for instance.

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