Noob questions

[TheWall]

I've got four friends, two of whom have never played WoW, and I who are planning to start a five man group to level with one another. I'm trying to figure out the best build while allowing everyone to play what interests them. Here is what we have.

Tauren Warrior
Tauren Shaman
Undead Mage
Undead Warlock
Undead Priest

Would you swap any classes out for the classes we have chosen, or do you think we have a solid build for leveling in 5 man instances? Also one of the rookies is playing the Warrior. I'm hoping that won't be a problem.

[Rasix]

That team will steamroll and it's not hard to teach a warrior what he's supposed to be doing.  I honestly would probably replace the warlock with a rogue for some added DPS, but the warlock adds a lot of additional utility and security.

Really, if you came up with that team and everyone is happy, you're doing great.  I ended up leveling in a shaman/shaman/mage team all of the way to 60 while doing every instance up to Zul'farak.  It was different, but doable.

[TheWall]

I'll be playing the priest. It will be my first one. Any spec suggestions? I would like to be effective in both PvP and PvE. Keeping in mind that my PvP will almost always be in this group.

[Rasix]

It's really up to you with that kind of team, I'd play whatever strikes your fancy.  If you have to solo at times, then definitely go shadow and a shadow priest is pretty much just as effective as any other build until you start getting into the MC raiding area.

Plus, you've got a shaman, so entire healing responsibility doesn't rest on your shoulders.

The boards are often pretty helpful on the topic of specs... but I know we have at least one PVP priest here. Cevik?

[cevik]

I'll be playing the priest. It will be my first one. Any spec suggestions? I would like to be effective in both PvP and PvE. Keeping in mind that my PvP will almost always be in this group.

Go Shadow if you want to pvp.  You can heal sufficiently, but you can go into shadowform and vampiric embrace as well if you want to dps.  Being able to make that shadowform switch when you're caught alone by a rogue will be a lifesaver, you'll thank me for it a million times.  Non-shadow priests just don't have enough survivability in pvp.

I usually start battles not in Shadowform and just play healer until we've 1)  Beat the initial zerg, and 2)  felt out the other team.  If they don't target healers I will stay in healer mode and heal.  If they are smart and gang rape me everytime I cast a heal, I switch into shadowform and use ve while I kill their healers/clothies.

My Build:

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/priests/talents.html?50023215000000000000000000000050232512015151

When you are leveling up, you may want to skip out the points in Shadow Focus and instead put them in Spirit Tap (max out Spirit Tap, respec at 60).  Spirit Tap basically doubles your mana regen if you get the killing blow.  It's invaluable if you solo, if you're never ever ever ever going to solo it can still be usefull if you are running low on mana and you talk your group into letting you get the killing blow with mind flay or mind blast (or your wand or whatever).

Get a wand early, use it often.

If you guys happen to by some odd random chance have made your characters on Llane, send Cevik a tell. :)

ETA:

The boards are often pretty helpful on the topic of specs... but I know we have at least one PVP priest here. Cevik?

Heheh, was already typing! :)

[Jobu]

I'm of the opinion that you should play whatever you all think is fun. Screw trying to min-max a group. With 5 of you together, you can scrape by with whatever you end up with.

But anyways... Orcs make pretty good warriors. The stun resist is really very nice in Battlegrounds when rogues start trying to stunlock the warriors down. And they get Axe bonuses (yay Arcanite Reaper, and Ravager).

[cevik]

I'm of the opinion that you should play whatever you all think is fun. Screw trying to min-max a group. With 5 of you together, you can scrape by with whatever you end up with.

Some people actually have fun min/maxing. 

[Calantus]

If you intend to be healing in PVP a fair bit I would say you either need 2 points in improved flash heal, or 2/2 martyrdom + 1/1 focussed casting since you're horde. If you lack both you WILL be made utterly useless the second a hunter or rogue gets on you, and you wont be too much chop when anything else is on you either. If you're going shadow go ahead and just grab the marty/fc talents in your disc talents (as alliance it's no substitute as you get purged like a mofo sometimes). You'll probably want them anyway for the times you simply must get a flay/mindblast off and your shield is down.

The group you have is perfect IMO. I'd much rather a warlock to a rogue when given the choice in a permanent group personally. You've got elementals, demons, beasts, undead, humanoids (twice!) covered for CC in that group, as well as 2x wipe recovery, free "potions", summoning, and the warlock adds great AoE damage to the mage. Much better IMO.

As for races, stay away from trolls and you can't go wrong. For the best (subjective of course) I'd say make sure the shaman is tauren, and I'm of the oppinion that undead make the best horde warriors & warlocks, with orcs just behind.

[SurfD]

Most of my guild swear by Orc for mele classes.  yes, taurens get Warstomp (somewhat usefull) and the bonus HP, but many of our Warriors seem to be of the consensus that Orc passive stun resist is a much much better racial.

[Fabricated]

I've got four friends, two of whom have never played WoW, and I who are planning to start a five man group to level with one another. I'm trying to figure out the best build while allowing everyone to play what interests them. Here is what we have.

Tauren Warrior
Tauren Shaman
Undead Mage
Undead Warlock
Undead Priest

Would you swap any classes out for the classes we have chosen, or do you think we have a solid build for leveling in 5 man instances? Also one of the rookies is playing the Warrior. I'm hoping that won't be a problem.

You should run over everything if you all stay within 5-6 levels of eachother. Tradeskills don't matter unless you're really min-maxing, since most of the skills have branching paths. Having multiple blacksmiths can be a boon later since you can have an armorsmith, an axesmith, swordsmith, etc, or with leatherworking a Dragonscaler for mail and an Elemental for rogue gear, etc. etc. so on. You can't really go wrong there unless you end up with like...5 axesmiths.

Alchemy, Tailor/enchanter, Smith, Leatherworker, engineer is the ideal min/max combo.

As for the warrior, teach him that while that two-hander is fine for soloing and most general grouping, when you hit elites, you put that shit away turn on defensive stance, and pull out the one-hander and board. Also tell him he doesn't have to hold aggro on EVERY mob in a group, just one or two at most (and with bosses, usually JUST the boss). That's really important, because it's how most newbie wanna-be tanks get burnt out, especially when playing with other newbies who think the warrior should be able to hold aggro on a half dozen enemies at once unerringly so they can spam their "awesome" AoE spells.

The only "problem" I could see arising is early on, the Mage/Priest/Warlock fighting over cloth drops. My advice is to get really good at running Shadowfang Keep early on, because everyone is going to want those drops.

[Calantus]

One thing I'd recommend is that if you aren't deadset on tradeskills, don't do them until you cap. It gets really old when the miner/herbilist goes for his 50-billionth mine/herb, or the skinner just has to skin every last fucking mob you kill in STV. Trust me. Old. Very.

[TheWall]

I really appreciate all the good feedback. Min/Maxing is cool but we are trying to find a happy medium between that and just having fun. However, with my priest I really do want to contribute damage to pvp while remaining useful to my group for heals. And thankfully it sounds like I can do that.

My problem is I usually don't play a cloth class. So I really suck at Mana management. Any suggestions on how to handle that? I was planning to get as much +int, +stam gear as I could find. Do I need to focus a lot on spirit or any other stats?

[cevik]

My problem is I usually don't play a cloth class. So I really suck at Mana management. Any suggestions on how to handle that? I was planning to get as much +int, +stam gear as I could find. Do I need to focus a lot on spirit or any other stats?

In PVE I wear +int +spirit gear and I never lack mana.  If you guys are just blowing through the mobs and you're mainly healing, even as a shadowpriest (which if you want to do damage, go shadow), you'll have plenty of mana and mana regen to keep you at near full all the time.  If you are running low on mana, let your group know to let you get in that last hit and you'll get spirit tap and regen your mana (at least until 60 when you respec and ditch spirit tap).

In PVP I have another outfit that is +int +stam, and, since I'm usually casting faster and fighting more people, I often run low on mana.  My mana regen sucks with my +int +stam gear on, but all of the battlegrounds have 2 things that make this not matter. 

The first thing is a "chest" that spawns inside of certain buildings every few minutes that acts as "food" when you run across it and regens all your mana/health (extremely quickly, like within 5 or so seconds I would say).  Almost no one else seems to care (or know) about these, so usually I kill 3 or so people, then run into the nearest building, grab the regen, come out the other side and nuke the last couple from behind.

The second is a "ration" you can buy from the faction store once you hit friendly faction with that group, only usable in the bg for that group, that gives you 4000+ mana over 30 seconds if you remain seating.  So I buy 80 of those every night that I pvp (costs about 2.5 gold, which is fairly inexpensive), and I use them in between battles.

If bad comes to worse, and it does happen (that's what pvp is all about, right?), I will wand people from behind a tree or a rock while I wait on enough mana to nuke or mind flay (mind flay is extremely mana effecient, but rather low damage compared to your other spells, and it leaves a big long blue streak back to you that everyone can easily see).  Usually if I am at this point, and I'm alone, and the enemy has anything more than a fraction of health left, I can count on dying.. :)

[Mesozoic]

I'll second what Cev said about pve gear...my hunter wears full "of the Wolf" (+Agi, +spirit) for farming leather and the difference is huge.  "Of the Monkey" (+Agi, +Stam) will be my pvp gear, assuming I can find it in mail.

[TheWall]

Right now my main attack is smite. Is it safe to assume I will never use this for PvP? What skills should I focus on vs skills that I should avoid? Please dont' abreviate their names though as I won't know what the heck you are talking about.  :-D

[Merusk]

Mind Blast
Mind Flay
Improved Shadow Word: Pain

Those are the 3 shadow spells of DOOOM.  I never PvPd with my priest, but when I was PvEing, the order was

Power Word Shield myself, Vampiric Embrace, SW:P, hit Autoattack,  Mind Blast, Mind Flay, Mind Blast, Mind Flay..

Maybe Mix-in a Mana Drain if it was a caster, but that was pretty much it. Things were usually dead after around the 3rd Mind Blast unless I had resists.  I'd work wands in sometimes as well after the 2nd Mind Blast to keep the skill up in the event I actually needed to Shield & wand something to death.  -- Which you do sometimes, since Adds like to sneak-up on low-mana Priests.

 As a PvE priest at 60 I don't fight mobs anymore. I send people to do it for me and if they impress me I decide it's worth healing them.

[bhodi]

You'll be doing the good ol' "Pull with mind blast, Dot, flay, mind blast, flay" for a good long time. Definately take tap, there's a good shadow leveling guide on the forums you can read if you need specifics. I'd stay away from PW:Shield whenever possible and use food or your mana to heal afterwards instead. Less downtime == more XP.

I'd also suggest subbing a druid in there, somewhere; You can never go wrong with versatility in a 5man... offtank, or DPS, or heal; I've found I mostly DPS as cat and shift out to heal main tank; though with 2 other healers already, i'm not sure this is necessary. If you get innervate, though, ppl will love you.

[Dren]

Maybe Mix-in a Mana Drain if it was a caster, ...

You mean Mana Burn.  Mana Drain is for the Warlock and doeth rock much.

[Merusk]

I do indeed mean burn.  I forgot the names of most skills long ago.  They are now keypresses, and I don't think saying "numberpad *" is going to communicate it well.

[cevik]

Right now my main attack is smite. Is it safe to assume I will never use this for PvP? What skills should I focus on vs skills that I should avoid? Please dont' abreviate their names though as I won't know what the heck you are talking about.  :-D

Mind Blast, Mind Flay, and ShadowWord: Pain will be your main damage spells in pvp, especially once you get up the Shadow tree and get the Improved Mind Blast (reducing the cooldown), Shadow Weaving, Darkness and Shadowform talents.  With Shadowform your Mind Blast/Mind Flay/Shadow Word:Pain will do 15% more damage, and Smite will be uncastable (you can't cast Holy spells, including all of your heals, while in Shadowform, in exchange you take 15% less damage and do 15% more damage on shadow spells, it's a very fair trade).  With Darkness you'll have another 10% damage increase on those spells and with Shadow Weaving stacked 5 times, that's another 15% more damage for 15 seconds, so all said and done, your Mind Blast and Mind Flay will blow Smite out of the water.

Once you have both Shadow Word:Pain and Mind Blast, there is a trick (exploit?  it's been in since day one and EVERYONE does it), that you can do that lets you cast both spells at the "same" time.  Basically if you cast Mind Blast at a target, then, while the Mind Blast "lands" you can cast Shadow Word:Pain at the exact same moment and skip the 1.5 sec global cool down.  Practice it on mobs for awhile until you get it down.  Just watch the cast bar, and the moment the cast is "finished" and you start the animation, cast shadowword: pain.

In PvP if I get the jump on the person, I do that trick, then I hit them with Vampiric Embrace (so that I get 20% of the damage I do to them returned as health for me), and I kite like a crazy man using Sheild then Mind Flay (Sheild keeps them from interrupting the mind flay with damage, if you cast Mind Blast they can run behind you before the spell finishes casting and it will fail to cast, Mind Flay will keep you facing the opponent).  Then I Kite more and let my shadowword:pain do more damge, then focus casting and Mind Flay more, then fear and mind blast if I need to finish them off (when you fear they won't be able to run behind you, so you can mind blast them).  Or some combination of the above, since it's PvP you'll obviously have to improvise as things go wrong, which they always do.  :) 

If you are undead, you'll also get "Devouring Plague" which you can cast every 3 mins.  It does about 3/4 of the damage of shadowword:pain (and can be stacked with shadowword:pain), but it also heals you for 100% of that damage.  Stacking Vampiric Embrace with it means you get an additional 20% of the damage returned in health (i.e. if it does 100 hps of damage per tick, you get 120 hps added to your health per tick).  At level 55, with ShadowWord:Pain, Devouring Plague (keeping in mind you can only use this on one target per 3 mins), Vampiric Embrace, and Mind Flay all going, I'm healing around 97+19+30+26=172 health back every tick from the person I am fighting and the person I'm fighting is taking about 97+157+128=382 damage per tick or so.  Everyone else in my party is also getting 75 health per tick (19+30+26 from above, they do not get the 97 from devouring plague), which is helpful for them as well.  Every Mind Blast I land gives me and everyone in my party between 100 and 200 (200 for a crit) health and does between 500 and 1000 damage.  PvP for me is all about a game of stealing seconds from the other player.  For every second I can delay them, they take more damage and I get more health.  If a battle lasts 2 seconds, you can bet I've lost, if a battle takes 1 minute the odds are I won.

This is obviously oversimplified and doesn't have a strategy for dispellers you'll encounter (priests and pallies, think Mana Burn as mentioned above), but it will give you a good idea of what PvP is like for a priest.

[cevik]

You'll be doing the good ol' "Pull with mind blast, Dot, flay, mind blast, flay" for a good long time. Definately take tap, there's a good shadow leveling guide on the forums you can read if you need specifics. I'd stay away from PW:Shield whenever possible and use food or your mana to heal afterwards instead. Less downtime == more XP.

With my +int +spirit gear, I do this:

Shield, Mind Blast, DoT, Mind Flay, Wand until dead.

In shadowform, by the time the mind flay is done the equal level mob will be at ~60% health, between my DoT and my wand (especially if the wand is a shadow damage wand), I'll end up killing the mob right as the sheild wears off.  Because I'm wanding to death for the last half of the battle, I'll regen mana during the battle, I'll usually end up at 100% mana and 100% health at the end of the battle.  Unless I get a lot of adds I never have any downtime, I can just keep killing until I finally get bored and logoff.  :)

[bhodi]

With my +int +spirit gear, I do this:

Shield, Mind Blast, DoT, Mind Flay, Wand until dead.

In shadowform, by the time the mind flay is done the equal level mob will be at ~60% health, between my DoT and my wand (especially if the wand is a shadow damage wand), I'll end up killing the mob right as the sheild wears off.  Because I'm wanding to death for the last half of the battle, I'll regen mana during the battle, I'll usually end up at 100% mana and 100% health at the end of the battle.  Unless I get a lot of adds I never have any downtime, I can just keep killing until I finally get bored and logoff.  :)

Ya, that sounds pretty good. Keep in mind I got my priest up to I think ~25-30, so I didn't have shadowform or even a good wand :) 
I should level a priest again... but what what server? god, when are server transfers coming? I wouldn't want to invest so much time in a character than be unable to find a home ;)

I thought FFXI had a good system, and lum's recent comments highlighted it -- they're deliberately preventing me from playing with my various friends. Why?

[Calantus]

I'll throw my favourite combo out there:

Mindblast
/start strafe
Shadowword Pain
Vampric Embrace
/end strafe
Mind Flay
Mind Blast (I have talents to reduce MB cooldown)
Wand

Doing that I could chain mobs endlessly, only drinking when I got attacked or did a couple multi-pulls. You will need +damage gear to do it, but there's enough +damage tailored gear you can wear at 40ish for that purpose.

In a group you're often better off just mind flaying with or without VE on as pain is usually wasted and mind blast will either pull aggro or not go off in time. Against elites I tend to just pain them, renew the warrior, and get to wanding.

[squirrel]

Shadow priests and warlocks make the ultimate duo IMO. I have a 43 lock alt that i play with a buddy's shadow priest. With the locks mana regen abililties and ability to create massive shadow vuln on mobs plus a tanking pet this duo can wreck oranges and finish at full health/mana.