Just started playing....

[NumberSix]

I'm on a pvp server (Magetheridon), have a level eight priest. Seem to be dying rather a lot.

Any must-have addons that'll actually work? Tried some of the ones from the addons thread, but all seem to be incompatible now.

Anyone got any good general newbie tips for me? What do I need to know?

[sprite]

Hey!

I'm not really sure how this advice will go down but..

For a newbie, a PvP server can be a little punishing a bit later. Though, you won't be a 'newbie' then, but just as a little warning. I've never played on a PvP server so the Muk guys can tell you a little more about that

That said maybe playing on a PvP server with a group of nice helpful people *looks at Muk* would be nice

WoW can get lonely by yourself. Assuming you are by yourself there

Priests are a bit squishy. Get yourself a wand and you'll make things a little better, less mana intensive. But... I only levelled one as far as ten and I got a bit bored of it :\ but it was a bit harder to level at that point than some other classes.

[Melon_Bread]

Well even on a PvP server the 1st 20 or so levels you shouldt see much PvP action.

Remember to log off in an Inn for rested bonus (increases the exp you get next time you play depending for how long it's been).

[paulamagaula]

I'd have to agree that PvP servers are a bit punishing for a first time WoW gamer. That said though, for some people PvP is the heart of the game and it might be that you're used to the PvP element in other MMOs

If you're not tied to the server in any way (other friends on there etc.) then I'd suggest moving onto Ravenholdt and joining the Muk guild there. At least until you get the hang of the game anyway. They'll give you lots of help and advice on the game itself and specifically the PvP element. Ravenholdt is an RP realm but it's not hardcore RP so if you don't like RP and you're worried about it, don't be.

It's very hard to give advice on here because there's so much to the game, you really need people on-hand while you play to answer all the little questions that pop into your head.

I'm happy for you to create a character on Draenor purely for the purpose of spamming me with questions and it may be worth getting a character to level 20 or so (doesn't take long, honest) on a Normal server then moving to PvP when you get to grips with the game itself

Good luck!

[df0]

My free tip of the day is to go to Ravenholdt and join Muk. Loads of experienced people there can and will help you with almost anything

If you wish to join Muk on Ravenholdt, add Deefnil to your Friends and I will toss you an invite.

[paulamagaula]

Failing any of that, just keep the questions coming in here as you think of them

[Nimmel]

My free tip of the day is to go to Ravenholdt and join Muk. Loads of experienced people there can and will help you with almost anything

If you wish to join Muk on Ravenholdt, add Deefnil to your Friends and I will toss you an invite.

Should you be able to face levelling up again do this, we can help you out with bags, a bit of starter cash, advice and nonsense.

Other than that get a wand from the AH as soon as possible you'll do more damage with it than your spells to begin with.

[MotiVater]

Stumbling block to Muk is that I seem to remember NumberSix is in the USA.

Priests are awesome, pile all your points in to the shadow tree while levelling (save for maybe wand spec) and you will be melting faces is no time.

[George Clooney]

Here are a few general tips that'll probably sound stupid to most people, but are easy to forget/not realise when you just start out.

- you'll want to keep all spells that buff your stats on you as much as possible. For a priest that'd be power word: fortitude, which increases your stamina. Its also important to understand what each stat does. Stamina increases your health points, intellect your mana pool, strength your melee power, spirit your health/mana regen, and agility your chance to crit/dodge. Know which ones are important to your class, and try to get gear that has them on. Again, this may sound basic, but when I first started I played a mage, and didnt really know what Arcane Intellect really did, as I didnt really know what intellect did, so I never cast it!

- Look at tradeskills as early as you can, which is generally when you leave the starting area. Read up on them, and pick the ones that you think will complement you, or go with 2 gathering ones if you want to make money. Dont forget if you take one of the crafting professions to take the relevant gathering skill that goes with it!

- Dont be afraid of the auction house. You'll get better prices usually than selling stuff to vendors, but you have to get to know what'll sell on there and what wont. Anything with the name in grey is of no use, and should be sold to a vendor, anything white can be used for something, and green or any other colour is uncommon or rarer. Its hard to make decent money when you're leveling without using the AH.

- as a magic class, get a wand! You wont do any damage with melee attacks, so this will be your backup if you run out of mana, or if you want to save mana. Get one from the AH, or make one if you take enchanting as a profession.

- as a priest, your combat should generally go along the lines of: shield up, cast shadow word pain, smite until dead, with extra shields or heals if necessary. When you get the spells, you should swap smite for mind blast, with mind flays in between (assuming you spec shadow - replace mind flay with smite if you dont). Dont try to take on anything thats more than 2 levels above you at first, try to stick to your own level if possible until you feel comfortable.

Hope some of that helps, sorry if any of it was too basic or stuff you knew.

[kitten]

- you'll want to keep all spells that buff your stats on you as much as possible. For a priest that'd be power word: fortitude, which increases your stamina.

At level 12 priests also get a spell called Inner Fire. It's only castable on yourself and increases your armour by a nice amount, which in layman's terms simply means you take less damage when something hits you. Priests don't get many ways to keep mobs away from them, especially at lower levels, so keep this up as much as possible.

[New York Mikey]

I recently started playing with a priest, up to level 30 now in a few weeks.

The best advice from above IMO is to get that decent wand as early as you can. I got mine for a quest on Darkshore at level 22 or so, and have been doing 37 DPS ever since that point. I'm still using it at level 30 as I haven't found anything better. It's called a graveyard scepter I think if you wanted to google and figure out which quest it's from. I haven't found a mace, staff or dagger that can come anywhere near it yet. Which is almost a little sad, as I'd like to do a little more damage than I am.

[Mr.Jeff]

It's amazing really how after even after 2 years we've never gotten round to doing a faq for beginners on here.

Anyway, advice:

If possible, get into the habit of looting everything to sell it off at vendors. While it gathers a small ammount of copper to start off with, it adds up later on.

Aside from picking up a wand, it's best to not spend all your cash on the auction house for the first 15 levels or so? Most of the rewards you get from quests are reasonable enough to start with. If you see something you really like though, go for it

[George Clooney]

I recently started playing with a priest, up to level 30 now in a few weeks.

The best advice from above IMO is to get that decent wand as early as you can. I got mine for a quest on Darkshore at level 22 or so, and have been doing 37 DPS ever since that point. I'm still using it at level 30 as I haven't found anything better. It's called a graveyard scepter I think if you wanted to google and figure out which quest it's from. I haven't found a mace, staff or dagger that can come anywhere near it yet. Which is almost a little sad, as I'd like to do a little more damage than I am.

Mages, Warlocks and Priests simply will not do nearly as much damage with a melee weapon as wand, as they dont really get anything added to it, as they have very little strength or attack power. This is why you'll see the dps of wands being better than equivalent level melee weapons - wands do not get any bonus from stats or attack power and as such need a higher base dps.

Technically, the highest dps weapons the the game are wands, but when you factor on the melee classes attack power and stat bonuses, you wont catch anyone doing the highest dps in the game with a wand.

[lenticular]

yeah..

http://www.thottbot.com/?i=2321

gravestone scepter, its a quest reward you can get a lvl19 (i think) if you know anyone that can help you through BFD.

theres no better wand till you hit lvl40 for a priest.

[NumberSix]

Awesome, thanks everyone. Exactly what I was looking for. I just hit level 12 and am dying a bit less now, which makes it more fun.

Back with more questions later, I'm sure

[NumberSix]

I just bought myself a wand. Excellent: I'm not getting creamed anymore.

[New York Mikey]

One more tip from me. It took me a while to realize also that you're really not supposed to explore everywhere too soon. My most frustrating afternoon with it was where I decided to go sightseeing at around level 15, and ended up in the barrens. Unfortunately, the nearest graveyard was also in the barrens, so I ended up dying about 20 times as I tried to get back to the nice, safe places. Actually, frustrating is an understatement. I nearly cancelled my sub there and then.

[NumberSix]

yeah, i did that too. Total rubbish.... would die before the hearthstone worked.

I'm loving my wand though. and all the other tips... thanks folks, I guess priests aren't so rubbish afterall

[Hardwired]

Priests are amazing fun.

The best thing to remember, is if you're in trouble you can always shield, psychic scream and run like a girl.

I'd highly recommend sticking your first talent points in Spirit Tap and Wand Specialization. It makes playing alone an awful lot easier. I did exactly that for levelling from 60-70, while keeping the rest of my build the same as I had for end-game healing.

[NumberSix]

I'd highly recommend sticking your first talent points in Spirit Tap

Took wands, but why spirit tap?

Also - can anyone point me in the direction of a good resource for learning about talent point (and how I get them), and the various professions? I've done no training in any professions just yet....

[Space Renegade Ulala]

Admittedly, I'm just parrotting what a priest-playing friend of mine said but he was always adamant that your first five points should go in Spirit Tap as well. If I understand it right, it helps bring your downtime to a minimum as you regen the mana you spent in the fight much quicker. Great for moving from enemy to enemy in fast succession instead of killing something then having to drink to recharge for the next battle. It's better for soloing than for groups, though, as it requires you to get the killing blow for the regen to work.

Um, I think!

[Nimmel]

Took wands, but why spirit tap?

For mana regeneration, when you kill a mob with spirit tap your mana regen doubles for 15 secs if you kill the mob once outside the five second rule otherwise you gain 50% either whilst casting or until you get outside the FSR. It means you have little to no down time drinking. When in the FSR you don't naturally regenerate any mana, although later on you'll pick up items that have MP5 stats on which isn't affected by the FSR.

*After casting a spell it takes 5 secs to get back to your normal mana regeneration rate.

Links below to explain the jargon, hopefully it will make it a bit clearer than my slightly muddled post!

http://www.wowwiki.com/Spirit_Tap

http://www.wowwiki.com/Formulas:Mana_Regen

http://www.wowwiki.com/MP5

Personally I'd go for something like this on the journey to 40:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=rVZZxMGdMtoo

Or this although you have a risk of greater spell resists with no shadow focus and your mind blast doesn't get any reduced cooldown but blackout is very nice to have and procs a lot:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=rVZZEMMzMtoo

Respeccing at 40 to this, as you'll want Shadow Form as soon as a possible.

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=rZZxMGdMtoot

This is also worth looking at:

http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?t...02302&sid=1

Edit: The most effective way to finish a mob outside the FSR is to wand it to death, I tended to start wanding the mob down once it had reached less than 40% HP.

Once you get mindflay your spell casting should probably be something like this:

Mind Blast -> SWP -> Mind flay x however many to get mob to 40% -> Wand. You may or may not want to start this sequence by casting a renew or Power Word Shield on yourself dependant on what mobs you're fighting.

The reason priests are so obsessed by the FSR and MP5 is that unlike other caster classes we have no other way of getting mana back other than our mana regen rate, drinking or if in combat using potions, until we get Shadow Fiend at 66 or speccing VT at 50!

Edi 452 :

Another tip is to always keep Rank 1 Psychic Scream on your bar as well as the highest rank you have currently, if you have the room to fear a mob you might as well use it and by using rank 1 of the spell you obviously save mana. The higher ranks tend to be for those "oh shit!" moments, or when you're well into the Shadow tree and killing 4 mobs at once.

[PopeSmokesDope]

I'm on a pvp server (Magetheridon), h

Change servers.

Thats the Uber server of all uber servers. MOst of the world firsts happen on that serevr and you will end up getting swamped by legions of experienced players trying to get in one of the world class guilds.

[sprite]

Hold up, NumberSix is in the US right? Presuming he means Magtheridon US, Nihilum are on the EU one

[George Clooney]

I'd still say change sever to a pve one, its much less frustrating. Unless you have a group of people that you're going to play with pretty regularly, and all level up at roughly the same speed. In which case its rather fun.

My first character that I really made an effort with (ie, leveled past 20 - a priest which I still played as my main until I stopped playing) was leveled on a pvp server, but with a group of people who I knew who were almost always on at the same time as me. It was great fun, as it made questing more exciting, yet cut down on the frustration of being jumped by a pair of people and having no chance. Most of the time, the fights were fair-ish.

[NumberSix]

Ok, I'm level 25 now.... starting to like being a priest. First 20 levels were kinda tough, but i'm starting to Kickass now so it's a bit more fun. PVP thing is fine: shield/fade/fear. Sorted.

And yep, am in the US.

[The Grand Pursuivant]

Ok, I'm level 25 now.... starting to like being a priest. First 20 levels were kinda tough, but i'm starting to Kickass now so it's a bit more fun. PVP thing is fine: shield/fade/fear. Sorted.

And yep, am in the US.

Fade is completely useless in PvP. Aggro doesn't exist when you're fighting player characters.

[NumberSix]

Fade is completely useless in PvP. Aggro doesn't exist when you're fighting player characters.

Depends where you're fighting them, no?

[NumberSix]

For mana regeneration, when you kill a mob with spirit tap your mana regen doubles for 15 secs if you kill the mob once outside the five second rule otherwise you gain 50% either whilst casting or until you get outside the FSR. It means you have little to no down time drinking. When in the FSR you don't naturally regenerate any mana, although later on you'll pick up items that have MP5 stats on which isn't affected by the FSR.nd to be for those "oh shit!" moments, or when you're well into the Shadow tree and killing 4 mobs at once.

This was particularly useful, btw. Thanks. I just realized i could respec, so I ditched all the stuff I didn't need and went full shadow, with the exception of two points in healing focus. I'm starting to be able to look after myself a little bit now, which is ace!

[Jameseh]

Depends where you're fighting them, no?

No, fade is completely pointless in PvP. What it does is reduces a mobs threat on you for a short period of time, but you get the threat with the next spell you cast after fade has ended. It's purely an instancing spell, and is completely pointless in PvP and whilst soloing.