Zombie Pirate Ninja Monkey

Warcraft - Azeroth Priests Are Easy

Another World of Warcraft-only post.

Received opinion is that priests are rare in WoW because they are hard to solo, challenging to play and that about half of the ones that exist are actually being played for the sake of guilds.  Having recently joined a guild that is, indeed light on the priestly fellows, I decided to try quickly levelling a priestly type.  Thus Etruscan was born.  Or reborn, or something.  He's undead.

Man, I must be missing something.  I'm good with druids, myself, but I've never managed to take one to level 14 without a single death.  I only realised last night that I don't know where the graveyard is for Tirisfal Glades (though I suspect it's going to involve Deathknell and Brill).

Yes, it helps to be able to heal myself.  But I've probably only done that mid-combat half a dozen times or so, when I've had to pull two or three linked mobs of my level, such as the Scarlet Bodyguards and Captain Verrache(sp.?).  He handles adds with absolute disdain.  He finishes fights against solo mobs of up to a level or two above on almost-full hitpoints with almost-full mana.  He almost never has to delay between fights.  His damage output is almost rogue-ish at this level, and massively higher than a druid before level 20.  And on more than 25% armour from Inner Fire, I'm better armoured than anyone at that level except feral druids, pallys and warriors.

You see what I mean?  Are people not using a good wand?  That would make fights extremely slow and much harder.  I'm attacking for 13.5 damage per second, which is better than my druid did with anything before the blue Wailing Caverns' reward Crescent Staff, and the auto-attack is every 1.5 seconds, which hammers enemy spellcasters as it disrupts their casting.  Plenty of my spells are instant, so I can kite with them.  While the wand is only for when not moving, it doesn't use any mana.

As it is, my full, huge (thanks to the auction house and intellect equipment) mana pool is available for Smite, shadow dot attack, Power Word: Shield, armour buff, then another PW:S as required.  I had a look at him last night after the patch, and the cooldown on PW:S seems to have been halved (unless I just learned a new rank and didn't spot a cooldown change), so I can pretty much always be 100% invulnerable to damage.

This is by far the easiest character I have yet played, druid included.

My other impression is that the Glades are even more atmospheric and well-designed than Mulgore and Ashenvale.  It has a gorgeous and consistent aesthetic that is implemented across everything from graphics and mission design to character dialogue.  That said, the trash mobs (dogs, spiders and bats) get very tedious.