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Spiritual Guidance: So you wanna play a priest, part 3, levels 1-40
Spiritual Guidance is a fickle being that simply cannot be won over with chocolates and a reservation to the fanciest restaurant in town. Though Fox Van Allen might sport a silk (snap-on) tie and offer a second glass of corky but rather impressive claret, it is Dawn Moore's singing compulsion that makes the column coo its priestly secrets. With all the preliminary work laid out, this week we'll be finally be getting started on the actual leveling aspect of my multi-part leveling guide. This week we'll be covering abilities, rotations, talent builds, and gear upgrades for the first 40 levels of the priest class. So if you dream of smiting your enemies with divine fire, and giving yourself a small tan in the process, hit the jump!
Peter Molyneux on WoW's reward system
You probably know Peter Molyneux's name if you've been playing video games for any significant amount of time -- he's the mind behind such classics as Populous and Dungeon Keeper, all the way up to Black and White and the current Fable series. He recently gave a talk to the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, and early on his talk (part 1 is here, part 2 and part 3 are also online), he speaks out about our favorite game, World of Warcraft. Specifically, he mentions it as an influence on his game design, and says the most brilliant thing about the game are "the steeds," or the mounts you could pick up at level 40 (nowadays, of course, they're available at level 20). He says that in his own games, he tries to give everything out to the player as soon as possible, but the fact that Blizzard made you wait to ride a mount around, made you work up a few levels for it, really stuck with him. Now, of course, he's taking away his own lessons here -- Blizzard's philosophy with the game as a whole seems to reward the player as much as possible, and especially lately, with emblems and the different modes and all of the other daily and weekly quests they've come up with, they're making you do less waiting for prizes than they ever have before (in fact, compared to MMOs when they first started, much, much less waiting). And Molyneux's own games are very "rewarding" -- I don't think more than two minutes went by in Fable without me getting a level or a new spell or a new item to play around with. But his point is still good, even after all that: anticipation of a reward can be just as strong a motivator as the reward itself.
Reminder: The destroids are invading!
Citizens of Millenium City, take up your arms! Dr. Destroyer is attacking the city once more, but this time he has sent in legions upon legions of robots, including new Mega-Destroid! The robots are all over the city, but the Champions have been dispatched to fix the crisis, along with countless other heroes!If you want to get in on some Dr. Destroyer smashing action, then you have to act today! It's the last day of the Champions Online beta test, and they're going out with their usual bang. All you have to do is log in, visit Millenium City (available from the Canadian or Desert helipads) and then speak with the cop on the helipad who's waving his arms about in the air. Once you do that, you'll be leveled up to 40, given all the powers you ever wanted, and you'll have a shot at taking down some Mega-Destroid. Destroids will be attacking until 3 AM ET, 12 AM PT this evening, when Cryptic switches off the lights.Those who take down the Mega-Destroid will be given a special perk for their accomplishments (although the perk is kinda borked right now) and a special Mini-Destroid action figure for the live game! Kinda cool, and cute, in a destructive kind of way.
Spiritual Guidance: The sweet 40 - 60
Every Sunday (usually), Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Your host is now Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of PlusHeal, a new healing community for all restorative classes. For the next few weeks (unless it's something game breaking), Matt will do his best to guide you through the Priest leveling process! By now, you'll have learned most of the spells you'll be using at end game. If you've been crafty, you might have been able to land instance runs to hone your abilities as a healer (or DPS if you're of the Shadow sort). I won't focus as much on spells here on out although I will list anything significant on the way to 60. Instead, I'll explore the various zones and instances that you can (and should) do.
Spiritual Guidance: The 20 - 40 grind
Every Sunday (usually), Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Your host is now Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of PlusHeal, a new healing community for all restorative classes. For the next few weeks (unless it's something game breaking), Matt will do his best to guide you through the Priest leveling process! Congratulations! You've made it past the initial hump of the first 20 levels in the game! Great job getting this far. I personally know of a few players who gave on the way to 20 because it was "too hard". If you're on a PvP server, break out the stress ball. Be prepared to get rocked on the road to end game (especially as a Priest).
Draenei on a tiger at level 30
I still really haven't wrapped my head around the fact that we can get mounts at level 30 yet -- for so long, it's just been a fact that you don't get to ride anything around until level 40 that I'm still surprised when I see someone under that riding around. But it's true, of course, and Truffled over on WoW LJ took full advantage of that fact, in addition to the recent changes to reputation at lower levels -- she ran her Draenei through both the Azuremyst and Teldrassil starting areas, and was able be riding around a Night Elf mount right at level 30, bought for the Exalted price.Very impressive. She says she hit Exalted only two quests after 30, and that she basically just did every single quest there was to find, save for the Raene's Cleaning end quest (so she could keep the rod). She doesn't mention /played time (all of the traveling probably added a little bit of extra leveling time in there), but however long it took, it was worth it, as she's one of the lowest non-faction Exalted characters we've seen. Nice job.
Scattered Shots: A talent for leveling in Beast Mastery
The Scattered Shots hunter bears his or her teeth and says "RAAAWR!" to the mirror every morning in an uncouth, beastly manner -- thus affirming the beast within, which yearns for a way out to express itself.Which talents you should get as you level up is a tricky question with many different answers, many of which can turn out just fine or absolutely horrible, depending on how you play. Today I'll be taking you along on a journey through the first 40 levels of talent spending, and explaining why I think certain talent choices are better than others.One of the most important things to remember about talents is that, in spite of all their mathematical precision, they are open to poetic interpretation. Some talents give clearly superior advantages, while in other cases it's mostly a matter of opinion as to which one fits your play-style best. Sometimes the talents that look best on paper aren't the ones that will really help you the most when the going gets rough. Likewise, some talents are designed more for endgame use at level 70, even though they appear early on in the talent tree, while others are better for leveling up, and you may wish to drop them later on once you finish leveling.Most of my talent choices today are going to be in the Beast Mastery tree, for instance. Some people may say that they like Marksmanship or Survival best, and certainly that's their right. But from most of the people I've talked to, the general consensus is that Beast Mastery is best for both leveling and early endgame raiding, too. While talking about these talents, I'll list your level and the number of talent points you have at each stage, so that it's easier to keep track of your talent resources.
WoW Rookie: Mount up!
WoW Rookie is brought to our readers to help our newest players get acclimated to the game. Make sure you send a note to WoW Insider if you have suggestions for what new players need to know. UPDATE: The magic number is now 20! Read our updated version of mounts for the leveling player. In the World of Warcraft, 40 is a magic number. Once you hit this level you get access to a 31 point talent, which usually does some pretty nifty things for your class. You really start specializing into your role as a healer, tank or DPS character. The best part about 40 is getting your fancy new mount. Once you get used to traveling the world on you pony (wolf, nightsaber, raptor, ram, etc) it can be really hard to go back to hoofing it on foot.
Exalted by 40: My little undead pony
When I originally started playing World of Warcraft, there was absolutely no way to get a cross-faction mount. That didn't stop the text on the tool-tip from taunting me though, saying that the Forsaken mounts were available to Orcs and Trolls and not just Forsaken. Of course, as anyone who started the game at the very beginning can tell you, exalted with any of the basic factions was a vague future idea that they said would eventually be implemented. When the cross-faction cloth trade-ins came into the game, I started slowly but surely forking over every scrap of Runecloth I had to the Orc cloth NPC. I eventually managed to hit Exalted with Orgrimmar, and was able to buy a riding Wolf for my Troll Rogue. But between 40 and 60, I spent quite a long time bouncing around on a Green Raptor, wishing I'd been able to get either a Skeletal Horse or Wolf. (As they took the Ivory raptor I had really wanted out of the game altogether, I certainly wasn't buying an epic raptor!)Flash forward to Zangarmarsh, and my baby Blood Elf Rogue. Coming up through the ranks, I thought it would be fun to see if it was actually possible to get a cross-faction mount by no later than level 40 -- and if so, just precisely what it would entail.
Alternate faction mounts at 40
No, it's not easy, but it is possible now that reputation rewards for quests don't degrade with level. However, questing alone doesn't seem to be enough to get a mount by 40, as explained by goffchick on wow_ladies. The real trick seems to be timing it so you can run (pre-60, it's more likely to be corpse-hop) to as many lunar festival elders as possible. (Yes, for each elder you speak with, you gain 75 reputation for all horde or all alliance factions, depending on your faction, of course.) Anyone else out here who's managed to snag a cross-faction mount at or around level 40? I'd be curious to hear how difficult it was.
