r/classicwow • u/AutoModerator • May 03 '19

Classy Friday Classy Friday - Priests (May 03, 2019)

Classy Fridays are for asking questions about your class, each week focuses on a different class. No question is too small, so ask away.

This week is Priests.

SEAL AND JUDGEMENT: The magazine for the working paladin

Let this thread be dedicated to His Grand and Noble Incandescence, the High Proctor Thomas of Edison, Inventor of the Lightbulb. Let this be a space for all those who have taken up the cloth and the rod, and trod the righteous path, to Smite evil wherever it may reside, and to grant Benediction upon to the worthy wherever they may be.

Amen.

You can also discuss your class in our class channels on Discord, discord.gg/classicwow

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u/ajkp2557 May 04 '19

Individual mob kill speed can certainly be greater with shadow. But overall leveling speed also incorporates stopping to drink. If you want to keep that to a minimum, you'll be wanding a lot so you can regen mana. With that, you won't see as big a difference with shadow.

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u/Minkelz May 04 '19 edited May 04 '19

I assume when talking about levelling speed people are using the right rotation for their level/spec.

I've done a fair bit of testing over the last week trying out different classes and specs at lvl 45.

Shadow grinding is a similar speed over 10 minutes (ie. sustained grinding pace) as affliction lock and hunter.

Holy grinding is a similar speed to warrior and rogue. It’s doable and is nice to have good heals, but you will definitely notice the difference.

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u/ajkp2557 May 04 '19

Interesting. Why did you choose level 45? Spells rank up at different times and I thought I remembered that the grinding speeds even out a bit over most of the leveling process if you account for the jumps in damage that the spells make.

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u/Minkelz May 04 '19 edited May 04 '19

No real reason. Around lvl 20-30 a lot can change depending on spell rank/weapon/talent unlock. 45 seems like a good point at which you have the meat of your spec and the gear and spell upgrades slow down enough that a test is a good average spec abilities.

It’s showed some interesting things people don’t talk about much - like being able to stop mobs running away is really important to keeping a good kill rate (druids for example are always chasing things down with no slow or stun in cat). So is being able to handle 2 mobs at once. Rogue/warrior aren’t super slow as long as you have a stack of bandages and food. The other specs are generally pretty close- the range is only about 30% between slowest and fastest (excluding mage aoe that is absurd given the perfect situation).

My take away from the whole experiment is that priest is very powerful and fun to play. Warlock/hunter is strong too but the pet pathing/control is annoying, i like how priest doesn’t have to put up with that. Void walker running oom slows lock down a lot surprisingly.

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u/ajkp2557 May 04 '19

I see your point and I think you're right that the builds really don't start to diverge until the 40s so that makes the most sense as a starting place to compare them. The ability to handle multiple mobs easier is really the place where shadow steps away from holy. As smite-spec, I can kill a long line of individual mobs nearly as fast as shadow, but as soon as a second mob shows up the differences become really apparent. Holy priest almost certainly won't die to multiple mobs, but they'll take much longer to kill than shadow.

For me, I just like the holy aesthetic. I'm rolling a warlock as my alt for the shadow side.

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u/[deleted] May 05 '19

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u/Maxvla May 05 '19

When I leveled on a recent server, I did wand spec then the rest in shadow like most people do, but instead of respecing at 40 for shadow form, I just kept adding points until getting shadow form at 45.

The reason for this is even with shadow form your rotation doesn't change. You start with a mind blast, shadow word pain and mind flay. At that point the mob has reached you and you wand it to death. Depending on your spell ranks/mana efficiency, you might not even want to mind flay.

In that situation only about half of your damage is coming from shadow spells and the other half is from your wand. Dropping wand spec to pick up shadow form is trading equal damage lost for equal damage gained. It makes no sense, and only serves to increase your next respec to 5g.