The Mini-Priest Project

Last week, I got a ton of help and support from the blogging community when I wondered whether it was a good idea to attempt to level a priest through PvP.  Turns out that this was a fantastic plan.

Meet Thisby:

Thisby has spent most of her time in the 25-29 bracket this week, and I’ve been having a blast.  To date, Thisby has won 8/14 battles in Warsong Gulch, and 2/3 battles in Arathi Basin, which means I’m sneaking by with a winning record!

I’m not going to pretend to be either an expert on PvP or priests here .. since I’m neither .. but I’ll point out a few things I’ve learned this week:

• My first “ohmigosh, look I’m smart” moment came when I was going 1v1 against a shadow priest.  I put a shield on myself and then remembered to dispell his shield before I started to damage him.  I remembered my buttons!
• At this level, I spend as much time damaging enemy players as I do healing my teammates.  Renew, PW:S, and Penance are still really strong right now, so it means I can spend a lot of time on offense and just keep one eye on my teammates’ health.
• Always, always, ALWAYS have a shield on yourself.
• Atonement, and points in Evangelism, have actually been helpful at low levels because I’m doing so much damage.  Unfortunately, both of these abilities only proc from Smite and Holy Fire, and I use my DoTs and Penance slightly more often.
• I was experiencing a lot of mana issues, which were made even worse by the inadequacies of low-level water (I would have to drink 2-3 of them before I was back up to full, and that’s a lot of time spent as an easy target).  So I went ahead and put some points into Mental Agility to try to make the mana situation a little more manageable.

One of my favorite moments of the week came yesterday morning, when I found myself in the enemy’s flag room in WSG with two rogues.  All three of us stood still for a moment, trying to figure out who was going to take it.  Finally the rogues asked me to carry, since neither of them wanted to have to leave stealth.  I grabbed the flag and took off.  On the way back to our base, we killed the enemy flag carrier and went on to cap, which gave me my Capture the Flag achievement.

Spelling error aside, it was adorable.

Then, this morning, this happened – and it’s something I haven’t been able to do on any other character:

So as a silly (but sincere!) thank-you to everyone who offered advice in this endeavor, I’m offering the chance to decide which of the PvP mounts Thisby will purchase.  Remember that she’s a gnome, so she will look ridiculous no matter which mount you choose – and, really, isn’t that the point of gnomes anyway?

Should you be interested in following Thisby’s adventures, I’ve been writing about her occasionally on Twitter with the hashtag #minipriest.