Spiritual Guidance: Finishing off 75 - 80

Every Sunday (usually), Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder ofPlusHeal, a new healing community for all restorative classes. This week Matticus is going to look at the final 5 levels from 75 to 80!

When I finished off Grizzly Hills, I was a few bars into 75. To be fair, I did run a few normal instances to knock out the quests that were within them. In this week's post, I'll give you a quick glance of the last areas and what you can start working on once you reach 80 (such as instances and gearing for raids).

Zones of interest

Zul'Drak – Priests will have a field day in this zone. On one side, you're going up against Scourge forces trying to take over the Troll capital. On the other side, there's renegade Trolls running loose. Your Shackle Undead is going to come in great use here if find yourself getting overrun and overwhelmed.

Sholazar Basin – It seems as though no matter what you do, you just can't get rid of Nessingwary. Get ready for more exotic animals to kill. Note that flightmaster does not become available until after you do a few of the early quests. A plane can't fly until you get the parts for it to become operational again.

At level 77, you'll get access to Cold Weather Flying. In order to continue leveling, you're going to need it for certain areas in Storm Peaks and Icecrown. You won't have to complete an extensive chain in order to learn it anymore. There's a Cold Weather Flying trainer in Krasus' Landing in Dalaran who will gladly teach you this ability for a mere 1000g (depending on your reputation).

Storm Peaks – If you're not into Inscription, be sure to do this zone! The Sons of Hodir are the only faction in Northrend to offer shoulder enchants! If there's a quest chain to do in the entire game, I believe it's the one in this zone. I really loved the storyline and the Norse references and it's a big treat whether you're into the lore side of things or not.

Icecrown – Welcome to Icecrown. The lair of the Lich King is home to monstrosities that players could only dream of. He certainly does have quite the army at his disposal. The Argent Crusade have set up a camp towards the south east part of the zone and that's where most players will be starting from.

Skills

At 75, we get access to a new Shadow spell called Mind Sear. Check out Alex's post for more information on this new baseline ability.

At level 80, we also get Divine Hymn. Haven't tried it out yet extensively. It looks like a lot of fun to use in PvP.

Professions

Start working on your professions now that you're 80. You may have to resort to farming them on your own (dual spec can't come soon enough). The auction house has some ridiculous prices up there right now. 

Now what?

Congratulations on reaching level 80! For the PvE players, the next step is to run a few instances and start gearing yourself up for Naxxramas and Obsidian Sanctum! Here's a few items of interest and where to get them from:

Gloves of the Time Guardian

These gloves would be something for early Priests to look at. All you need to do is run Caverns of Time: Stratholme and complete the quest Chromie gives you (A Royal Escort). If you're lucky, a Soul Preserver might drop which will help ease any mana woes you may have.

Moonshroud Robe

Tailors can create this epic level robe (which are extremely expensive). Run Utgarde Pinnacle and accept the quest (Junk in my Trunk) to get a Bauble-Woven Gown instead if you can't afford it.

Aurora Slippers

Here's another (relatively) cheap blue you can pick up. See if you can sweet talk a tailor to craft this for you and parting with one of their Moonshrouds.

Instances?

To fresh 80s, I strongly suggest staying away from the Occulus and from Halls of Lightning for a while until you start accumulating better items. Both of those instances are no joke and aren't the most forgiving. Replace any final green pieces you have from quest rewards or crafted items and you should be in decent shape. I found heroic Gundrak to be challenging as well (that snake boss and his wraps are intensely annoying). The last boss in Old Kingdom (Ahn'kahet) is going to put many healers to the test.

Try your hand at heroic Nexus or Utgarde Keep first and gauge your ability in there.

Quick tip for Ahn'kahet

On the last boss, just before he triggers his Insanity spell, have your group stack on each other. When they become hostile, blow a Psychic Scream and run in the opposite direction. Keep your Shield and Renew up on yourself. The idea here is to not DPS the mobs on your own. It's going to punish your mana too severely. Stay alive as much as you can and kite them around the entire room. Buy the rest of your party enough time for them to kill their ads and get to yours. Conserve your mana and keep fearing when the ads get close to you.

You're going to get frustrated. You're not as geared as you'd like to be and both normal difficulty and heroic difficulty instances are going to continue to be trouble for you. My advice is to stick with it. I spent 3 hours wiping on Heroic Halls of Lightning after dinging level 80 just hours earlier. It can be done. Bring pots, use consumables, and pay attention to everything. It's harder because you're not familiar with boss abilities. Once you get the hang of that, it's one less issue to worry about. So stay with it!

Spiritual Guidance: Wrath Priest leveling guide from 70 to 75

Every Sunday (usually), Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder ofPlusHeal, a new healing community for all restorative classes. This week Matticus is going to look at the introductory zones of 70 to 75!

Welcome to Northrend! Ready to take on Arthas? Here is a quick primer on the road to 80. For part 1, we'll look at an example leveling spec (which isn't Shadow), early spells, different zones, and some tips.

Spec

My personal spec of choice has always been to go a combination of Holy and Discipline. I can still maintain a decent pace soloing and I can still remain viable in instance healing. Believe me, as a non-Shadow Priest leveling, there will never be a shortage of players looking for healers for an instance.

The one I picked for leveling from 70 is a pseudo-hybrid 31/27/3 build.

Highlights

Power Infusion – Haste every 2 minutes. Keep this up as often as possible.

Surge of Light – Free Smite (or Flash Heal). Watch for the proc and use it according to your situation. Full health? Use it on a Smite. Took some damage? Slap on a Flash Heal. 

Spirit Tap – Minimization of downtime. This skill is virtually essential in order to reduce the amount of drinking to do.

DPS Method

Cast your Power Word: Shield up before you open fire. Remember that Holy Fire is a 1.5 second cast when talented. Open up with that spell first, follow up with a combination ofMind Blasts and Smites. Keep doing this until the target you're hitting reaches ~3000 health. Finish it off with a Smite and an Shadow Word: Death. If it still has health remaining, tap yourHoly Nova once or twice to make sure it stays down.

Against multiple mobs, keep your Shield up as often as you can. Focus down one mob at a time. If you notice your health getting lose, use instant spells like Prayer of Mending and Renew to keep yourself up. The goal isn't to DPS all the mobs down as fast as possible. It's to go at it slowly and surely while keeping yourself up. You want to try to outlast the mobs as much as you can. If you have Super Mana Potions lying around, don't hesitate to bust one. Your Shadowfiend's a great tool as it can help provide a small burst of damage and provide you with more mana.

Preparation

Stock up on some Pugnant Seal Whiskey from the local Inn. About 80 is a good number. This is also a good time to use up any stockpiles of Spell damage food that you might continue to have. Super Mana Potions are nice to have in case you need mana in a pinch. Check out WoW Insider's guide to preparing for Wrath with consumables.

Zones of Interest

Check the guide to get to Northrend!

Borean Tundra – Accessible via the Stormwind Harbor for Alliance and the zeppelin from Durotar. It's possible to navigate from Borean Tundra and Howling Fjord without resorting to flying mounts of a continent-wide trek. You get introduced to Malygos. Give Nexus a shot (after you do the various quests in the region to gain access to further Nexus-related quests).

Howling Fjord – Accessible via Menethil Harbor for Alliance and the zeppelin from the Undercity. Utgarde Keep is the first instance you can enter. Don't forget to check out the walkthrough!

Dragonblight – At around 71 or 72, Dragonblight becomes appealing. Most players I've spoken with opted to go to the other introductory zone (Borean Tundra or Howling Fjord depending on which they did first). I suggest diving into Dragonblight as soon as you are almost done the introduction zone. Do the chain quests. Epic cinematic is epic.

Grizzly Hills - Located on the eastern side of Northrend and is a zone above Howling Fjord. You'll run into the Westfall camp here at some point. If you've run Shadowfang Keep before, you'll encounter an old friend.

Getting to Dalaran

Unlike Shattrath City, players can no longer simply ride into a neutral capital. There's a anattunement like quest. There's a variety of NPCs that can port players to Dalaran. You can only get this quest when you're level 74. On the other hand, you can also pay off a Mage or a Warlock to send you to Dalaran. Alternatively, you can get higher level guildies to queue for a Battleground from Dalaran and then AFK out (which should work at any level).

For Alliance – Magister Dath'omere (Valiance Keep, Borean Tundra), Baron von Stromhearth (Valgarde, Howling Fjord) and Magistrix Haelenai (Amberpine Lodge, Grizzly Hills).

For Horde – Image of Archmage Aethas Sunreaver (Agmar's Hammer, Dragonblight). There's undoubtedly similar NPCs in the respective Horde camps in the different zones. I just don't know the name of them since I'm Alliance (cue chorus of boos).

Skills

At 71, you learn Inner Fire at level 71. It's the only skill you learn at this level. It's entirely up to you if you decide to boat back to Stormwind or Ironforge to train it. I strongly suggest no if you're bent on hitting 80. I trained my skills at every second level. Besides, Holy Fire is the first DPS spell that gains a new rank (at 72).

For 74, you gain new ranks of Mind Blast, Mind Flay, Smite, and Devouring Plague.

General Leveling Tips

If you want to level as fast as humanly possible, you'll need to streamline your game plan.

• Don't sightsee. I know it's Northrend and it's all new. But if you don't care about the experience and just want to level to 80, you have to go straight from quest giver to objective.
• Do a bunch of quests at a time. Do all the quests at your local quest hub before going back to the hub. You waste less traveling time going back and forth in order to turn in individual quests.
• Forget professions. Leave those to 80. If you're a gatherer, you'll want your Cold Weather Flying training anyway (because it makes it easier). If you're a crafter, hold off some as raw materials are insanely expensive (a stack of Cobalt Ore is going for 300g. Ridiculous!)

Spiritual Guidance: The 20 - 40 grind

Every Sunday (usually), Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Your host is now Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of PlusHeal, a new healing community for all restorative classes. For the next few weeks (unless it's something game breaking), Matt will do his best to guide you through the Priest leveling process!

Congratulations! You've made it past the initial hump of the first 20 levels in the game! Great job getting this far. I personally know of a few players who gave on the way to 20 because it was "too hard". If you're on a PvP server, break out the stress ball. Be prepared to get rocked on the road to end game (especially as a Priest).

Location, location, location!

Where do you level at this point? When I finished wrapping up Loch Modan and Westfall, it made sense for me to hoof it all the way to Redridge Mountains and start all the quests in Lakeshire (as Alliance). Horde Priests will probably want to visit Stonetalon and Ashenvale before bouncing to Hillsbrad and Arathi Highlands. After that, I hopped down to Duskwood and bounced back and forth between that and Wetlands in order to push 30.

After that, a zone of interest is the race track in Thousand Noodles Needles. You can start leveling up with Nesingwary's quests in Stranglethorn. Arathi, Desolace, Hillsbrad and Alterac Mountains will be other level 30+ zones that you can cut through.

Highlights

And when you do push 30, look what you have access to! You can pick yourself a brand spankin' new mount to play with. Remember, as this is your first mount, don't expect to be kicking up dust and smoke and leaving opposing faction players in your dust.

Leveling Toys

Level 22: Perhaps the first fun spell Priests get is Mind Vision. Honestly, you're not going to get a whole lot of practical use. It does have near-unlimited range and it's great for finding the flag carrier in Warsong Gulch. Shadow also awards a new rank of Mind Blast whereas Holy offers more with new ranks of Smite, Resurrection, and Heal.

Level 24: We get access to Mana Burn! This is one of our staple PvP spells against casters at the end game level. For now, it won't serve much of a purpose as it's useless against mobs without mana. Even then, against mobs with mana, you're better off brute forcing them with Smite and other such spells. Holy Fire rank 2 is up for training from the Holy Tree. Won't useful yet until the expansion.

Level 26: Nothing special aside from new ranks for Flash Heal, Renew, and Shadow Word: Pain.

Level 28: A spell I failed to highlight is Mind Flay. Great spell for Shadow Priests everywhere. It's a channeling spell so you have to sit still while you use it. I suspect it's a primary form of DPS for our leveling Shadowy brethren. Regardless, rank 2 is right here for you to snap up.

Level 30: You get to buy a new mount! Whoo hoo! You also get your first AoE heal in the form of Prayer of Healing. It's a great spell to use if your entire party took a large hit. Expect to use it frequently in certain end game situations. Talents like Holy Reach and Healing Prayers will will affect both the range and the cost of the spell.

The Shadow tree gives you two new spells in the form of Mind Control certain mobs and even players. Although you can't use their spells and abilities, you can still throw them off of cliffs (very handy in Arathi Basin). The second spell you get is a protective ward called Shadow Protection which grants you the ability to partially or outright resist incoming Shadow based damage and effects.

Depending on how you talent, you can also snap up Divine Spirit which will help your mana regeneration rate slightly. It's not worth getting at this point, however.

Level 32: Abolish Disease another tool in our restorative arsenal. We can use it to get rid of certain diseases from players. Coupled with Dispel, the only types of debuffs we can't remove are curses and poisons.

Level 34: This level marks the last time we get to train Heal. It also marks the first time we get access to Levitate: A fun spell that lets us float off the ground.

Level 36: Your Dispel just got a whole lot more uber. Instead of removing 1 effect, now it will remove 2 effects at the same time. Otherwise, your Power Word: Fortitude and Shield gets a slight boost. Shadow side sees an increase to Mind Flay.

Level 38: Nothing flashy at level 38 except for updated versions of Flash Heal, Renew, and Smite.

Level 40: You've finally graduated to level 40. Now you can start using the big boy heal in the form of Greater Heal. Get ready to used this spell often as you progress throughout the game. Inner Fire, Mana Burn, and Shackle Undead get slightly stronger (and you are remembering to hit yourself with Inner Fire, right?). Mind Blast, Fade, and Prayer of Healing round out the rest of your upgrades (I guess there's Divine Spirit rank 2).

You're a little over the halfway mark. I've found the 40 – 60 grind to be the worse. Just hang in there. You're almost at the end.

Shameless blog plug

There's not a whole lot of Priest blogs out there and I pay a lot of close attention to the ones that are just starting out. With that, I wanted to point Priests to World of Snarkcraft. It's run by a pair of Blood Elf Priests (Joveta and Seri). For some quick highlights, read Jov's post on Priests and Wrath where she reassures everyone that it's not going to be that bad. Seri offersa lesson on Raid Guild Apping 101.