Alt Appreciation Week Seven - Priest

Lae from World of Lae has come up with awesome idea of celebrating all of the classes in World of Warcraft one by one, each week! You can find out more about it and a list of participants in this thread.

Priest Week 

Priest hanging out at the Timeless Isle

It's finally rolled around to what I'll be honest was the week I was most looking forward to! Unfortunately the week so far hasn't gone as planned with my boyfriends HDD giving way he's been raiding on my computer and I've felt a bit bad playing WoW while he's not been able to! However every week is Priest week for me as my main is a Priest so it's not all bad. 

My first attempt at the Priest class didn't go so well. I'd spent a fair amount of time watching a friend play a Hunter when the time came for me to learn the Fade spell I was pretty stoked. I somehow got it into my head that it was the exact same as Feign Death. It's not. I died a lot, decided Priests were terrible and ditched her instantly. That was some time pretty early in vanilla, thankfully it wasn't the end of Priest for me. 

A few weeks before The Burning Crusade released I decided to start another Priest, Korla. 

I had no idea then that she would become the heart and soul of my account. She started life out as a Human but I never really got around to leveling her. With the first expansion coming all of my focus was on gearing up my Hunter who had just become my new main, since I'd gotten a bit tired of my Warrior. After a few weeks of BC and deciding that I hated raiding on  / was awful at my Hunter my little Priest offered me some solace and respite. 

 

Sadly not the original Korla.

Something happened while questing in The Badlands, I fell in love. Completely head over heals in love with Korla. It just hit me. I was having so much fun with her. I don't know if it was due to making some kind of break through with the game - up until that point I'd been a bit of a noob. I think it had a lot to do with me really enjoying the game for the first time. My Warrior had been my first character and everything was pointing to getting to level 60 as quickly as possible to begin raiding. That seemed to be the only point in the game in many people's opinion. My next character was my Hunter who again I rushed to level 60 as quick as I could so that she could become my new main for the expansion. 

With Korla I took my time, quested though a lot of zones I'd never been to on my leveling path with my previous characters. 

I had several friends who played healers, specifically Priest healers. Healing was an aspect of the game I was really interested in after having tanked and DPS'd in dungeons and raids. There was no such thing as LFG at that point so you had to look for people to join your group for instances. This was usually done either in the city or in the zone which the instance was located Westfall for Dead Mines, Hellfire Peninsula for Hellfire Ramparts for example. By the time I was level 60 the Armory existed but inspecting in game didn't. Duel spec also didn't exist so when I while I leveled as Shadow - when I saw someone looking for a healer I'd drop out of shadow form in order to lose my buff and tell them I was a healer. I loved healing so much more than Shadow. 

In my mind she was my main even before she hit level 70 but once I got there I started the gear grind and began raiding on her and I continued to do so until the last tier of Cataclysm. I decided to take a break from raiding after clearing Dragon Soul, I just didn't have the heart to go back though and do it on heroic. 

 

Firelands Priest Transmog

For most of my raiding career Korla has been Holy, during Wrath I raided along side a Disc Priest and there's no point in having two in a ten man raid. I finally took a Disc spec during Firelands as it was favored for a lot of the fights and I was no longer raiding with another Priest so I was free to do what I wanted. Throughout Mists I've stayed Disc as it's quite fun being able to pew pew and heal at the same time but this week I've gone back to my much loved Holy for a bit of a change and I'm really enjoying it again! It's even viable in PvP! 

About two months ago my hard drive broke. Gone. kaput. I lost all of my screen shots from Vanilla - MoP and I'm gutted. I've lost the SS of Korla completing the ICC meta achievement, I've lost the SS of Korla grinding reputation in Dire Maul when my fiance first whispered me to tell me he liked me before we'd met. I've lost the SS of Korla hitting each of the level caps and all of the adventures we've been on and that makes me pretty sad but I still have the memories. If Blizzard decided that they had to make cut backs and everyone had to delete all character bar one Korla would be the one I'd keep. I really do love her. 

Transmogs used;

First picture;

Shoulder - Hallowed Pauldrons
Chest - Fel Conquerer Raiments
Belt - Maletic Girdle
Hands - Heroes' Gloves of Faith
Weapon - Starshard Edge

Second picture; 

Shoulder - Wrathful Gladiator's Mooncloth Mantle
Chest - Brutal Gladiator's Mooncloth Robe
Belt - Wrathful Gladiator's Cord of Alacrity
Hands - Setaphic Handwraps
Weapon - Wand of Eternal Light

Third picture; 

Shoulder - Mantle of Closed Doors
Chest - Robes of Smoldering Devastation
Belt - Maletic Girdle
Hands - Heroe's Gloves of Faith
Weapon - Ko'Gun, Hammer of the Firelord