New forsaken priest needs advice!

So, I've been confused about what class I want, but in the end i said fu it, i'm going priest, if they want me to heal i'll heal the best they've seen! xD
I'm just starting, and wanted to ask some basic questions.
My two biggest fears, what talents do I take, and what professions work better? Having two gathering seems dull tho.
So far, I thing leveling as Spriest and dual specing in Disc is pretty much what I should do. As I really like Spriests and want to play one mostly, and Disc priests are supposed to be good in raids and dungeons? (I'm a total noob, just started and never had a character above lvl 20 YET )
About professions, Enchanting and tailoring seem to be the bread and butter choice for all cloth wearing classes, I was wondering is anything else more worth it/ more fun? Thanks for your time.

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Originally Posted by NightBoss99

So, I've been confused about what class I want, but in the end i said fu it, i'm going priest, if they want me to heal i'll heal the best they've seen! xD
I'm just starting, and wanted to ask some basic questions.
My two biggest fears, what talents do I take, and what professions work better? Having two gathering seems dull tho.
So far, I thing leveling as Spriest and dual specing in Disc is pretty much what I should do. As I really like Spriests and want to play one mostly, and Disc priests are supposed to be good in raids and dungeons? (I'm a total noob, just started and never had a character above lvl 20 YET )
About professions, Enchanting and tailoring seem to be the bread and butter choice for all cloth wearing classes, I was wondering is anything else more worth it/ more fun? Thanks for your time.

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Yes, shadow is probably the easiest way to level-up. Things that help you with hit chance/mana costs and crowd control tend to be quite valuable during leveling.

Before you start raiding it doesn't really matter what spec you want to use for healing.. shadow is good enough as well. Try to experiment you will find out what works for you. (and then you have a lot of time to try both - holy/disc - before raiding, during dungeons as well).

Avoid enchanting if you can. Its the most frustrating prof to learn - you need rare materials that cost a ton of money or time. And it has exactly the same benefit as many others (lw/bs/ins...). Tailoring gives you proc (15s duration/45s cd) back enchant, which is rly good on shadow, slightly worse than static stats for disc (healers are generally better off with smaller, but constant bonus). Jwc gives tiny bit more spellpower than other profs if you wanted to get absolutely the best value.

I think that its better to get 1 crafting (probably tailoring since you want to mainly shadow, and it slightly helps with getting gear) and 1 gathering prof especially if its your first char. After you have some money you can drop gathering prof and get second crafting. (Inscriptions is fast, simple and cheap to lvl up and has same bonus as ench).

Thanks for the info!
I'll cetrainlky have to see how i'll do in dungeons, never been in one yet.
So, I should take Tailoring and which gathering, mining or Herbalism? Also, is mining/Jwc a good idea? or herb/insc ?

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Originally Posted by NightBoss99

Thanks for the info!
I'll cetrainlky have to see how i'll do in dungeons, never been in one yet.
So, I should take Tailoring and which gathering, mining or Herbalism? Also, is mining/Jwc a good idea? or herb/insc ?

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Doesn't rly matter imho, both herbs and ores should sell well. Mining + jwc / herb + ins both work as well. (almost same bonuses, about the same difficulty of leveling). JWC might be good, since gems sell for quite some coin as well (but it takes a while to get receipes and stuff).

Thing is, I have like 40-60 cloth right now from the starting quests. I was thinking of taking Tailoring and Inscription, but inscription goes with herbalism, and if i take jwc/mining, I'll have to wait untill I get goig so I can remove mining for something else. I'm really confused here, will tailoring/insc bring enough profit on their own, because I feel like mining/jwc is better. and then I can get rid of mining for inscr.

You can either go tailoring + mining/herb (doesnt rly matter which gathering prof), or herb + ins, or mining + jwc. tailoring + ins doesnt make much sense. (its easy to swap to ins when you are at max lvl)

Ye, I would prolly do the same - level up mining/jwc, drop mining and get either tailoring (shadow main) or ins (lazy or healer main).

Here's how I leveled! I've leveled 2 priests to 80 (and later to 90 and 100) on retail and one on warmane lordaeron and this has been the most effective way of leveling I've found so far:

level 1-4 smite/w.e. skills you have spam

Level 5-19 Shadow word pain+wand spam (or smite spam depending on how good of a wand you get)

Level 20-49 Holy Fire/Smite spam

Level 50-80 Shadow


Talents:

Take 3 talents in to spirit tap and after that spec in to holy tree taking all talents that increase your smite/holy fire dps and after taking all damage increasing talents from holy (at level 40) spec rest in to whatever (disc in my case)

This is the talent build I used: http://wotlk.openwow.com/talent#bVcoZbxthbbqbZh

Pros of this spec: Amazingly small downtime (Time you have to use for drinking etc) and huge damage, it's not uncommon to oneshot mobs when your surge of light procs. Also, shadow dots usually lose half of their value when the mob dies before your dots are half way through, with smite spec you get more value from your spells. Also, early access spiritual guidance increases your damage a lot, on shadow you get a similar talent, twisted faith, but you get that 25 levels later than spiritual guidance.


Gear:

Spirit/spellpower (+critchance after getting surge of light too)

All uncommon (green) gear that has "Of the whale", "Of the owl" or "Of spirit" is great for leveling.

Getting a good wand is very important in the early levels, a good wand deals more damage than any of your spells during low levels.

Gear for shadow is pretty much the same, Spirit is awesome, spellpower is awesome.


Shadow talents:

While leveling, everything that decreases mana cost of your spells or increase your mana regen is golden and everything that increases your damage is awesome as well. You want to kill mobs fast and spend as little time drinking as possible while killing mobs fast.

Important talents when leveling as shadow:

- Spirit tap and improved spirit tap
- Shadow focus
- Mind Flay
- Shadow Reach
- Vampiric Embrace (improved vampiric embrace is very useful as well, but some people like to skip it, personally I take it)
- Mind Melt
- Shadowform + improved shadowform
- Misery
- Vampiric touch
- Twisted faith
- Dispersion
- Veiled shadow is extremely awesome after you get shadow fiend, put point in to this talent at level 65 and 66.

This was my spec when leveling, I skipped some talents to make room for stuff like silence and psychic horror for world pvp reasons, you can also go for darkness instead of improved mind blast and change the build to fit your needs: http://wotlk.openwow.com/talent#bZZG0fiofkbfqfkVo

At level 80 I ended up having all talents from shadow except shadow affinity and having some talents from disc and then I respecced to pvp spec.


Professions:

I recommend gathering professions for the duration of leveling, this is especially important, if you don't have a max level character on the server allready.

Go for Skinning and mining/herbalism. You can go for both mining and herbalism too, but changing between find minerals and find herbs is, at least in my opinion, rather annoying.

Sell all leathers, ores and herbs in the auction house and you should be able to buy every skill and mount and dual spec and everything during leveling.

After you get level 80, switch to whatever professions you desire and powerlevel those up.

Simple google searchs: "<profession name> 1-450" will find you many guides for each profession and most efficient ways to level those up.

Tailoring and Engineering are the ultimate best professions for PvP (and Raiding too, I guess?), but I recommend taking whatever professions you like most, every professions has it's perks, doesn't make that much of a difference.


Best of luck, have fun leveling!
- DakMonkeyz


Edits: Spelling errors, formatting, added shadow talents and professions chapter.

Leveling as Shadow seems like the most logical choice until you realize you have no power until 40-50lvl. So in that case leveling as Holy is a good alternative, if not even better, at least until 40-50. You have very straightforward (even boring) damage with Holy Fire and Smite, your spells are mana-efficient, unlike Shadow's before you get mana talents and Vampiric Touch, and you can also heal in dungeons quite well. Later on you can just switch to Shadow when you get access to some deep talents. Regardless of what spec you choose, always pick Spirit Tap - it reduces your downtime significantly.

As for professions - yes, tailoring + enchanting is what most casters pick up, but enchanting is a pain in the *** to level because it eats all of your gold and all random green items that drop. Picking tailoring with another profession seems viable, until you reach 400 and you see that you actually need the dust from enchanting... So unless you have another main with enough gold on him (several hundred, at least), my advice is to pick up herbalism + alchemy/inscription OR mining + jewelcrafting. Herbalism + inscription will give you a steady gold income because you will sell the glyphs you've crafted and you'll never have to spend gold on glyphs yourself.