Priest Guide

1. Introduction
2. General Information
3. Talent Builds
4. Healing
5. Raiding
6. PvE
7. PvP

1. Introduction

Priests are a very powerful class wielding a combination of shadow and holy abilities they can be the ultimate healer or a dangerous damage dealer. Priests are one of the most wanted classes in the game as many guilds need more healers.

Also Priests can do very well in a PvP group as with Shadow Abilities they can deal quite a bit of damage and fear their opponents away. Many times a priest is also needed for the various instances and bosses.

2. General Information

The Priest has 3 abilitie/talent trees. The Holy Tree, The Discipline Tree, and the Shadow Tree. Each tree enhances an aspect of the priest such as his healing ability or his damage ability.

The Holy tree is focused upon healing ability. It has things such as Holy Nova and Lightwell. This is great for raiding and for use in group PvP. Also great just so that you have fast healing and smite is pretty good for PvP because of patch 1.10

The Discipline tree enhances your mana regeneration/conservation abilities. Also improves things such as inner fire and shield thus your ability to protect yourself and teammates. Has some abilities that allow you to cast a mana free spell and other things.

The Shadow tree focuses upon your damage ability and gives you numerous tools to kill other players. It gives you things such as Vampiric Embrace to drain life from opponents and silence to prevent players from healing/escaping. Also gives you Mindflay a wonderful PvP/leveling ability.

Each race of priest has a different special ability at level 10 and 20:

Alliance

Human: Desperate Prayer, Feedback
Dwarf: Desperate Prayer, Fear Ward
Nightelf: Starshards, Elunes Grace

Horde

Undead: Touch of Weakness, Devouring Plague
Troll: Hex of Weakness, Shadowguard

3. Talent Builds

18/33 Discipline/Shadow PvE Grinding Build

Discipline Talents (18 points)

Unbreakable Will (5/5)
Martyrdom (2/2)
Improved Power Word: Shield (3/3)
Improved Power Word: Fortitude (1/2)
Inner Focus (1/1)
Meditation (3/3)
Mental Agility (3/5)

Shadow Talents (33 points)

Spirit Tap (5/5)
Blackout (5/5)
Improved Psychic Scream (2/2)
Improved Mind Blast (5/5)
Mind Flay (1/1)
Shadow Weaving (5/5)
Silence (1/1)
Vampiric Embrace (1/1)
Improved Vampiric Embrace (2/2)
Darkness (5/5)
Shadowform (1/1)

19/32 Discipline/Holy Healing Build

Discipline Talents (19 points)

Unbreakable Will (5/5)
Martyrdom (2/2)
Improved Power Word: Shield (3/3)
Improved Power Word: Fortitude (1/2)
Inner Focus (1/1)
Meditation (3/3)
Mental Agility (4/5)

Holy Talents (32 points)

Healing Focus (2/2)
Holy Specialization (5/5)
Divine Fury (5/5)
Holy Nova (1/1)
Blessed Recovery (2/3)
Holy Reach (2/2)
Improved Healing (3/3)
Spirit of Redemption (1/1)
Spiritual Guidance (5/5)
Spiritual Healing (5/5)
Lightwell (1/1)

4. Healing

The Priest has many healing abilities and here is a list of some of them and when to use them.

Holy Nova: Great for healing groups of rogues/warriors in fights such as Golemagg and Vaelastraz.

Flash Heal: Useful in fights where your tank requires heals very fast when a boss gets a combo off. Used in fights such as Nefarian, Twin Emperors.

Greater Heal: A Long slow heal good if your comfortable with your tanks HP but anticipate him losing alot soon, or if the tank needs a heal but not immediately. Okay to use on fights such as Lucifron and other slower fights.

Lightwell: Useful for giving a quick free bandage type heal to rogues and other DPS classes in raids.

Renew: Toss this on DPS classes runnning by if you have spare mana.

5. Raiding

In a raid your main role is to be a healer for the tanks and sometimes will be assigned to heal DPS groups. For the most part just using Greater Heal occasionally should be fine for most fights unless your healing the MT in a boss fight.

Also if you have it you can throw down a lightwell for the DPS classes. Not much else priests need to do. Also using a bunch of either spirit or +healing gear can allow you to go through most of the raid dungeons without running out of mana.

Many fights in blackwing lair and some in Molten Core will require you to position yourself out of LOS or other things to prevent you from being killed. Some fights are a bit more active in such things but most will not require you to move much.

6. PvE

The shadow build is generally the best for PvE leveling as it has a number of tools that improve your damage while still allowing you to go long periods without resting. Your first talent for any priest should be spirit tap as when you get 5/5 it can regenerate almost your entire mana bar till around 25-30 and even after that can keep you going.

After that as soon as possible get Mindflay which requires 11 points in shadow. From there on Vampiric embrace and Shadow form are your big talents.

Using this combo to kill mobs should make it easy:

Mind Blast
SW:P(Shadow Word Pain)
Mindflay
Wand
Mindblast
if mob is running Mindflay otherwise Wand

Using a good wand can help save a lot of mana as it can do almost as much damage over time as your spells do.

7. PvP

Priest will generally use the shadow spec for PvP as it has the best damage ability and allows them to sometimes take a warrior on head to head and survive because of PW:S(Power Word Shield) and Shadowform.

If they are a caster you will want to make good use of silence at a crucial time such as when they are trying to heal or for a mage their opening combo. Also Mindflay is a great spell for finishing off a running opponent or for if your low on mana.

Make sure that when PvPing to not use shadowform unless your certain your fighting only 1 opponent. If a rogue or some other class pops out and attacks you while your in shadowform you may die before you can cancel it and heal.

Also never underestimate how good MC is when attempting to assault a flag. MC the warrior or the mage then try and damage as many people as possible before moving in a killing off the survivors.