tank + 4 priests
The idea
Since I'm almost done gearing my main team (just waiting for 3.3.3 before buying the last lvl 245 crafted items), I decided to do some unfamiliar setups. I've always liked priests, but I got really set on the idea with the recent changes to the shadow tree (vampiric embrace and mind flay in particular).
Anyway, since I'm not in a hurry to get them to 80, I decided not to go the boosting route and level them by hand, but only quest to 15 (where the LFG tool becomes available) and level them the rest of the way only in instances except for some starter greens in outlands (at 58) and northrend (at 68).
Priests + tank have been done before (as most combos have been), so it's really mostly about the levelling process rather than hope of great end-game results. I doubt I'll ever single-box raid with a priest, so most likely I'll just gear them up casually and they'll end up as tradeskill slaves. Still, I'd like to experience how they fare in heroics and pvp, but I'm not even sure if that will happen before Cata as I plan to play them very casual.
The setup
I was planning on the following setup:
Tank: Unholy DK
Healer: Holy priest
DPS: Shadow priest
Since I need a tank for 1-56, I decided to give warriors another shot, although I haven't really been a fan of the rage mechanic.
I will spec all priests shadow until level 40 where shadow form becomes more or less mandatory, then spec one priest in holy and keep the rest shadow. I already have a priest at 80 in my mixed team and I've tried both disc and holy, so I know that I prefer holy for it's excellent AE heals (single target healing is rarely an issue in heroics anyway).
The lower levels (1-28)
Though I'm not going to boost, I figured some gear was in order. I still had the heirlooms from my warlock experiment, so I just created the chars, mailed to each char 4 frostweave bags + 1000g + heirlooms (weapon, shoulder, chest, trinket x 2), dropped a mailbox in the newbie area with an engineer and off we went.
The quest grind to 15 wasn't as bad as I remembered, although hardly "fun". I did herbalism + mining on my main in order to profit from some of the herbs in the low level areas (briarthorn, for instance, is selling for 5-10g, as well is goldthorn and several other old world herbs) but decided not to mess with tradeskills apart from those until later on.
The first instance I got in the LFG tool was RFC at level 15, which was a cakewalk, although I found it a bit frustrating that my warrior was doing double damage of my casters, add to which the casters would run out of mana in two pulls (mind blast + smite spam), so I set up for wanding and switched to mind blast + wand spam, which worked better, both in terms of dps and mana usage.
I thought it would be better once I got mindflay, but wands were still the best option up until the lvl 28 mindflay. Mindflay is still more mana intensive (obvíously), but does significantly more damage now. Still, I havent upgraded my wands since the blue quest wands (dungeon quest) I got around level 20, so I may still be surprised. Either way I'm sticking with mindflay for now and seeing how my mana pools handle that.
With shields and 4 x renew, my tank was never in danger of dying. Currently at level 28 I have 5 deaths - 2 of which were due to AFK'ing in instances with patrols (heh), but of course heirloom gear helps a lot, as does the instance nerfs and so far I'm actually a bit disappointed that it hasn't been more of a challenge. For instance I was able to bruteforce Thermaplugg without even casting a heal - no need to press the flashing buttons or anything like that, which does remove some of the charm of the encounter. I don't think that would have been different in no heirloom gear - the bombs only seemed to do take 15% of my priests health and I even 4-manned the encounter this way (kept one priest outside the door in case I'd wipe - the run back to gnomeregan is long!).
Either way the instances have been fun so far, but unchallenging - all the fights are tank and spank. I'm looking forward to some of the later instances - end boss in ramparts with no fire resistance totem should be a delight :P
Mid levels (28-58)
Switching to holy nova spam (see my weblog for videos), these 30 levels have went by amazingly fast. After seeing how powerful holy nova was off-spec, I decided to spec into holy and later on added the glyph. This is the spec I'm currently using:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#bA0buhhVRbZctt0bb:uVZzM
The most important talents are the one in the holy tree - I've worked my way into disc as I levelled up. The SM instances, Uldaman, ZF, BRD and Strath are all very good for AE levelling. BRD deserves special mention - I was there from 48 to 57 and it's the best XP i've seen in my wow-career outside RAF - I was getting anywhere from 130k - 170k per hour.
So far
I'll see how far holy nova will take me, but so far it's working still. I'll get 59 in strath and the get my quest gear set from BC. After that I'll venture into ramparts and see how my guys fare in there.
From a longterm perspective I'm worrying about lack of poison cure, but I hope the fact that I have 4 (potential) healers can make up for that.
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Originally Posted by Zub
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