Well, let me give the following caveats: 1) My main spec is Holy, and I only occasionally go Shadow. And, I can’t access the Armory from work, so I can’t look at your stats/gear or mine (Kene on Cairne).
As far as gemming, there seem to be two or three schools of thought. For both Disc/Holy, lots of people recommend gemming for straight Intelligence. This is pretty much what I do. That boosts your mana pool (mine is over 30k), your crit (I think I’m around 30%), and your mana regen.
For Shadow (and maybe Disc), I think it’s common to gem for Spellpower. Holy priests don’t usually gem for SP because we get an SP bonus from Spirit.
For Holy, many players gem for Haste. I think I may gradually exchange some of my +Int gems for +haste over time, because while I almost never get low on mana, I do sometimes land a big heal a fraction of a second late.
As Disc/Shadow, I definitely would not stack Spirit. If your mana pool and mp5 are satisfactory, I would probably go for spellpower. If you’re lacking mana, go +Int.
Sounds like I need Int and MP5 then – currently I have 0 mp5 unless my trinket procs! I’m surprised I haven’t been OOM more often in random heroics – maybe I’m just getting lucky and pulling lots of overgeared tanks. And yeah, I know the pain of a prayer of healing landing just a fraction too late – I never cast greater heal, though – it’s usually bubble (instant), mending (instant), the quick one (flash? or is that the pally one), and of course penance. Renew on the lock if he’s tapping while we move between groups of trash. I do the same in PvP, but I still can’t survive a well-geared rogue stun-lock or a big red raging warrior who’s spinning around and can’t be feared, though that’s probably because I’m too slow to hit Pain Suppression.
I plan to level quite a bit through the DF, though I want to quest quite a bit as well; this is my first Horde toon, so it’ll be fun doing different quests for once… I doubt I’ll spend too much time in BGs, as I don’t really enjoy healing them. Like you said, #1 target. I *do *enjoy BGs on my gnome rogue though
On a slightly different note: is it just me, or is there an overabundance of Priests in this thread?
Disc priest healing is all about shields. You want to gem enough Int in order for Rapture to return (at least) the mana you spent on casting it. PW:S costs 23% of priest base mana, which at level 80 for a priest is 3863, so 888 mana, but Soul Warding reduces this by 15% and Mental Agility reduces another 10% to 666 mana per PW:S cast. In order for 2.5% of your mana pool to be equal to 666 mana, you need 26640 mana, which is easy to get.
After you have enough Intellect for that, gemming, IMO becomes more complicated. It really depends on what you find your role to be and what spells you are casting a lot. Borrowed Time makes Haste a very devalued stat for Disc Priests, because when you cast with Borrowed Time up it is very easy to hit the soft haste cap. Spellpower is always a useful stat, and unlike the Holy spec, you get no spellpower from Spirit, so it is all dependent on the spellpower you have on gear or gem for. Spirit, because of the lack of receiving the double bonus of spellpower and regen (it’s only regen for Disc priests) is also undervalued, and you will find more regen on mp5 items than straight Spirit items.
However, if you dual spec Shadow, and share gear between the specs, then you need to focus on equivalent points to spellpower. Basically, a lot of shadow priest theorycrafting revolves around a term called pseudopower where every stat is converted to pseudopower. 1 pseudopower = 1 spellpower = .98haste = .6spirit = .4*critical strike rating. So, usually you gem Runed red gems for red sockets, Reckless orange gems for yellow sockets, and Purified purple gems for the 2 blue sockets you need to activate your meta. These gems all work for Disc as well, though you will be working with far less Intellect than you would if you gemmed for it. I suggest you gem like this for both specs in the pieces that you share between specs, and when you pick up healing only pieces, that you gem Intellect in those pieces. 26.6k mana is fairly easy to reach, so I would not worry too much about Int unless you don’t ever plan on going Shadow or have sets for both specs. Sorry if this is an overload of information, I just love the class and am dual spec’d Disc/Shadow on my priest. Let me know if you have any other questions, and I will do my best to help.
ETA: Just looked at your armory. Replace all Spirit gems in your Disc gear with either Royal Dreadstones or Dazzling Eye of Zul (if you want to keep the socket boni) or with Brilliant King’s Amber or Luminous Ametrines if you don’t care about the boni. Otherwise, you seem fine.
It does indeed Tantrum (just like his ability in Ulduar) on a train set and it is awesome.
I started a DK. I think today I may go learn mining, since I have a good map of Copper, Tin, and Iron nodes. However, got lots to do in Outland quests first. Anyone levelled a DK with a Blood-Tank build? My Blood DPS build is awesomely surviving everything they can throw at him (facing down up to 4-5 mobs equal level) and it’s so much fun! Tank I gues would be a little les damage, but it’s mostly the same abilities at this point anyway, right?
I leveled my DK as Unholy, but overall the abilities are exactly the same as the main difference is the spec. Any DK is incredibly overpowered until they reach their mid-70s, and even then they are extremely powerful. With the ease of leveling via the RFD, especially as a tank, I figure you should have no problem with a pure Blood tanking build, as your DPS will still be decent, easily enough to get through quests and you’ll be able to solo most group quests (oh Death Strike, how great you are). Good luck and enjoy the awesomeness of the DK, the class that broke the game!
Just noticed that my post about shadow priest pseudopower (PP) is misleading.
Spirit is converted to PP by multiplying it’s value by .6, and crit rating by .4, and haste by .98. They are not equal to 1 pseudopower, despite my equal signs. Sorry for any confusion.
At least a Train Set stops making noise after a couple minutes. I’m guessing that everybody in Dalaran who has one of these must have had them out, which is why the whining was going non-stop and I couldn’t get away from it without completely leaving Dalaran. Surely Blizzard wouldn’t make a pet that never shuts up and broadcasts its vocalizations over the entire city?
Then again, maybe this is Blizzard’s way of “encouraging” people to stop idling in Dalaran and turning the place into a lag pit
You get 20k xp from that quest and level 70->71 requires 1.5 million, so 1%(well 1.3%) sounds about right.
So far you been spoiled by the super enhanced leveling speed for levels 1-70, now that you’ve hit level 70 you’re back to the normal level speed. Playtime is over, welcome to the real game.
And no, don’t even think about leveling by grinding, there are so many quests and the quest flow and rewards are so good in Northrend that you’d be doing yourself a huge disservice by not questing.
Yeah, unfortunately once you hit 70 the experience gain goes way down (or rather, the amount you need per level goes way up).
If you can get into any instance groups, you’ll get more. Be sure to pick up the quests before you go in (if you’ve been doing Coldarra, you should have at least one or two for the Nexus). Have you tried out the Dungeon Finder yet?
I did once (dungeon finder) and I have 3 quests which are dungeons right now, but I’m a little leery, because not everyone I join with understands my problem (the dementia) and that I can’t do much more than stand there and hack and slash, because I don’t “get” what a tank’s supposed to do or the strategy.
Guess that’s what’s taking me so long to level, huh?
