Leveling as holy

Post by 40435

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Post by Aylia

There's really no reason you have to level as holy just because you intend to heal at 70. You can heal just about any instance as shadow spec until your mid-late 60s, provided that you have a decent set of healing gear. If your gear is really good, you can even pull off healing 70 instances as shadow.

If you really want to level as holy, it's doable of course. The build you linked has WAY too many points in the holy tree, though.

If you wanted a build primarily for healing, but with a little bit of smite power thrown in, I'd go for something like this. If you want to go full on lolsmite holy DPS, I'd try something more like this.

Post by 40435

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Post by Adanoi

If your looking for different builds this page is the key to solve your problem
http://www.wowwiki.com/Priest_builds this is a very good site for all your wow questions
I would however agree from 1-70 stay in the shadow tree and begin to collect Healing-gear
from level 65 and up. Then when you hit 70 you can easily respecc to a healer :) happy leveling.

Post by 70752

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Post by moocow

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=bxRhzIbzbZfxtcbbqbZx is what I have atm, planning to put the last 2 points in Mental Strength. I find it to be great fun, good healing for instances / group quests, along with fairly good damage (2k Smite crits at 68, 25% crit) and at least as little drinking as Shadow. HN is also great to have for weak packs.

And if you PvP, people are completely mortified to be killed by Smite xD

Post by bratta

Shadow is without a doubt the most efficient way to level, but if you are like me the tree just isn't very interesting and healing is where it is at. I decided to take my priest this direction:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=bEMhzhZfEt0rrqbZx

I started leveling with Spirit Tap, then went down the Discipline tree, and once I got all those talents I started working down Holy. At 70 you'll want to respec to go with one of the accepted healing builds (if that is what you plan on doing).

I'm finding this to be pretty fun to work with. Healing is great and only improving with time and better gear. Soloing is a breeze. Thanks to Spirit Tap I can go forever if I manage my spell rotation right and don't get a lot of unwanted adds. In the battlegrounds I can easily top the healing charts (heh, mainly because no one like to heal).

The only problem I've found with this approach is that in world PvP I'm a sitting duck. I can sheild, heal, dispell, and run but otherwise I haven't had much luck if I'm alone and get caught off guard.

Post by Lightrain

IDK, i throughly enjoyed being holy spec thru 52. I tried shadow around 40, and was using up way too much mana for the dps. However, at 50+ with VT, shadow may be a very good thing. You have to have a whole lot of +spell damage to make it worth it though. and at that rate, a whole lot of spell damage kills fast, and regens your mana for you at the same time. That is, if they stay alive long enough to really get any benefits. At 56, I can kill 4 or more mobs as shadow, but end up really close to the line on mana. I can also almost slay a 60 mage. LOL! My mind flay ticks 232 without using trinkets, as well as pain, and VT 190. So, I'm sitting around 600dps after dots are set. Not too shabby. With 5% mana return, after VT and SWP cast, and burning em with mindflay, i'm looking at about 900-1000 mana per kill without bubble. The more dps you stack, the less you have to rely on swp to return ur mana, and the faster you can slow ur target down so they dont disrupt your mindflay.

However, this is only good if you can pull single or double mobs. If you get multi mobs, they own you pretty hard as shadow and you cant do much while runnin away seeing as to get that much dps, you have to sacrafice some major int and stam points between 50 and 58.

As holy, I could pull a 6-8 mob, grab my loot, and run away and survive to kill again. I'm not saying that I can kill em all in the process, but the survivability of a holy priest is very high compared to shadow.

And the lack of non channeled cc as shadow does make it hard to find a group for instances, especially heroic instances, where the mobs hit so hard you only want your tank getting dual or triple dps'd for a VERY short amount of time. It does have it's benefits tho. You do get off healer status, and channel heals to the whole party while dpsing.

So, just decide a lifestyle, and stick to it. Or at least make sure when you run across gear, that you choose the one that suits your end game goals, healer or dps. Don't pass up a good healer trinket just cause you are shadow atm, or vice versa

Post by JayRay

i have a priest that i've been leveling as shadow, and i know as well as anybody that i NEED to become holy eventually.

Whoaa!! Why do you NEED to become holy? Is it because you want to heal? Or does your guild want you to be holy?

I have a slight feeling you doubt the power of shadow :)

Post by 83772

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Post by razzem

I leveled all the way in Holy spec, tried 2 times Shadow when i hit 70 but i don't liked it: it kills slower and can't survive if spell lock. Holy is more about burst damage but it burn your mana pool very very fast so for grinding Shadow is better.

Holy = Higher critical, more spell damage and is burst.
Shadow = Mana conservation and more damage reduction

This is how i spend my points while leveling:
5/5 Holy Specialization
5/5 Divine Fury
1/1 Holy Nova
3/3 Improved Renew
1/2 Healing Focus
2/2 Searing Light
3/3 Improved Healing
1/1 Spirit of Redemption
5/5 Spiritual Guidance
2/2 Surge of Light

Level 37 and you kill things so fast that will forget u are a healer. You are now a great healer and a great survivor so feel free to PVP in open world(hate Bg's twinks)

I absolutely agree with this, though the first 20ish levels of being a priest are difficult. I think respeccing around level 20 is a good option. If you are leveling before that, don't forget spirit tap and wand spec, the 2 most important leveling skills out there.

The advantage to leveling with Holy is that you get the added bonus of being even better equipped (than a shadow spec) to heal low level instances. I think this is a great option for those people that want to Heal endgame with their priest.

But don't neglect Spirit Tap, which you should have up until 70, and Wand spec, which is incredibly useful, especially if you are learning to abuse the 5SR while leveling and soloing, which you should be learning.

Leveling as holy

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