Addicted to Heals

So I’ve been playing my little priest for a while now, slowly working my way through the zones. It’s been slower going than usual because I am doing more zone-hopping and running around looking at stuff than actual, buckled-down questing.

Even so, leveling as a disc priest is actually going more quickly than leveling as a resto shaman (though I think both would go about the same if I spent more time in instances).

I don’t really have any sort of strategy here. What I did was take every talent I could in the disc tree that upped damage or crit, as well as ones that helped with my mana pool or regen. I did not take points in Spirit Tap in the Shadow tree. I probably should have, because I do see quite a bit of downtime, and maybe I’d see less with those points.

I have, however, come up with a few things that are helping me out, so I thought I would share.

1. Keep your shield up. If it goes down and you still have Weakened Soul, kite around as necessary, or just run in circles until it comes back up. If you have room and can use it without pulling extra mobs, use your fear.

2. Holy Fire is your friend. Use it every time the cooldown is up.

3. Wands are also your friend. Make sure you have one that’s doing a decent amount of damage for your level; I normally avoid the auction house like the plague, but this is the one item I would blow gold on, because if you don’t want to be drinking after every pull, you’ll be wanding like crazy after you DoT up your target. Unless Holy Fire’s up, then use that.

4. With multiple mobs who keep downing your shields, blow all your mana on Holy Nova. When I’ve accidentally grabbed more mobs than I can handle with the DoT + wand strategy (so, like, three) and they are all beating on me to the point where a shield is a waste of mana, Holy Nova has kept my health topped off and killed them pretty good, or at least gotten to where a good smite took care of it. Gabi’s an alchemist with mana potions, though, so your milage may vary.

5. Use your DoTs. This should probably be No. 2, but I’m too lazy to reorder the list. I usually go Holy Fire, then Devouring Plague, then Shadow Word: Pain, and then I wand a couple times and use Holy Fire again, then wand to death. Usually they’re low enough at that point that the wanding goes quickly, and by the time they die, I’ve got most of my mana back. (At level 42. In the low 30s, I was still going oom all the time.)

6. Use your fear creatively. Sometimes you grab too many, have too little mana, and know you’re gonna die even with Holy Nova. So Psychic Scream, shield and run like heck. “She who fights and runs away, lives to fight another day” should be a priest motto, because you are not wearing mail and even with Inner Fire you’re gonna die pretty quick.

Really, leveling disc is not that difficult. Leveling holy would be a lot harder if you weren’t healing the whole time, I think, but disc is not bad at all.