WoW - Class: Priest

Now continuing our look at classes with the priest class.
Okay as you'd expect this class is a master at healing and preserving the wellbeing of themselves and their party, also partly shielding them in battle from some of the damage they take and in at the end of the fight resurrecting their fallen friends so they might fight once more. While it's true this class has a good array of healing spells, even the holiest of holy priests can still do some damage if required, they have attack spells okay not many 5 to be exact, 2 holy and 3 shadow although you don't get the last one until near the end and it has to be used very carefully. The spells are Smite takes a 1 or so to cast does a modest amount of damage, Holy fire as the name suggest hits them from above for a moderate amount of damage which continues over the next 8 seconds where additional damage is dealt to your enemy otherwise known as Damage Over Time aka a DOT. Your 3 shadow spells are Shadow Word: Pain - instantly cast and deals DOT, Mind Blast takes a second or so to cast deal a modest amount of damage - a bit like a shadow version of smite, now on to the shadow last spell everyone gets - Shadow Word: Death now this little spell will get you either out of trouble or right in it deeper as if the creature your fighting DOESN'T die when you cast this instant cast spell, you take the damage on yourself - now this can becuase it does deal damage but not enough to kill the creature or the creature gets lucky and resists the spell entirely which does happen :-S now as you can imagine firing this off and having it hit you could actually kill you, hmm "puts hand up" I've been there done that,got the T-Shirt and Starred in that freaky Video.
Now not all priest choose to go holy some choose to go to the dark side and become shadow priests now these can do masses more damage, stun their enemies, not only heal themselves with spells that are dealing damage to the enemy but anyone in their party as well through the talent of shadows embrace, you also get a special form called shadow form which increase the amount of damage your shadow spells can do by 15% and at the same time reduces the amount of damage taken by 15% although you can't heal in this form nor cast any spell classed as "holy", this is a talent from within the shadow talent tree.
There are other spells that don't actually do any damage in themselves but can help
keep you alive a little longer, there is the ability to add some stamina to yourself and others though the spell Power Word: Fortitude this is rank based but if you use it on a lower leveled player it will automatically use the highest rank of spell that can be used - this spell lasts either 30 minutes or until you die if you die within that time,
Power Word: Shield is as the name suggest gives you the ability to shield yourself or others from some damage - this is depends on the rank of spell you have and also on a few well placed talent points in the discipline tree which give it a boost in it's damage absorbing capability.
There is also the classic Fade which as it suggests makes you fade out for a short time discouraging your enemies from attacking you, touch of weakness (undead and blood elves only) or hex of weakness (trolls only) this will reduce the amount of damage dealt by the enemy affected by an amount dependent on what rank of the spell is used the higher the rank the more the damage is reduced by.
Psychic scream - as the name suggest it's designed to cause an small number of enemies flee from around about you, this increase with the rank of the spell, sometimes useful when you need to escape quickly and can do so safely, sometims it's not as these you caused to flee sometimes come back with friends :-S.
There is also mind soothe, an nice spell that reduces the range at which you'll annoy the humanoid creature you use it on, can only be used on humans or humanoid classed creatures.
There is also the rather nice ability of being able to charm and mind control another humanoid creature can come in real hand when you find an enemy player and there is a cliff near enough to use - the fun when you use this spell and throw them off and there is nothing they can do about it, so a hint if a priest ever asks you to dual make sure that you aren't anywhere high up....
Now that you've read all that and see wow maybe I could play a priest, the bad news - you can only ever wear cloth, because you wear cloth you never really have much hit points and don't even think of getting up close and personal with your enemy as you really can't do much damage in hand to hand combat or melee as it's known, and finally if your going to regularly heal in a party quick reflexes are a must to balance between using one healing or another and who to try and keep alive.
Oh yeah I almost forgot here am I saying you can't do damage close up and not telling you what weapons you can use.
The weapons are as follows: Staves which requires using both hands at once, One-Handed maces which allows you to put something else in your other hand to help out, daggers again something can go in the other hand and wands which you can equip much like a bow, thrown weapons and the like for a rouge.

More tomorrow....