Priest - What Makes a Priest The Best Healer?

The Priest is a caster class and is considered by most to be the best all-round healer in WoW. His spells are Holy and Shadow based. A Priest can also do quite a bit of damage but is mainly known for his great healing capabilities in both PvE and PvP.

One of the downsides of playing a Priest is the leveling. Even though the Shadow talent tree is available, which greatly increases a Priest’s damage done, it can still be time taking because the spells cost a lot of Mana. Once you get to the higher levels though, you can always count on a spot in any kind of party or raid wherever they are going because a Priest is just great and everybody knows it.

All the Priests are able to cast a Stamina buff on themselves and party and raid members. If a few points in the Discipline tree are spent another buff called Divine Spirit becomes available. This buff boosts the Spirit of players. A Priest’s healing spells are based on Holy power and one has a variety of instant, small, big, HoT and AoE heals to choose from which make the priest the best overall healer. If a Priest prefers to do damage he is pretty much stuck on the Shadow spells if he wants to get the best out of his Priest.

You can choose from quite a few races if you want to play a Priest. The Human Spirit and Blood Elf’s Arcane Spirit racials make them nice choices. Other races you can choose from are Dwarves, Night Elves, Draenei, Trolls, and Undead.

A Priest can choose to go for a full Discipline build if he likes to heal and likes to play PvP. There are some great talents in the tree that make the Priest tougher, his heals more effective and the Priest will also gain some new abilities like Pain Suppression and Power Infusion. The Discipline Priests are great single target healers. This, together with abilities like the ones mentioned above make the Discipline Priests great for PvP as well.

The Holy tree is also great for healing. It’s probably a bit better when it comes to raw healing then the Discipline tree. Some other healing spells like Circle of Healing are learned which make the Priest even a better healer. The Holy build gives more bonus healing and is normally considered to be better for PvE purposes when it comes to healing.

Finally, the Shadow build. Priests make great healers but they sure can do good damage as well. His damage is based on Damage over Time (DoT), and fast spells like Mind Blast and Mind Flay. The great thing about a Shadow Priest is that he can also support his group by placing some debuffs on a target like Vampiric Embrace and Vampiric Touch which will convert some damage done to mana and hitpoints for both the Priest and his group members.

Paladins - Holy Warriors

The Paladin is a hybrid class, capable to tank, heal and do damage. The Paladin can wear plate armor, shields and most melee weapons. The Paladin uses the Holy magic school and physical attacks for most of his abilities.

One of the most well known abilities of the Paladin is Divine Shield, often called ‘Bubble’. The Divine Shield is an instantly casted spell that protects the Paladin from any damage for 12 seconds. Divine Intervention is almost as good as Divine Shield and can even be casted on party or raid members. It protects the target from all physical attacks. The Paladin also has various auras that affect the entire party and several buffs that can also be cast on different players. The Paladins abilities cost Mana, no matter what build one chooses.

The following races have Paladins in their ranks: Humans, Dwarves, Draenei, and Blood Elves.

A Paladin can be a very capable tank when the Protection talent tree is used. While using a shield and some abilities that create high amounts of threat, the Paladin can easily tank in dungeons. A Paladin tank is probably the best tank when it comes down to keeping aggro on multiple targets. This comes at a cost though meaning that he isn’t as good as a Warrior Tank in example when it comes to single target tanking. Some buffs also become available in this talent tree like Blessing of Sanctuary and Blessing of Kings, even though the last one doesn’t have to be chosen since it requires quite a few talent points.

A healing Paladin should use the Holy talent tree to maximize the effect of his healing spells and to obtain some other healing spells that will make him a great healer. A Holy Paladin is a very capable healer known for his fast heals. Known to be one of the best single target healers while his weak spot is the lack in heals that can heal an entire group. A Holy Paladin should focus on getting a lot of critical strike rating, because his heals will heal more and a lot of his heals will refund Mana this way.

Finally there is the Retribution Paladin. While wielding a 2h weapon and being able to use several abilities that deal great amounts of damage, the Retribution Paladin is a great class for both PvE and PvP. This hasn’t always been the case; before the WotLK, Retribution Paladins were almost never welcome in either raids or PvP teams. This is probably why they have received a great boost and are now one of the stronger PvP classes and builds out there.

A Paladin is a strong class, fighting one can be really annoying as it seems that they have multiple lives sometimes. Playing one is a great experience. A nice thing about a Paladin is that you can gather different types of gear and then change from a tank to a healer or DPS if you get a bit bored with your build.

Mage - Magic is what they do best

A Mage is a powerful casting class capable to do immense amounts of damage and control the enemies.
While using Arcane, Fire and Frost a Mage is definitely one of the best damage dealing classes in WoW. Mages are known to do great Area of Effect (AoE) damage with several great abilities and be able to control both enemy NPCs and players with Polymorph, Frost Nova and the like.

The downside of a Mage is that one usually has low hit points and his cloth armor doesn’t help with his survivability. He does have spells to keep enemies at bay though or to cast an Ice Block which makes the Mage immune to any damage for a period of time.

A mage is incapable to heal or tank so damage dealing is his main purpose. The Mage does have other abilities that make him wanted in many groups and PvP teams. Like said before, the Polymorph ability is great to control mobs because it turns a Humanoid or Beast enemy NPC or Player into a Sheep, Turtle, or Pig. A Mage can also teleport to other cities and even make portals so others can benefit from his ability. Another reason why a Mage is always welcome in a group is his ability to conjure food and water which is especially welcomed by healers that otherwise would have to buy their mana drinks.
These abilities also come in very handy while leveling. Being able to teleport will save a lot of time on the long run and making food and drinks whenever one pleases is also a time and money saver.

The Mage can also buff himself with Arcane Intellect and has several magical armors he can choose from. He can also cast Arcane Intellect on his party or even entire raids.

One nice thing that is nice to know is that Dalaran, the capital of Northrend, is a Mage city. The Kirin Tor is a faction of Mages and all the Mage players start with Friendly reputation towards this faction.

The Mage class can be played by Gnomes, Draenei, Humans, Trolls, Blood Elves, and Undead players.

Mages have three talent builds namely Arcane, Frost and Fire. You will run into mages that have specialized in any of these talent trees because they all have pros and cons. It is up to your own preferences to whatever build you would like. I would advise you, if you intend to make a Mage, to try out several builds to see what you like best and not just follow anybody else’s opinion.

I can tell you though that the Frost Build is quite nice to level because it doesn’t burn your mana away that fast and you have several nice abilities like the Water Elemental and Ice Barrier which absorbs damage. At 80 this build is still nice and can be seen quite often in PvP.

Then there is the Fire build which focuses mainly on single target damage, even though also two AoE spells become available in this tree.

It was never really worth it to go 100% Arcane until the WotLK arrived. With some new talents and a bigger variety of damaging attacks this build has become a lot better and is now also a great build for PvE and PvP. Arcane is also often used for Hybrid builds (Frost/Arcane, Fire/Arcane).