If you buy priests and the other team has experience upgrades, you'll get outleveled very quickly. I still only buy priests when I can get cats. If my team is getting pushed around, I'll consider priests. They are the exception and not the rule, however.

I'm still in reflexions on that point. Priests give extra xp and gold to ennemies. But they also give significant advantage for keeping flags, destroying towers, and therefore oblige ennemy DGs (without priests) to go back to crystal more often. Sometimes, depending on DG each side, at equal skill, one DG won't be able to defend his tower against one DG with an entiere creep waves + priests attacking with him (the "non-priest wave" got killed around flag).

I do not buy priests all time at WR 3, usually more around WR 5/6. But I sometimes buy them early if I feel the need to.

For example, a team with 2 or 3 Assassins needs early priests; an opposing team without good AoE (Sedna, Ereb) allow you to buy early priests; and very often I'm not waiting much time between ennemy's priests and mine because I usually feel pushed back and really don't like that.

If I buy them, most to counter enemy-priests or if we are only assasins, or pushed around the map, I only buy the blacksmith and armory ups at catas/giants. I think, its to expensive this early on to buy it for priests only.

i am with zehdon here. well, i do not buy them as soon as possible but qutie early. they amount they help to push the enemy back deeper into their base is far more worth than the xp/gold they may get more. usually they don't get more at all because they are to occupied with other stuff. with priests on yur side their towers get destroyed pretty fast if you go with them. it highly increases the pressure.

btw. in most cases quite soon after you bought them they are forced to do the same so the argument with more xp/gold does not hold for a long time anyway.

I pretty much play Sedna exclusively and I will get priests as soon as I hit level 5 and get Healing Wind 2.  The buff it provides is tremendous and it becomes close to impossible to knock me out of a lane unless you gang up on me.  And if you're ganging up on me, that means my teammates and the priest wave are unopposed in other lanes tearing down towers.

as gunblob says, it also depends on the demigod you play. If I am a tower farming rook (a playstyle which I enjoy and frequently use) I would most definitely recommend getting priests asap so you wont run into health problems over time and can stay with your farm replacing overtime/destroyed towers. (a good general ally can also send you a monk, ofcourse) 1 of rook biggest weaknesses is that his hp wont come back after he is hurt. (well, it will come back, but very slowly)

I wouldnt get priests if your enemies are very dominant on the battle field because then the feeding argument is right. However, when your enemies have priests and they keep hurting your towers, get them yourself because you need your towers to protect your base as long as possible.

Also, as Archon_Saar said, if your enemies have some AOE attacks getting priests isnt always that useful because they are wiped out in an instant by a demigod as TB.

When you have sedna they are extra useful, when your enemy has sedna with counterhealing they are not at all useful.

It depends on the game you are in but in general, they are pretty useful.

Priest seem to be good with very few exceptions such as:

1. Against an extremly powerful aoe team, one frost tb is not enough (upgrade armor one or two times and blizzard wont kill priest lol)

2. If you have to sacerfice the basic gear in oder to get it perhaps you would have made more of a push without priest if you were stronger than having priest along?

3. in the short period of time when the opponents can,t get your towers in any case but even with priests you can't get the flags but that is perhaps at warscore 3 only with certain conditions such as: they own you in the beginning but have no class that can easily put down a tower when it is defended or hurt the defending player even tho he is standing by the tower.  

Hey Makeshift-D!  Great game out there.  It really pwns using blood soaked wand with a little teamwork.

As for priests, I generally don't want to get them unless I'm not winning the duels.  They're a good boost, you fight in the middle of them and get healed and they do more damage, help push over the edge.  Or if enemy is distracted, get them to wear down towers.  Other than that, just XP feeder, imho.  Or buy at the very end to catapults.

BTW, Don't know McShane, sounds like a good player, but I watched him make a custom game and then rig it to have noobs on the other side and better peeps and his buddy j-bud on his sides.  Here's my guidelines, haha:

Guy who plays well and is generally cool:  good player

Guy who plays well and is a stats-whore and dick in general: douchebag kid that needs to get off the computer

As a general rule, do not buy any creep upgrdes until you can go straight to Catas.

There are some exceptions where priests early can be useful.

The more of these that hold true, the more the benefit of priests will outway the gold/exp boost to the opponent.

1) If you have high HP characters on your team (Rook, UB), then the healing bonus is siginifcatly greater then usual.

2) If the opponent lacks multiple AoE characters, then it is difficult for them to effectively farm the extra gold, but will still be able to farm the exp.  IE: An opponent team of Sedna/Ereb.

3) If you are focusing on pushing where the creeps go, as opposed to going after portals, then you will be able to fight by your creeps and gain a significant advantage.  This means, in Cataract, you are pushing the middle, not portals.  This is extremely uncommon early in the game.

4) They will help you hold flags.  This is a last resort, only in the situation where you are unable to take any flags back.

There are some other things to consider:

If you have priests, then your spawn wave will wipe the opponent spawn wave.  This means that usually, if you want to kill creep, you have to venture further into enemy territory to the new equilibrium point.  This is risky.  Also, waves of 2-3 priests tend to build up before getting killed by towers, giving the opponent  easy oportunities for mass-farming.

Some characters benefit in ways more than just extra Exp/Gold.  An opponent's Oak is a deadly force in one of your large creep waves.  His AoE nuke, combined with Divine Justice, will give him a massive heal every time he kills your creep wave.  It is extremely difficult to fight an oak who is nuking your creeps and getting heals from it.

Yes Cind3rs I try to play with my roommate Jay_Budi when I can, what a stat-whore dick that makes me.  While it would be great to just kick the noobs that join all day even when you have "good players please" in the title, I think most people know that eventually crashes the game. 

As far as buying priests I have a problem with it if you're not already controlling the lanes and in a good position to push the other team back.  In a close game, vs a team that can do a lot of damage, the extra gold and xp they get from farming can eventually turn the battle in their favour.  Also getting priests as soon as possible before other important upgrades such as gold, tower regen, and xp is not a good idea.