Priest @ 80!

Last Sunday I managed to hit level 80 on my Priest, which wasn't that hard considering I was only about 6 bars short. I discovered a few interesting things about leveling this character, which I leveled pretty fast (probably faster than any other character I leveled from 70 to 80).

1. The LFG tool is great for supplementing XPs assuming you are willing to go as a healer.

2. XPs gained from dungeons in the midrange aren't necessarily worth it because of just how short those instances can be. DK is an example of that...a single run through that instance may net you only about 1 bar of XP. As a result, questing is actually faster in some of these instances.

3. A combination of cherry-picking quest lines, skipping annoying quests, and supplementing with instances is definitely the best option for leveling.

4. It's also important to try to hit quest lines that net rep rewards with the various WOLK factions. Sure you can pick up that rep later doing L80 instances and heroics, but that's pretty slow going.

Now that I've hit 80, I've started doing dailies (hodir rep is now maxed, thanks to having saved hundreds of Ulduar Relics). I've also made back around 3k of the 7k I spent on the character just through leveling. I started doing some normal L80 instances, and this time since I'd been doing instances since 80 the transition was smoother. Most of my gear was comprised of questing and instance blues, with only a few green items. I spent a few hundred gold buying a few cheap purples (an inscription offhand piece, and a pair of moonshroud gloves), both of which I got for about 100g each.

Healing as Priest is a little more interesting than Shaman, and I've had less problems with it overall. Priest has some good AOE healing spells, and a few fast-reaction spells in addition to more normal casting spells. The combination seems better to me, though I can still see the value of a shaman healer.

Sunday I spent the better part of the day doing instances and had very bad luck with getting gear. I did TOC5 non-heroic at least 9 times, nothing useful dropped it was all plate and mail gear. I then tried a few specific heroics just to see how I'd do...turns out not that bad as long as the tank was well geared. So I also started doing some random heroics which also went OK. Still, the only piece of gear I got was a pair of gloves from DK that were virtually identical to the gloves I'd paid 100g for (the difference being 1 point of spirit lower)...fuck blizzard. So while I got a lot of experience, I came up with nothing gear wise even after 6 hours.

Yesterday went better, though. I also had a bad forge of souls run which I just could not keep people alive (though we completed the instance without any wipes, during the last fight the only two alive was me and the tank by the end of it). Still I started getting some gear. I picked up T9 Shoulders, socketed it with Haste and put on the hodir shoulder enchant. I also picked up a healing staff, which replaced my mace/book combo. And I picked up a spell DPS wrist which had haste, hit, and SP which I went ahead and equipped because it was still far better than the green wrist piece I was wearing (hit be damned!). By the end of the night, my SP had gone from 1300 to 1800. My haste had gone up by over 100, and my crit from 5% to 10%. My mana pool is also now over 15k, much better than the 9k I'd been stuck at for such a long time. I'm definitely interested to see how well I perform now. Hopefully some of those fights I was barely keeping up with will be easier to heal through and I'll stop feeling so mana starved.

After that, I got into a ICC10 man with my mage, which went OK. I kept dying though, mostly due to me not really knowing the encounters well enough to predict threats in the first place. I did pick up a a nice belt which had much better stats than my old piece. I lost crit about 50 crit, but gained around 90 haste and about 70 SP in return so overall I think it was a great upgrade. My haste rating is now sitting around 550, though my base crit is now only 36%. Still, for arcane haste trumps crit so I think that's a worth while trade off.

Not sure what's happening for the rest of this week. I might be online tonight, and if I am I'll probably spend much more time in instances and doing random heroics instead of TOC 5 man. I still don't think I'm geared enough for TOC5 + ICC heroics though, so I'm a bit leery of the random. Still, I'd like to get enough badges to get my next T9 piece (probably gloves?). So we'll see.