WoW Priest Guide

The priest is a common class for any fantasy MMORPG, most of the time it is a healing class and that is true in WoW. However, there is also a dark side (if you will) to the priest in WoW and that is when you take the route of the Shadow talent specialization which we will get into later in the third section of the guide which is talent specs. Priests can be a very fun class to play and also powerful if you play it correctly.

There are some advantadges to playing a priest character in WoW, one of these is the healing effects. Priests have very good healing if their talents are set correctly and still have good healing otherwise. This is very helpful while leveling and of course in raids. They also have abilities to fear enemies away making them very useful in getting out of tough situations and in PvP. Whats more is that they also have an ability to shield themselves and other players to lower damage taken from attacks. And as other healing classes, most of the time it’s very easy to get in a group as a holy/discipline priest as healers are usually hard to find when running instances. Priests also have a stamina buff they can cast on themselves and friendly targets.

Although the Priest does have a lot of positive features there is some negative ones as well. First of all they are restricted from wearing any armor type other than cloth which makes them exceptionally vulnerable to attacks and can die very quickly and easily if they aren’t quick to get their shield up and fear enemies away. Another disadvantage is that you are limited to basically one DPS spec which leaves no room to switch things up a bit.

What Racial Abilities are good for Priests?

The priest class is able to choose from four different alliance races as well as three different horde races. The only races you will be unable to choose is the Gnome, Orc, and Tauren. However as with any class choosing your race is important and can increase your healing and damage down the road. With some classes it is important you decide which route you will be tanking (DPS, tank, heal) but not quite as much with the priest since you will be casting if you are doing shadow DPS or healing.

Starting with the four available alliance races you have to choose from as a priest, the first of which being a Human which has a passive ability which increases spirit by 3% which is useful for PvE and also a remove all movement impairing effects with a 2 minute cooldown which is very useful in PvP. The Dwarf has the Stoneform ability which removes bleeding, poison, and disesase effects and also increasing armor by 10% with a 3 minute cooldown which makes the Dwarf a very useful PvP Priest race. As with any other class the Night Elf makes for a nice PvP Class with it’s Shadowmeld ability and it’s quickness which reduces the chance you will be hit by 2%. The last is the Draenei which is useful for PvE raid healing with the extra Heal over Time racial ability “Gift of the Naaru”

Now continuing on with the three horde races you have to choose from as a priest. First is the troll which has the Berserking ability, this ability will increase casting speed for 10 seconds by 10% at full health and 30% at low health with a three minute cooldown which is good for raid healing if a lot of people are in trouble and you need to get heals out as fast as possible and also just with DPSing. The Undead has Will of the Forsaken which will remove fear, sleep, and charm effects with a 2 minute cooldown. Useful in PvP when someone comes in and tries putting you to sleep and killing the other player you were protecting. And finally the Blood Elf, the Arcane Torrent is very useful for both PvP and PvE, it will silence enemies making it very useful against casters in PvP and also regains 6% of your mana which helps out in both areas.

Which talent spec should I choose?

The Priest has both Healing and DPS talent specializations as I mentioned earlier, the DPS spec is Shadow. Shadow talents are going to be all about damage increasement and not healing. Shadow Priests have a lot of useful spells such as Mind Flay which is a three second cast that needs to be channeled which will cause damage and slow the target. This spell is useful for both PvP and PvE because of the damage it can do and also the reducing of the targets speed. Shadow priests also have quite a bit of Damage over time spells such as Vampiric Touch which lasts for 15 seconds. A bonus to add on to all of these damage over time spells is Shadowform. Shadowform is like switching stances as a warrior, your character will become dark like a shadow and it will also give you a 15% shadow spell damage bonus and reduce all damage taken by 15%. It does however prevent the casting of holy spells except cure disease and abolish disease. Shadowform also decreases threat generated by your damage over time effects by 30% and allows them to critically hit.

The next talent specialization we will discuss is Holy which is the main healing spec for priests. Holy priests are debatebly the best healing class in WoW. Holy priests have a talent called Spirit of Redemption that will increase the priests spirit by 5% and also when the priest dies they will be able to cast healing spells in a sort of guardian angel type form for 15 seconds before being completely dead. A very useful talent the holy priest has is the Circle of Healing this ability will heal the lowest five raid members around the target instantly and surprisingly only has a six second cooldown. The last talent you learn as a holy priest is Guardian Spirit which you will cast on a friendly target to increase their healing received by 40% and prevents the target from dying but that will sacrifice the spirit. This spirit lasts 10 seconds and has a three minute cooldown. Another talent you learn early on is Spiritua Guidance which increases the priests spellpower by 25% of their spirit.

The last talent specialization we will discuss is the Discipline tree, this tree can go either way when it comes to raid healing and PvP. This spec will strengthen the priest’s buffs like Fortitude (Stamina buff) and Inner fire. If you choose to go PvE healing with discipline your job will more than likely be keeping the tank alive rather than healing the raid. Holy is more preffered for raid healing because of the AoE heals.

What stats are important for a Priest?