WORST PRIEST EVER and leveling the Shammy. . .

I will be the first to say I am not an expert at playing every class. I know a little bit about each one, and I could probably do ok in any given role with any given class (cept rogues and hunters, no interest there). With that having been said, over the weekend, I witnessed the most pathetic display of ineptitude from a rather surprising source.

Now, I have a number of thoughts on shadow priest healing. I used to be very down on tanking for them in TBC. They don't generally have the tools of a pure healing build. However, having leveled a priest (both holy and shadow, thanks RAF), I have dispelled some misconceptions I had. First of all, while the holy tree makes priests better at their job, the main abilities it adds are increased spell power, efficiency and more AoE heals. Because there is no longer +healing, the spellpower stacking that a shadow priest will be doing already will give them sufficiently strong heals. All priests, regardless of spec, will have access to flash heal, greater heal, renew and holy nova. That should be enough tools to keep a group up in a normal instance setting. This is important to note because of the epic fail of the priest in our group.

I have been leveling my shammy with the intention of getting him to 80 and having a strong caster DPS/healer hybrid option. I also considered a shadow priest for this, and to a degree still do, but in all honesty, I like the shammy more. Not that I think the shammy will be any more or less effective, I just enjoy him more. Anyways, one of my guildies (Nymeros, my pally tanking big brother from Ours is the fury), wanted to knock out TBC heroics for the achievement, and thought bringing me along for gear would be helpful for me.

Now, I leveled up to 68 on friday which left me a couple hours till I needed to leave to go see the gf. I let Nym know that I hit the level and he asked if anyone else wanted to go to join in the fun. One of our hunters wanted to go, our GM wanted to bring one of his many alts, and the hunter wanted to bring one of his friends, the subject of this post. So initially, we set to tackle some heroics with a group consisting of my 68 shammy specced resto (I do have a resto set, its ok relative to my level/area), an 80 pally tank (raid geared, 32k HP), a 70 rogue, an 80 hunter, and an 80 shadow priest.

Now, druid healing has gotten me in some bad habits for shammy healing that I have to work on. Constantly spamming lesser healing wave runs me out of mana pretty quick. With my druid, I was constantly casting something on just about everyone, and I had the mana regen to do it. With my shammy, my heals are bigger, and riptide/earth shield is generally good till multi-pulls. With that having been said, TBC heroics were a monster in their time and the damage was just too much for me to keep up with.

Now, our DPS should have been enough to just burn through things with minimal damage. Two 80 DPS characters, both capable of AoE should have been burning things down left and right. Except the priest seemed to be just sitting there. We got her on a damage meter for one fight doing 741 DPS. I don't think I saw her mind sear once. So since I was being overwelmed trying to heal the group, we asked if she could throw out some heals. Her reply: "I don't heal, I am DPS". Not only did she refuse to heal, she was making the pally tank rez me when I was killed between pulls. Um, you are a PRIEST. The difference between you and a warlock or mage is they CAN'T heal, you are just worthless and don't want to. Long story short, Art brought his raid healing, skull pounding pally Ruhtra, we kicked her ass to the curb and powered through shattered halls, blood furnace, and ramps on heroic. I died a bunch, but that's what level 68's do in heroics.

Speaking of the shammy, I have to admit, they are a hell of a lot of fun. Spirit wolves are like the best leveling ability ever. I managed to hit 69 last night, and the combo of rested XP and two pieces of BoA gear make leveling not so bad. I did make a choice I semi regretted. In doing the intro quests in Borean Tundra I passed on a mace with int, MP5 and SP for the melee DPS mace. My thoughts were that I spend more time leveling than instancing, so the melee DPS one helps more. Turns out its the only quest reward mace with those stats. Not a huge deal I guess in the scheme of things. Once I get to level 70ish, I'd like to take a look at where my SP sits in my resto set and see how well I can do in UK. Maybe Nexus as well as I recall their being a good amount of quest rewards for there.

My current plan (which is always subject to change): level as enhancement with resto for instances (or if they're looking for DPS, stay enhancement). My current professions are skinning and herbalism. Now, my mage almost has enough mats to get into northrend levels of inscription and if I recall correctly, the useful crafted mail runs out around mid 70's. My intention is to switch my skinning to alchemy around mid 70's and level alchemy and potentially have two alchemists. I think the never ending health and mana potions are just too good a boon to pass up both for leveling and instances, not to mention trinkets, flasks and transmutes. From a class standpoint at 80 I am switching from enhancement to elemental. For a while, until I get +hit pieces, my resto and elemental gear will probably be almost the same. I have gone the melee DPS route and I honestly just don't like it. Let me qualify that statement: love it for leveling, hate it in instances. I so much prefer just standing in the back blasting away.

Anyways, I'm posting on sunday because I'm working on sunday which sucks, but I had a pretty good weekend, and hope everyone else did as well. . .