Which healing race/class to choose?

[Garfunkel]

I used to play a mage back in the day but now I'm more interested in rolling a healer but as I don't know that much about them, I decided to create this topic. I do remember priests complaining that leveling a Holy Priest is a nightmare comparable to Protection Warrior. I've also heard that due to fear ward, I should make a dwarf priest if I intend to join a raiding guild - which I do. So it seems that my choices boil down to:

A) dwarf priest
or
B) nelf druid

Am I missing something or have I misunderstood things? Share your thoughts.

[Trolle]

Fear Ward is really really good, for priest I'd recommend Dwarf. You could also play as a paladin, they are insane MT healers with their talent Illumination(found here).

[ThatsthePuzzle]

Priest levelling is really not that bad, it's not even that bad if you choose to not go into shadow. Just pick up wand spec talents. Warrior is much worse.

Fear Ward has uses sure, but I think that Druids overall are a lot rarer in vanilla and you may have more luck finding a guild as one of those if you're interested in raiding. Priests have good utility in all the Undead 5 mans with shackle and Druids are good in Humanoid based ones with roots and can sleep dragonkin/beasts too.

Dwarves are ugly.
Night Elves flip.

[Cousy]

I find priests are the easiest healing class to level. Ret is mind-bloggingly boring to level waiting on autoattacks and SoC procs. Druids are good in that they need little downtime but kill slower than a shadowform priest.

If you have a good wand and the wand spec talents, you'll find leveling a priest very simple. Open with Mind Blast, Shield yourself, SW:P and wand. With Spirit Tap, you'll barely have to drink.

[Garfunkel]

Yeah, I'm definitely interested in raiding so raid viability is an important aspect.

That point about paladins is a good one, so now I have a choice to make between three options:
a) dorf priestess
b) human pally
c) nelf druidess

I'm not going to be Shadow Priest since I would like to learn the ropes of healing in instances as I level and I bet finding groups as a healer is much easier than as DPS.

Dwarves are ugly.
Night Elves flip.

That's a very good point as well but maybe I can make the one pretty dwarf on the server?

[konked]

Yeah, I'm definitely interested in raiding so raid viability is an important aspect.

That point about paladins is a good one, so now I have a choice to make between three options:
a) dorf priestess
b) human pally
c) nelf druidess

I'm not going to be Shadow Priest since I would like to learn the ropes of healing in instances as I level and I bet finding groups as a healer is much easier than as DPS.

Dwarves are ugly.
Night Elves flip.

That's a very good point as well but maybe I can make the one pretty dwarf on the server?

Dwarfs are some of the most sexiest priests in the game, stoneform is awesome too

[TheLockKing]

Warlock.


What? best self-healing class.

[Civean]

I used to play a mage back in the day but now I'm more interested in rolling a healer but as I don't know that much about them, I decided to create this topic. I do remember priests complaining that leveling a Holy Priest is a nightmare comparable to Protection Warrior. I've also heard that due to fear ward, I should make a dwarf priest if I intend to join a raiding guild - which I do. So it seems that my choices boil down to:

A) dwarf priest
or
B) nelf druid

Am I missing something or have I misunderstood things? Share your thoughts.

Super biased towards priest here, but roll priest. Leveling won't be terrible as long as you make use of wand spec.

Dwarf is pretty much the best choice in both PvE and PvP for Alliance priests. Fear ward is really good and iirc they also get desperate prayer which is nice for snap heals on yourself. Smeld can be pretty good if used well in PvP since it works similarly to vanish; if you time it right you can avoid cc entirely with it while still putting the skill on cooldown. Best example would be smelding death coils.

If you feel like rolling around as a DPS in PvP then you've got shadow spec to fall back on. Druids don't really get that luxury as feral and balance are pretty lackluster and at best perform very niche roles.

Also yeah Stoneform is awesome.

[rackam]

I used to play a mage back in the day but now I'm more interested in rolling a healer but as I don't know that much about them, I decided to create this topic. I do remember priests complaining that leveling a Holy Priest is a nightmare comparable to Protection Warrior. I've also heard that due to fear ward, I should make a dwarf priest if I intend to join a raiding guild - which I do. So it seems that my choices boil down to:

A) dwarf priest
or
B) nelf druid

Am I missing something or have I misunderstood things? Share your thoughts.

Super biased towards priest here, but roll priest. Leveling won't be terrible as long as you make use of wand spec.

Dwarf is pretty much the best choice in both PvE and PvP for Alliance priests. Fear ward is really good and iirc they also get desperate prayer which is nice for snap heals on yourself. Smeld can be pretty good if used well in PvP since it works similarly to vanish; if you time it right you can avoid cc entirely with it while still putting the skill on cooldown. Best example would be smelding death coils.

If you feel like rolling around as a DPS in PvP then you've got shadow spec to fall back on. Druids don't really get that luxury as feral and balance are pretty lackluster and at best perform very niche roles.

Also yeah Stoneform is awesome.

been stuck deciding between nelf priest or dwarf, what racials do night elfs get along with starshards? and can you use starshards in shadowform?

id like to heal in pve but also pvp as shadow, should i just go night elf ? or is fear ward 2stronk

[Drain]

Holy Priest leveled quite well in 1.12 after the tree got its massive buffing. I don't know what you're talking about. It plays similar to a Mage except that you can heal during fights as well. Being attacked by players is the biggest issue, meaning you might want to reroll Shadow at 40. But against mobs, it should be quite easy to outlive everything. With 2/2 Searing Light and 5/5 Spiritual Guidance, you can get some decent nuke numbers too. My strategy for the best way to level Priest was 5/5 Spirit Tap, then actually going up Holy until level 40. I found that this outperformed Shadow until it got Shadowform. But you could very well stick with Holy if you liked the tree. Even after falling behind Shadow, you still have decent heals for groups.

Fear Ward is the winner on racials yes, but I myself would roll Human or Elf as I don't like midgets. You don't "need" to have a certain racial. Too few people realized this back then or even today. You can pick any race you want. Guilds are not going to turn down Priests because they don't have Fear Ward. Horde as an entire faction doesn't even have Fear Ward.