You Lack Discipline!

I hope everyone knows that title as a classic Arnold Schwarzenegger meme, and if you don’t, you know it is now!  ….Go look it up, kiddos.  ANYWAY.  I’ve been up to a lot recently, thus my lack of posting.  I decided to switch mains, away from my elemental shaman and towards my new priest, Vellem.  Vellem is now a level 72 Discipline priest, quickly leveling up to 80.

I knew I wanted to heal with my priest…Resto shaman got boring in TBC, and I am really starting to hate Taurens and their hugeness and ugly hooves.  The gear on them also looks bad.  Have you seen a Tauren in level 80 blues and purples that arent tier sets?  Really ugly.  The caster shield from Mexxna doesn’t help either, with its primary color scheme and shiny center.  Taurens also sit on drake mounts as if they’re about to fall off, which annoys me after flying around for awhile.

All this led up to my eventual switch back to priest.  My first level 70 in TBC was an undead priest, and I healed up to ZA with that character as holy.  It is an undead…and the reason I switched from that character to the shaman was because of how badly the gear looked on undead.  I’m sorry, but if I spend weeks farming for an item, or get some lucky drop in an instance, I want to see all of it, not just part of it, and my bones for the rest.  Must every item I get have custom holes cut out for my arms and back hump?  Just cover that back hump with a cloak, I dont need to rip it so I can see 4 vertabre when I hobble around. /rant

So as you can see from the picture, I rolled a Blood Elf, and leveled all the way back up to 70, and now beyond.  The gear, while sometimes has a stupid model, looks great on the Blood Elf.  No bones are showing, my shoes completely cover my feet, and im not overly huge so nothing is streatched out.

I decided to go discipline this time around.  I’ve been reading about priests and have seen that discipline are really good single target healers.  Their shields can soak up a lot of damage, and their crits can apply a new shield, Divine Ageis (if specc’ed for it, which you really should be).  Discipline priests gear/gem more for Spell Power, Crit, Haste, and Intellect, since both the increased mana pool and increased crit chance are both great.  Discipline priests also benefit most from actually health points regained, as opposed to overhealing.  We have talents in our tree that regenerate mana back for each health point returned to the target via our heals, so if we are actually restoring health to say, the main tank, we will get mana back.  Holy has a similar talent that works the exact opposite.  Serendipity, which is far down the Holy tree, regenerates mana back to the priest for each point of overhealing done.

There has been some hatin’ on Discipline priests, saying that if a priest wants to heal they should go Holy, but I think most of those people are misinformed.  Holy priests are better for multi-target/group healing, but they lose on their single target abilities.  Priests are unique in that they are the only class with two completely different healing trees to work with.  It is almost like having a holy paladin and resto shaman at a whim.  Once I get to 80 and start doing heroics/intro raids, I’ll write about how end game Discipline is.  So far, for both soloing/questing and 5-man dungeoneering, Discipline is really working out great.  It is definately a spec that cannot compensate for the rest of the group if they suck, but when the whole group is doing the right thing, this spec really shines.

Here is a link to my leveling spec. I am currently filling out Spirit Tap in the Shadow tree to help me regenerate mana faster while soloing.  Otherwise, work down the Holy tree as you move from 72-80.

~Nick Fox

Holy Priest Batman!

So I caved.  I rolled my third priest.  This time, it is a Blood Elf named Vellem (US-Burning Blade).  He is only level 13 but I am leveling him with some nice heirloom items (shoulders and mace) and the intent to be a healer.  I am still up in the air between disipline and holy, but we’ll see as I get towards endgame.  I plan to level shadow just to make things easier and hopefully with the shoulders, I will make it to 80 soon.

There he is.  The heirloom shoulders give a 10% experience increase from monster kills, so that is a nice bonus.  Plus, the stats on both the shoulders and mace increase as I level. Heirloom weapons and armor can be purchased with emblems of honor in Dalaran or with stone keeper’s shards in Wintergrasp if your faction owns it.

Well, making a big blog post = less time to level priest, so off I go!  You can catch me in the Ghostlands if you need me!

~Nick