by vonkaar » Tue Oct 19, 2004 8:56 am
I think I solo as good as anyone... as far as difficulty is concerned. I haven't seen a single class that can solo SINGLE targets as well. Aten's warrior is pretty fucking scary about chewing through multiple enemies... but I think I might do better against single targets... although, my downtime is probably greater due to mana regen.
But... other than warrior, I am pretty sure that I am about as capable as can be for solo'ing single targets. For instance, I was recently killing those drywhisker guys near Hammerfall in Arathi. The camp was 'shared' between a lvl 40 nigh-elf druid and myself. Maybe it can be chalked up to the typical 'alliance players suck' response, but I was clearing my mobs (2 levels higher than me, 4 levels lower than him) a lot faster than he was. I basically ran 2/3rds of the camp whiel he stuck it out in the remaining third.
I read a lot of discussion on which talent page to go with... some say Shadow is the best... others say Holy... some make hybrids... others stress discipline. Personally, I can't see anything in Holy that makes me even slightly interested. The Discipline tree has a few bits that are *very* nice... The holy word (power word? wtf): Shield set is crucial. This is the priest rune that lasts for 30 seconds. The talent is a 3-part set that decreases the 'decay' time by 5 seconds each. So, with 3 points in it, the rune lasts for 30 seconds and I can recast it every 15. This *does* save lives and is reason enough to invest in the discipline tree. The other nice one is the holy word: fortitude set. It is a 2 part that increases the effectiveness of my sta buff... by 15 and 30 percent each. So, my level 34 sta buff is 42 instead of 32... nice 100hp difference for only 2 talent points.
Shadow is where most priests like to dump their points. There are only a few 'great' ones in there... but the rest are pretty nice, especially if you PVP a lot. The main one I like is the first one, 'spirit tap'. This is amazing for solo'ing because it will go off after every kill. Basically, it doubles your spirit for 15 seconds when you get the final blow in on a mob. The lame 'no mana regen for 5 seconds after cast' *can* really hurt the benefits of this talent, but it's still great. After a big kill that would leave me low on mana, spirit-tap combined with drinking is usually enough to get me FM within 10 seconds. Another cool bit.. it goes off after EVERY kill. If I'm LM, I can target a 'rat', shoot it with my wand and get the 15 seconds of 310spirit really quick. That's a great feature.
The other brilliant shadow talent is Mind Flay. Can't praise this one enough. It's totally changed the way I solo.
The fun PVP ones are the mana burn booster... decreases the cast time on mana burn and the one that can (10% chance) stun the opponent for 3 seconds. It seems that the priests I've dueled (only 2 and they both sucked) didn't know about these two talents =p.
Soooo anyway... priests are a lot of fun to solo with.
The DOWNSIDE (so far) is grouping.
I'm sure that I'll have a lot more fun when I'm equal level to the groups I've been in lately...
The other day, I was 35&36 in a group with a 52druid, 50rogue and 48 warrior. I was able to keep people healed well enough... but the 2 dungeons we cleared were waaaaaaaay too high for me. Zul'Farrak and Uldaman. Since I couldn't cast on almost anything (rare mobs here and there in Uld, NOTHING in ZF though)... my job was basically defined as, staring at green bars all day. I had to hang way in the back, against the walls so I didn't range-agro... but even that wasn't enough all-to-often. If we got swarmed by a bunch of non-taunted mobs, they almost always went after me. Sometimes I was able to get away with a fade, but it didn't always help.
Regardless... it's pretty nice being able to contribute to a group that's a lot higher than me. When we went to ZF, we went with another high-level warrior who wasn't guilded and he had no complaints about my healing in ZF. So... I think I do a fine job, but it's easy to get distracted when you are bored. I'm pretty sure that this feeling will pass as I get closer in level to the people I group with.
In short...
Priests are great solo'ers... maybe even the best. They are critical in groups, despite what so many others on the whining WoW boards say. The only problem I can see is boredom. If you are nuking a lot and contributing to the battle, you'll have fun... if the mobs are too high and you can't do anything but keep your party alive... you'll be bored.
Gaazy wrote:Now vonk on the other hand, is one of the most self absorbed know it alls in my memory of this site. Ive always thought so, and I still cant understand why in gods name he is here