Priest Overview

Priests can be powerful healers, formidable PvP opponents, or dangerous damage-dealers.

A quick summary of the Priest abilities:

• Healing. Priests have a large and versatile collection of healing spells, including:
  • Renew : An instant cast heal-over-time spell.
  • Greater Heal : A large heal with a long cast time.
  • Flash Heal : A fast cast medium-size heal.
  • Binding Heal : A low-threat heal with a fast cast time that heals both the Priest and their target for a moderate amount.
  • Prayer of Healing : A long-cast-time heal that heals all party members within 30 yards for a moderate amount.
  • Prayer of Mending : An instant cast preemptive heal, which heals the target for a moderate amount when they next take damage and gives the threat from the heal to the target, rather than to the Priest. When used, this buff then hops to a random raid member within 20 yards. Has 5 charges.
  • Circle of Healing : An instant-cast minor heal that heals everyone in a selected group within its radius, and that has no cool-down (other than the global cool-down). This spell is the 41-point talent in the Holy tree.
  • Power Word: Shield : Temporarily block a certain amount of incoming damage on the target.
• Buffs:
  • Power Word: Fortitude or Prayer of Fortitude , which increases a player's stamina for, respectively, 30 minutes or 1 hour.
  • Shadow Protection or Prayer of Shadow Protection , which increases a player's resistance to shadow spells for, respectively, 10 minutes or 20 minutes.
  • Divine Spirit or Prayer of Spirit , which buffs a player's Spirit for, respectively, 30 minutes or 1 hour. This spell is a 21-point talent in the Discipline tree, and can be further buffed with talents to increase spell damage and healing by up to 10% of the target's total Spirit.
• Removing harmful effects:
  • Dispel Magic — Removes harmful magic effects from a friendly target, or helpful magic effects from a foe.
  • Mass Dispel — Works like Dispel Magic but affects multiple targets at once.
  • Cure Disease or Abolish Disease - Removes a disease from a friendly target.
• Controlling their own threat:
  • Discipline or Holy Priests can take the Silent Resolve talent to decrease their threat from discipline or holy spells by up to 20%.
  • Shadow Priests can take the Shadow Affinity talent to decrease their threat from Shadow spells by up to 25%.
  • Priests also can Fade to temporarily decrease their threat on all targets for 10 seconds.
• Resurrect other players (out of combat).
• Shadow Priests can restore all party member's health and mana based on their Shadow damage using Vampiric Embrace and Vampiric Touch . These are, respectively, the 21-point and 41-point talents in the Shadow tree.

Their primary stats are Spirit for mana regeneration, Intellect for a large mana pool and crits , and Stamina for more hit points. Stats obtained from gear, such as +damage/healing, are also quite important.

Shadow Priests

Traditionally, the Shadow tree has provided a very good way to level the Priest class, especially after level 40. Via talents and a targeted Spirit and Intellect build, Shadow Priests can have high, sustained DPS and incredibly high survivability with little downtime.

Shadow Priests are considered a viable class for end-game raiding, acting as mana batteries with Vampiric Touch , easing the burden on healers using Vampiric Embrace , and by increasing the damage output of warlocks via Shadow Vulnerability . Additionally, they are flexible and can serve as DPS or as healers, depending upon the situation.

Although Shadow Priests lack AoE and natural class abilities to retain mana, this can be alleviated with the use of consumables, the Shadowfiend spell, and by using Vampiric Touch . Additionally, if necessary, a Shadow Priest can spend 14 points in the Discipline tree to get Meditation and Inner Focus , which will greatly increase their longevity in a fight.