Priest Leveling Guide - How To Level Up Really Fast

A Priest is a great character to play, especially because he is by most recognized to be the best healing class at level 80. Getting a Priest to the level cap has never been really easy or fast. However, I recently leveled an Alliance Priest, after having leveled a Horde Priest 4 years ago, and I must say that the mana-issue while using the Shadow build wasn’t really a problem. You can’t expect to be Holy or Discipline and expect to level up as fast as a Shadow priest. Only if you have some friends that will boost you whenever you want to play you can consider this but if you know you are the one that has to do it, Shadow is the way to go.

Let’s have a look at the talent tree:

PriestLeveling Build

As you can see, all Shadow talents are chosen in this build. It speaks for itself that you do move down the talent tree as fast as possible and later take the less important leveling talents like Improved Spirit Tap, Shadow Affinity, Veiled Shadows, Psychic Scream, Silence etc. The talents are quite good though so at a later level they should definitely be taken.

The Shadow tree starts nice with Spirit Tap. While leveling this talent is so great because it greatly improves your mana regeneration after each kill. Once you got your points there you should skip Improved Spirit Tap and put two points in Blackout. Then put points in Improved Shadow Word Pain and Shadow Focus. Put a point in Mindflay once you hit level 20, it’s not that strong in the first few levels you’ll have it, especially if you have a nice wand but it will become stronger and stronger. Use four talent points in Improved Mindblast to reduce its cooldown.

Leave Veiled Shadows for what it is for now and go for Shadow reach and Shadow Weaving, both great talents. Now go straight for Vampiric Embrace which is a nice and free spell that will restore some hitpoints in your fights. Put three points in Focused mind and one in Improved Vampiric Embrace.

Now you can choose either between Darkness and Mind Melt before Shadow Form becomes available! Now this is what you have probably been waiting for while leveling. Your damage will be increased while damage taken will be decreased, it’s just too sweet. Also take the Improved version asap because of the reduced pushback which is nice for your Mind Flay among other spells.

Now take Vampiric Embrace when you get the chance because that is a great damage dealing and mana restoring ability.

All the talents in the downside of the tree are great and it’s up to your preferences which you’d like to take first. You should take Dispersion, a real life saver and mana-generator, whenever you get the chance.

Priest - What Makes a Priest The Best Healer?

The Priest is a caster class and is considered by most to be the best all-round healer in WoW. His spells are Holy and Shadow based. A Priest can also do quite a bit of damage but is mainly known for his great healing capabilities in both PvE and PvP.

One of the downsides of playing a Priest is the leveling. Even though the Shadow talent tree is available, which greatly increases a Priest’s damage done, it can still be time taking because the spells cost a lot of mana. Once you get to the higher levels though, you can always count on a spot in any kind of party or raid wherever they are going because a Priest is just great and everybody knows it.

All the Priests are able to cast a Stamina buff on themselves and party and raid members. If a few points in the Discipline tree are spent another buff called Divine Spirit becomes available. This buff boosts the Spirit of players. A Priest’s healing spells are based on Holy power and one has a variety of instant, small, big, HoT and AoE heals to choose from which make the priest the best overall healer. If a Priest prefers to do damage he is pretty much stuck on the Shadow spells if he wants to get the best out of his Priest.

You can choose from quite a few races if you want to play a Priest. The Human Spirit and Blood Elf’s Arcane Spirit racials make them nice choices. Other races you can choose from are Dwarves, Night Elves, Draenei, Trolls, and Undead.

A Priest can choose to go for a full Discipline build if he likes to heal and likes to play PvP. There are some great talents in the tree that make the Priest tougher, his heals more effective and the Priest will also gain some new abilities like Pain Suppression and  Power Infusion. The Discipline Priests are great single target healers. This, together with abilities like the ones mentioned above make the Discipline Priests great for PvP as well.

The Holy tree is also great for healing. It’s probably a bit better when it comes to raw healing then the Discipline tree. Some other healing spells like Circle of Healing are learned which make the Priest even a better healer. The Holy build gives more bonus healing and is normally considered to be better for PvE purposes when it comes to healing.

Finally, the Shadow build. Priests make great healers but they sure can do good damage as well. His damage is based on Damage over Time (DoT), and fast spells like Mind Blast and Mind Flay. The great thing about a Shadow Priest is that he can also support his group by placing some debuffs on a target like Vampiric Embrace and Vampiric Touch which will convert some damage done to mana and hitpoints for both the Priest and his group members.