About Priest Leveling

[softclocks]

You don't particularly need Imp MB, seeing as you (should) only use it once per mob, as your opener.

At 30, you can do Duskwood, Wetlands, and a couple starter quests in Southshore (hillsbrad)

Yes, avoid STV until you're at least 34-35. It's a hellhole of endless ganking, especially if you're only 30-31.

Thanks for the advice, I'm 35 now.

Decided to suffer through a level in STV before going to Desolace (had cleared everything in dw and wetlands).

At 32 I went to southshore and it was by far the best place to level.

[Ana]

35 is a perfect level to grind the ogres in Alterac. Inb4 "grinding sucks": grind fest is better than corpserun fest.

[flowison]

go 1000needles shimmering flat.
nice farm quests

[gotmilk0112]

Yeah, at 34-35 you should definitely go to Shimmering Flats, as it has a whole bunch of quests that are just simple kill/loot quests.

Though the scorpid venom quest is the lowest droprate quest in the entire game, be warned. That and there's a fair bit of ganking. Not as much as STV, though.

[softclocks]

What is my rotation after getting Shadowform?

Am I still supposed to wand things to death?

[Ana]

Mind blast - SWP - flay - r1 fear - chase during GCD - flay - flay - finish with wand if needed (shouldn't be needed on mobs at your level)

[softclocks]

How is levelling with smite btw? or a holy/discipline build?

I've made it to 50 now, and I'm wondering when I should respecc into healing (if I want to).

[Sonett]

This thread is full of wonderful information; thanks a lot!

I do have one question though. When I played vanilla originally, I was young and naive with no real game strategy. Even though I think I was a decent priest, I was always broke, and actually ended up relying on the generosity of my guild leaders to help fund my mount etc. I'm trying to be a bit more careful with money now, playing the AH and mining every node I see for a little more silver. So in the spirit of cost-effectiveness, are there any skills you won't necessarily need to upgrade as you level? For example I saw a warlock guide that said there's only a handful of skills you ever really need to purchase.

[Friar]

Bare minimum: SW:P, Mind Blast, Mind Flay, PW:S, second highest rank of heal, rank 1 psychic scream, inner fire, sort of fort (it's not critical). These are spells you should think long and hard about skipping. That said I would pick up everything that isn't a useless utility spell (mind vision) or a holy damage spell. I heal instances along the way and am on the PvP server so I keep renew and glad heal max rank. I don't know why, but prayer of healing is my favorite spell. If it weren't it would be easily skippable.

[Ana]

Prayer is a good huge emergency mass heal if you have the time to cast it and inner focus to use it with.

There isn't much you can skip as priest tbh... I would say Fade is skippable until you start raiding. Also either Smite or Holy Fire, depending on how you open on mobs. Once you hit 40 and switch to full shadow you can skip them both.
Don't skip mind vision and definitely don't skip mind soothe / mind control. They are utility spells but they're amazing at what they do.