Spiritual Guidance: When I was your age ...
by Dawn Moore 
Sep 5th 2011 at 10:00PM
Every so often, I'm hit with this brilliant idea that I should level another priest. It always sounds like a lot of fun at first, especially when I'm just toying around in the character creation screen making my new baby all pretty. Do I want brown hair or blond hair? The sexy eyes or the vapid ones? Hmm ... now what do I name her? The fun ends a few minutes later when after skipping the opening cinematic (which I've already seen), I pick up my first quest and realize I've done this before. Sure, maybe this time I'm picking up Salvaged Supplies instead of Cactus Apples -- but really, it's always the same. That's why after about 5 minutes of killing eight boars or eight bandits or eight worgen, I bask in the glory of level 2 and log out.
Except for today. Today, I was determined to get my new darling Elyria up to level 12 so I could see all of the new Worgen content and the new Forsaken quests in Silverpine Forest after that. I was really determined this time, and as a result, I made it through something like 42 Smite casts without logging out and got to learn Flash Heal as a result That's when I realized that damn, priests these days have it easy. Flash Heal at level 3? Really? Let me tell you how it used to be.
If you were going anywhere, you were walking
In the old days, mount vendors were pretentious snobs who charged exorbitant prices and wouldn't allow you to train until you'd reached level 40. (How they even knew what level you were is beyond me, since most of them weren't even level 20 themselves. I'm looking at you, Katie Hunter.) Most classes had ways to get around this, such as druids with their Travel Form ability or mages with Teleport. Priests, though? We were stuck trekking about in our cloth booties for the first 40 levels, and when we finally were able to train, we had to pay full price for our mounts. You'd think there would be some discounts for men and women of the cloth, geez!
Holy Nova was a talent
Until Wrath, Holy Nova could only be obtained by dropping talents into the holy tree. Sure, it's never been a bread-and-butter spell to a healing priest, but as one of the few instant-cast spells with no usage restrictions, Holy Nova could actually save quite a few lives (particularly your own) if utilized properly. For surviving while on the move, Holy Nova was a great followup to a Power Word: Shield and Renew, and it wasn't too bad when you were stunlocked by all those bacon-craving rogues out there, either.
Oh, and before you go thinking you can properly reminisce about the old days, don't forget that way back when, Holy Nova was a 31-point talent. 31! Madness!
Spirit of Redemption was awfulMost people these days joke about Spirit of Redemption being a terrible talent because it's only useful when you're dead. Pfft! I say. Few priests actually remember the horror that was the original Spirit of Redemption. Holy priests these days enjoy luxuries like casting while in improved death form, but I remember when you couldn't even do that. Once upon a time, the only thing Spirit of Redemption did was apply a small heal and HoT to your party when you died. That's right, you got to die and then do absolutely nothing but sit there. Brilliant. Do you see what you kids take for granted these days?
Shadow priests were non-existent (and mostly useless)
Back in the day when you had to walk through three zones, in the snow, just to reset your talent points, shadow priests also had it rough. With the limited range of Mind Flay, the long cooldown of Mind Blast, and the severe lack of quality DOTs (remember that Devouring Plague used to be a racial), there wasn't much point in bringing a shadow priest to a raid. Making matters worse, Vampiric Touch didn't even exist until The Burning Crusade, and with healers often being in incredibly short supply, if you were a priest, you were healing. Unless you were this guy, that is.
On the plus side, since you couldn't check other players' talents back then, as long as you never swapped into Shadowform, you could come to raids and sneak in a few little HOTs between your heals without people knowing. The added benefit of this was also that no one could ever judge you for your terrible talent selection.
Your tanks hated Power Word: Shield
Some of you may remember that in the not-too-distant past, Power Word: Shield would prevent warrior and druid tanks from gaining rage. Cruising through a dungeon as a disc priest? Forget about it, because the first time your mediocre tank lost threat and someone died, guess who they'd blame? That's right, you and your bubbles. And don't think for a second they ever listened to you when you told them about the main tank from your guild who managed just fine with shields on him. No, of course not, it couldn't possibly be that the tank was just bad at his class. No. Not at all. Never. Dawn mutters under her breath.
Getting Benediction was a pain
Sure, getting legendaries is always a burden, but what if you had to run all over the world and fetch random eyeballs just to get a best-in-slot purple? That's what you had to do to get the Benediction, and assuming you even got your eyeballs, you still had to bring a whole slew up supplies to survive the very difficult quest objective. This old guide dated from 2005 suggests bringing 15 Oil of Immolation, two Major Mana Potions, and a Flask of Distilled Wisdom. Can you imagine if you had to go through all that work for a Smoldering Censer of Purity? Forget it! The Benediction might as well have been a legendary! Especially when you consider that the quest was extremely easy to bug out and fail if you stood in the wrong place or a random bystander tried to help or interfere. What a headache.
Discipline priests suckedDo you remember Divine Spirit? What about Wand Specialization? Force of Will, perhaps? Up until Wrath of the Lich King, the purpose of a discipline priest was very, very vague. With talents crossed somewhere between offensive and defensive, there was really no telling what a disc priest was supposed to do in combat. Should we DPS? Maybe heal? Should we smack ourselves across the face and go respec to holy (the answer to that question is yes). No one knew, and as a result disco revival was something only PVPers and the most stubborn of raiders bothered with. Talk about an underutilized talent tree. We didn't even have Penance back then, and nowadays you whippersnappers get it at level 10! Blasphemy, I say!
My memory isn't what it used to be
Perhaps I've forgotten something. Do you remember something from your old war stories that these novice priests should know so they can appreciate what they have these days? If you do, leave a comment, fish out your old screenshots if you have any, and show us your battle scars.
Spiritual Guidance has the inside line on pre-raid, valor point and raid gear for patch 4.2, as well as priest healing guides for the early and final bosses of The Firelands. Newcomer to the priest class? Look into leveling a healing priest, plus our guides to Discipline Priest 101 and Holy Priest 101.
Filed under: Priest, (Priest) Spiritual Guidance
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
Gendou Sep 5th 2011 10:12PM
I raided as Shadow in Vanilla.
It sucked. Badly.
Not so badly that I was ever tempted to go Holy, mind you, but Blizzard was really unkind to offspecs back in the day (also referred to as "leveling specs" or "PVP specs" or "lolnoob specs").
But I stuck it out and was rewarded for my patience when Burning Crusade was released, punished for being too useful when Wrath was released, and finally allowed to be awesome again once Cataclysm came out.
... I'm dreading the next expansion. They're like Star Trek movies for Shadow Priests - the odd numbers always suck.
Gendou Sep 5th 2011 10:14PM
I should note that I still have Anaethema (what did you call it? "Benediction?" Ha! No.) in my bank, waiting patiently for the day when I can use it for transmogrification.
Nick Sep 6th 2011 3:33AM
Also got "the staff" back in vanilla.
Unfortunately in a quit, not so much a raid quit but a "i'm getting rid of any temptation to return" I deleted all my characters. I remember spending hundreds of gold respeccing from from holy to shadow. I did MC as shadow sometimes, I still remember our top healer "Enibas" backing me up with it.
Now that I'm back, and have been for years, I went Alliance this time. I may go make a forsaken shadow priest all over again. Yummy!
Possum Sep 6th 2011 5:48AM
I though Shadow Priests were the OP class of Vanilla? Or at least that is what I heard.
Gendou Sep 6th 2011 9:31AM
@Possum:
In PVE? No, never. The only fight where a Shadow Priest was remotely useful compared to the much more powerful Mages and moderately more powerful Warlocks was on a burn fight with constant pulsing AOE damage that Vampiric Embrace could heal, like Hakkar in Zul'Gurub and... well, pretty much Hakkar. And even then, it could be argued that either the extra healing of a Holy Priest or the damage output of pretty much any DPS class would be superior to the mixed, inferior bag of the poor Shadow Priest. That having been said, there were a few die-hards like myself who refused to 'see the light' and still insisted on raiding as Shadow.
In PVP? We did a little better. Not MUCH better, but better than in PVE. Back in the days before Cloak of Shadows, Shadow Priests had a better than average life expectancy against Rogues thanks to our DOTs and the slow effect of Mind Flay. Even so, we were underpowered compared to Warlocks, who had everything we had, plus no cooldown on fear, more powerful DOTS, and a pet. More often than not, we were seen as healers with DOTs, and more often than not, that's how we played.
Not that we had it the worst of the class/spec combinations (anyone remember Vanilla Subtlety? or Arcane?) - but we had it pretty bad. Thanks to tier design at the time, if we wanted decent gear for raiding, we had to participate in the endless PVP grind to get at least our Blue PVP set (I almost made it to Champion, got sick, lost three ranks, and gave up in disgust).
All those people who look back with fondness on Vanilla? Rose-colored glasses.
Seriously, there was a lot of fun stuff in Vanilla, but damned near everything that made it fun was made better with the successive expansions. Anyone who says differently either wasn't there or isn't remembering all of the really, really bad details.
Katherine Sep 6th 2011 5:47PM
I raided as shadow in vanilla. Healing. In shadow. Worked fine in those days. Still got my hat from our first onyxia kill too.
Terrant Sep 5th 2011 10:42PM
Hey, *Improved* Divine Spirit was awesome! ...but after I was deep enough in Disc to get it, I did put my other 38 talent points into the Holy Tree.
Let's see... I remember:
1) Pain Suppression was self-only
2) Getting your first racial spell at level 10
3) Wondering why Lesser Heal and Heal existed at all, since there was a million ranks of Greater Heal anyway
themightysven Sep 5th 2011 10:43PM
I miss Touch of Weakness :(
WaterRouge Sep 5th 2011 10:45PM
Back before wrath only the wealthy could enjoy spamming Levitate, the rest were lucky to have one maybe two light feathers on hand. Shaman with their water walking? Forget about it, both murlocs AND naga dropped what THEY needed.
You should probably also talk about racial priest abilities too. Who had what and how essentially at that time certain races as priests were overpowered/underpowered.
WaterRouge Sep 5th 2011 10:51PM
Racial abilities from memory:
Night Elf - Star(something): Channeled spell which wasn't broken by line of sight. I have terrible memories of NE priests in BGs just spamming this on me from the roof with nothing I could do to counter it.
Undead - Devouring Plague: Pretty much the same thing although I think there was some kind of stat debuff associated with it too.
Troll - Shadow Ward: Lightning shield but with shadow orbs and a cooldown.
Human/Dwarf (I can't remember which had what)- Desperate Prayer: Same thing it is now but much weaker and I think a more substantial mana cost/cooldown.
Blood Elves - Mana (something): They channeled it and got mana back. This was back when Blood Elf racials were completely ridiculous. Spam 3 mana taps on the target then use mana torrent to silence the target and get mana back equal to the stacks you applied.
Draenei - Actually can't remember this but I know it wasn't Gift of the Naaru...or was it? This was back when certain classes had certain versions of heroic presence so I don't recall. Most draenei were rolling shaman anyway.
Gendou Sep 5th 2011 10:59PM
Humans had feedback, which was a mana drain when they hit someone in melee.
And Dwarves had Fear Ward, which was why most Alliance raiding guilds required raiding priests to reroll Dwarf.
Horde guilds didn't have that drama, since our Priest Racials weren't that great for PVE.
david73 Sep 5th 2011 11:04PM
WoWWiki still has a page listing the old priest racial spells here:
http://www.wowwiki.com/Priest_racial_abilities
Boobah Sep 5th 2011 11:17PM
Night elves had a dodge buff and an arcane damage spell
Humans had feedback (which was kind of like a Mana Burn weapon imbue) and Desperate Prayer.
Dwarves had Desperate Prayer and Fear Ward.
Draenei had a mana regen ability (which as I understand it, eventually became Hymn of Hope), later nerfed to Chastise, and Fear Ward.
Forsaken had Touch of Weakness, an on-next-melee ability (which is to say, something you were unlikely to use once you got your first wand), plus Devouring Plague.
Trolls had a hex, which was like Touch of Weakness only without having to melee, and their shadowy version of Lightning Shield (which for a while actually displayed with a bright blue and white ball orbiting the priest.)
Blood Elves had Touch of Weakness, and... something else. Not Mana Tap/Arcane Torrent; that was something every blood elf had, not just priests.
Gendou Sep 5th 2011 11:18PM
@David73:
Oh yeah, those are the upgraded ones that came out around Burning Crusade, I think.
Feedback really did have a melee (as in, the priest had to melee) requirement back in the day, though.
vendeurfrancais Sep 5th 2011 11:24PM
they took starfall away and gave it to druids, the saddest day....
of course, in wrath we had holy nova at like 20, now its at 61, which kinda blows. I did the anathema quest on an alt finally, one i've been playing around with for years, and didn't have holy nova, had to spec disc and make the skellies hit me and kill themselves, because i had no aoe and i forgot holy water.
illusionvreality Sep 5th 2011 11:31PM
Consume Magic was the other BE Racial. It dispelled a both on YOU to give you a piss poor amount of mana back that was usually less than the amount of mana spent to cast the buff!
Eregos ftw! Sep 5th 2011 11:38PM
@venduer
The priest racial was StarSHARDS, and it was totally different then StarFALL.
Mogster Sep 6th 2011 12:49AM
Yeah, the Feedback racial was really stupid. It didn't help that our Inner Fire buff added attack power (I kid you not.) Oh, and it only lasted 3 minutes. Still, IF was the one thing that convinced me to start leveling my priest again - I tried rolling a pally because I was annoyed how weak my priest was. Getting IF at level 12 made a huge difference.
I liked questing, but hated leveling. Thanks to Feedback and Inner Fire, I thought I was supposed to melee stuff. Cue noob priest running around Stranglethorn Vale whacking mobs with a stick like a moron. >_< And speaking of STV, I tried with no avail to get people to group with me. I practically begged General for some help, saying I could make it go faster by reducing down time, but no, no one wanted to group. That is, until I hit 50 and could do BRD. Then suddenly EVERYONE wanted to be my friend.
vendeurfrancais Sep 6th 2011 2:17AM
@eregos.
i was being kinda sarcastic, but the abilities really aren't that different, starfall is like a beefed up version of starshards, and they got it at the same time as my priest lost her racial.
calling them both starfall was an attempt to draw a parallel between the two abilities.
CDave Sep 6th 2011 10:51AM
@vendeurfrancais
Funny that you mention that, because Starfall was an ability belonging to the Priestess of the Moon in Warcraft 3