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The latest patch 5.4 newsSpiritual 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 3 of 4)
Ylspeth Sep 6th 2011 12:43AM
I remember when I was required to spec into Improved Divine Spirit because Circle of Healing was considered near useless (and that was without the cool down it has now.)
also had to spec into Improved Wands because you had to wand while waiting for your mana to regenerate.
Remember the original Divine Hymn? It basically caused the mobs around you to stop attacking for a bit but gave your party a 40% damage reduction against those same mobs?
Congratulations, you just gave every monster in the room Pain Suppression! Whee. I only got to use that spell once. I was threatened with a guild kick if I ever used it again. lol
Mogster Sep 6th 2011 12:43AM
Funny you should mention Wand Spec. I actually specced into that for a time at level 60 because it was incredibly useful for one particular raid boss. The other option was Force of Will which increased your chance to resist fear by 15%. Sounds good, right? Not if you were fighting Onyxia! Back then, she would wipe aggro after every fear, and you happened to resist it you immediately became her target. I'm not sure how many times I wiped the raid by resisting the fear and getting half the raid breathed on. Finally I said screw it, I'm going wand spec.
dba22 Sep 6th 2011 1:21AM
Wand specialization... it was actually good for early level combat. Up until around level 25 or so, a disc priest with a wand could keep up with most other classes in dps. Low level wands put out much higher damage proportionally (at least they did at the time, not sure about now). It was boring to wand instead of cast different spells, but it meant all that mana could go to quickly healing back up after fights instead of eating/drinking.
WolfC Sep 6th 2011 1:24AM
Anyone remember when spell power was split into healing and spell power? I remember having tons of healing power because the only way for a priest to get into a 5man (well before LFG system) was healing it in holy. Then when I wanted to level I would have no spell power for doing any dps with all my fancy healing blues.
Talk about when gear meant something too, i couldn't even roll offset on most items for shadow because bag space was at a premium and dps players on my server always needed them in really hard and rarely completed instances.
Remember when instances could take all day if u had a really crappy but determined team? With no LFG, all u had was your server...finding a full group was a miracle. Healers and tanks formed their own clicks. I remember at one point having a 6 awesome tanks on my flist and dpsers would actually pst me to start groups and use my contacts and healing skills!
O how I don't miss a thing.
Skarlet Sep 6th 2011 1:33AM
I remember making a priest in vanilla. Being a new player, I wasn't much bothered by difficult leveling because I didn't know any better. (Leveled my shaman restoration before dungeon finder was a budding thought in the developers' minds, for example) But by lvl 12 on the priest I was in tears! /cast power word shield, buffing spell that I can't remember, dmg spell then WAND! (Don't forget your racial ability or you just might die!) Wanding was THE only way to go for the first who-knows-how-many levels. I never found out.
Over the years, I tried time and time again to level a priest never getting beyond lvl 42. Finaly, in Cata, I'm proud to call myself priest! She's my main and the fun I'm having now makes me curse my lack of determination before. :)
Luis Alluren Sep 6th 2011 1:40AM
look on the bright side: at least, after so many years, you didn't name your priest something in the likes of "ihealyiu", "priestdk" or "holyfart"
milka.hanhela Sep 6th 2011 1:52AM
Yeah, I remember back in my day PW:Shield used to last for 30 seconds.
...wait, that wasn't so long ago, was it...
Fletcher Sep 6th 2011 6:06AM
Leni Riefenstahl is apparently reduced to posting spam ads on unrelated blogs. How the mighty have fallen! I can't say that this is displeasing - though the fact that an undead Nazi filmmaker has internet access at all is troubling.
I wonder which telecom company they use in Hell?
Fletcher Sep 6th 2011 6:18AM
A thousand curses upon you, inferior comment system! This was meant, of course, for the comment *below* this one.
Sarine Sep 6th 2011 3:13AM
The very act of leveling at all was a pain! I remember quitting my priest at 12 in stupid Westfall because I couldn't kill a thing and kept dying. Finally someone crafted me a wand, mailed it to me and I could finally level past that wretched level! She's been my main since, but it took me a good year to get past 12....
adrian_mott Sep 6th 2011 4:39AM
I remember back in the good ol' days.
I had the enviable honour of being the only dwarven priest in our guild, so i always had a permanant raid spot, especially for Onyxia.
I had 1 job, keep fear ward on the tank at all times, lest she face ppl in the face. Then blizzard went it gave fear ward to all the scrubs, and ruined it for everyone!
silks Sep 6th 2011 5:13AM
Wand Specialisation rocked!
Al Sep 6th 2011 5:19AM
.. Are you pitching a sitcom?
bodiandras Sep 6th 2011 6:07AM
Back in Vanilla my guild let me DPS with my priest sometimes. I had rank 10 pvp gear with Anathema. On our first Ragnaros kill in MC i was 1st in damage. Shadow priest were imba at that time. Also +15 % shadow damage to our locks was awesome. Second in damage was a lock who did the sucubus sacrifice and resurrect trick to get +40% shadow damage i think.
Fletcher Sep 6th 2011 5:42AM
This post is making me want to pick my disc priest up again. I started her shortly after the pre-Cata changes, the ones that gave us the new talent trees but before the old world actually changed. She's been level 67 for the longest time now because I finished all the Mag'har quests in Nagrand and couldn't quite bring myself to farm ogres for her talbuk (it'd be talbuk-enabled character number four). But now my guild has the rep grind buff it might not hurt so much!
EaterOfBirds Sep 6th 2011 5:42AM
i remember having to auto attack as a resto druid to proc clear casting. no wonder my druid still isnt at the cap to this day having had the char since vanilla. man our talent trees were awful ^ ^
alapin Sep 6th 2011 7:32AM
I will admit, I started all my chars in wrath days. I don't remember half the stuff everyone here does, but at the same time, I do remember that that benediction staff was even ludicrous at level 80. I was mad when they took out that quest for cataclysm changes because now I have all the parts to make the damn thing (took me a day of farming where the now foot path entrance to Hyjal is in Winterspring to get the second eye and one run through MC to get the first), but I can't do anything with them to get it because the quest is gone.
I blame my lack of love of mouseover macros for my inability to heal those damn ghosts running away.... >_>
Ymp Sep 6th 2011 9:35AM
This is pretty recent, since the first time I rolled a priest was on WotLK. I dual-specced as disc for healing dungeons and shadow for solo play. Every couple of levels I'd run to the trainer to learn new spell ranks. The trouble was, if I trained the new spells while in my shadow spec, my tool bar on my disc spec would not be automatically updated with the new spell ranks. It took me a loooooong while to figure that out but until then I was busting my ass out healing Trial of the Champion with downranked heals (in some cases as much as 2 or 3 ranks below max) and thinking "WHY IS THIS SO HARD???"
Amazingly, heals were so overpowered at that point of the expansion that I actually managed to kill bosses even with that crippled tool bar, and once I figured out what i was doing wrong I was drunk with power with my 5k flash heals and renews that healed for a lot more than the 400 health per tick I was used to.
Nowadays your spells get buffed every time you gain a level with no need to run to a trainer; I remember back then I had to re-think my spell priorities all the time because you would only get new ranks for some spells (say, greater heal) every 5 or 6 levels.
Ylspeth Sep 6th 2011 11:56AM
LOL. I forgot all about spell ranks.
I did almost the exact same thing, except in my case, it was Holy Fire and Smite. While I healed all the time, thus knowing to maintain my spell bar, I seldom had the opportunity to DPS.
I did not notice until one day we really needed everyone in the raid to dps to beat the enrage timer.
Holy Fire! *pitiful plink*
Smite * even more pitiful plink*
Oops.
I ended up wanding for the rest of the fight. How I miss wand specialization. (I misremembered it as improved wands in my first post.)
Artitian Sep 6th 2011 2:31PM
Power Word Shield used to be the bane of my existence as Pally Tank back in the day. You wouldn't notice it at first, but further and further along in the fight you'd have absolutely no mana left. Stupid, you gotta get hit to get mana mechanic.