Priest Leveling Guide

The Priest is unique in World of Warcraft as the only class with two healing specializations. For that reason the class has traditionally been associated with the healing role, with its lone damage specialization often seen as an afterthought. That’s no longer the case by the Mists of Pandaria expansion. Many of the class’s rough edges from past eras have been smoothed over; you won’t be alt-tabbing while your character hits things with their wand over and over. The Priest is quicker on their feet, and the Shadow build is satisfying to play, while the Discipline and Holy trees retain their powerful healing capabilities.

This guide will help you select your build, equipment, professions, rotation, and where to go as a Priest to get from 1 to 90 as efficiently as possible. Whether you’re looking to lurk in the shadows and deal damage from The Void or heal your allies with The Light, you’ll be well on your way before you know it.

Strengths

• Despite wearing cloth armor, Priests are surprisingly sturdy. When they do take damage, they have powerful defensive and healing capabilities to counteract it.
• If you want to heal in group content, you’ll have two different build options for it as a Priest, each with their own strengths, giving you more healing tools than you’d have with any other class.
• Shadow Priests are very effective chain pullers. You’ll roll right through your quests.
• Priests finally have some decent mobility in Mists of Pandaria thanks to Angelic Feather and Glyph of Levitate. They also have Void Tendrils, which gives them a bit more control than the old tactic of using Psychic Scream and praying that the mobs didn’t run right into another pack.

Weaknesses

• As a DoT-based specialization, the Shadow Priest has weak burst and requires a bit of ramp-up.
• Although they have some new crowd control and movement abilities, Priests still don’t have the toolbox that Mages and Warlocks possess for kiting or controlling mobs.

Talent Builds

Priests are a hybrid class with two talent trees for the healing role and one for dealing damage from range. Their lone damage specialization, Shadow, is the recommended way to level the class. Discipline and Holy are not advised as your damage will be too limited to quest or farm efficiently.

Talents

Because of the changes to talent trees in this expansion, all of your class’s specializations share the same set of talent options. Our recommendations for Priests are below, and are chosen with the Shadow specialization in mind.

• Level 15: Void Tendrils
  Being able to root up to 5 enemies will help you keep them at range while you deal damage. Psyfiend and Dominate Mind are much more niche in their usefulness.
• Level 30: Angelic Feather
  This is a much better movement speed buff than Body and Soul, with the tradeoff being that you have to place the feathers on the ground in your character’s path. From Legion onward, this could be done with a macro, but it must be done manually in Mists of Pandaria. Some players may prefer Body and Soul for this reason, and also because it piggybacks off another useful spell rather than requiring its own separate GCD to cast. Phantasm isn’t as useful except in PvP.
• Level 45: Solace and Insanity
  The passive effect that Shadow Priests gain from this talent will buff the damage of your main filler spell. From Darkness, Comes Light requires you to add Mind Spike to your rotation whenever it procs, and does not amount to quite as much damage. Mindbender is not as strong either.
• Level 60: Angelic Bulwark
  This talent is a passive effect that happens without you having to do anything and will provide a nice little buffer to your health when things get messy. In theory the absorption it offers is stronger than the healing of Desperate Prayer, but the latter allows you to control when it happens, which some players will prefer. Spectral Guise is worthy of its own separate footnote, which you can find below this list.*
• Level 75: Twist of Fate
  You’ll get a lot of use out of this if you’re chain pulling mobs and it will amount to a significant buff to your damage overall. Divine Insight and Power Infusion aren’t going to improve your damage as much, on average.

*Spectral Guise is designed as a slightly better version of Fade, which is not useful when soloing since it only reduces threat and doesn’t drop it entirely. But in the original version of Mists of Pandaria, this ability could be used to drop combat like Vanish or Feign Death if you canceled the effect before it ended. This was likely unintended, and it remains to be seen whether this functionality will exist in WoW Classic. If it does, then Spectral Guise may be worth considering for leveling as it will provide you with a powerful escape tool. The easiest way to do this would be with a cancelaura macro:

#showtooltip
/cancelaura Spectral Guise
/cast Spectral Guise

Glyphs

Like talents, glyphs have been trimmed down and have a more subtle impact than they did in previous expansions. The glyphs below are our recommendations for leveling, but your mileage may vary based on your own preferences and playstyle (and what cosmetic effects you may want).

Major

• Level 25: Glyph of Reflective Shield
  You’ll want to have Power Word: Shield up on your character as much as possible for defense and to prevent spell pushback. With this glyph, you’ll also be able to get some extra damage out of it.
• Level 50: Glyph of Levitate
  This glyph causes your Levitate ability to grant you the Path of the Devout buff while it’s active and for 10 seconds after it ends, increasing your movement speed by 15%. Levitate has no cooldown and is cheap to cast, so you can use it all the time, and you’ll still get at least 10 seconds of speed out of it even if you take damage immediately. You learn Levitate at level 34, so you may even want to pick this glyph up a bit earlier.
• Level 75: Glyph of Mass Dispel
  You’ll be able to remove some debuffs with this ability that aren’t normally dispellable.

Minor

• All of the Priest’s Minor Glyphs are purely cosmetic, so choose whatever seems the most fun to you! Personally I’m a big fan of the Glyph of Dark Archangel and Glyph of Shadow Ravens.

Stat Priority

Always try to stack your main stat above all. For Priests, that will be Intellect.

1. Intellect
2. Haste
3. Critical Strike
4. Mastery

Equipment

Priests are fairly limited in terms of what gear they can use. They can only wear Cloth armor. As far as weapons, you’ll be able to equip Wands, Daggers, Staves, and One-Handed Maces. Priests can’t Dual Wield and they can’t equip Shields. A Staff will usually provide you with the easiest stats while leveling, but you can also use a One-Handed weapon with a Held in Off-hand item. Note that Wands now use your Main Hand slot since the Ranged equipment slot has been removed from the game with this expansion. Weapon upgrades will often be the biggest damage increase while leveling. If you’re using an Heirloom weapon, it will upgrade automatically each time you level.

Heirlooms

Heirlooms can considerably speed up the leveling process by granting you increased experience gains and making your character a lot stronger. They’re also a lot more convenient than having to replace your gear every few levels. To get heirloom equipment for your Priest, you’ll have to buy it on another character who has enough of an appropriate currency.

Any heirloom gear is better than nothing. If you happen to have some lying around after leveling another character, feel free to use them rather than buying new ones (as long as the stats are good for you). But these are the best pieces if you’re looking to purchase some Heirlooms specifically for leveling your Priest:

• Head: Tattered Dreadmist Mask
• Shoulder: Tattered Dreadmist Mantle
• Back: Ancient Bloodmoon Cloak
• Chest: Tattered Dreadmist Robe
• Legs: Tattered Dreadmist Leggings
• Finger: Dread Pirate Ring
• Trinket: Discerning Eye of the Beast x2
• Weapon: Devout Aurastone Hammer
• Off-Hand: Musty Tome of the Lost

Professions

You can approach professions while leveling in one of two ways: you can either start working on the skills you want to use at level 90 or you can pick up some professions to help you along the way. It’s more efficient in the long run to level your endgame professions at the same time that you level your character, but most professions will significantly slow down the leveling process if you do this. So if you just want to make it to level 90 as quickly as possible, it might make sense to grab something else for the time being.

As far as professions that specifically make leveling easier, gathering skills are the best choice. Herbalism and Mining have been changed in Mists of Pandaria to allow you to gather materials from any node in the game with a level 1 skill. These two professions, along with Archaeology, also give you character experience as you gain skill. On top of that, all three gathering professions – Herbalism, Mining, and Skinning – each offer useful passive bonuses that can help you in your journey, even if you don’t bother to level them at all.

Crafting professions require a lot more work (or a lot of gold to buy the materials on the Auction House). Many professions will allow you to craft items that you can use while leveling, with Tailoring and Engineering being particularly useful. Many players who pick up Tailoring opt to take Enchanting as their other profession due to their synergy (you can enchant the gear you make, and disenchant extra items that you don’t need). It’s not really worth investing in these skills just for leveling, though. If you pick up a crafting profession, it should either be in preparation for endgame or as a means of supporting your other characters.

Rotation

Now that you’re all set up, here’s what buttons you should push and in what order!

For the first 10 levels, you’ll be maintaining Shadow Word: Pain on your target(s) and casting Smite otherwise. At level 10 you’ll be able to swap Smite out for Mind Flay and start mixing in your other spells as you learn them.

To maximize your damage as a Shadow Priest, you should prioritize your abilities in this order:

• Always have your Inner Fire buff active.
• Always have your Shadowform buff active (level 24+).
• Use Mind Sear if you are fighting more than 5 targets and ignore the rest of this list (level 76+).
• Use Devouring Plague if you have 3 Shadow Orbs (level 21+).
• Use Mind Blast on cooldown (level 21+).
• Use Shadow Word: Death if it is available (level 46+).
• Use Shadow Word: Pain to apply and maintain its DoT on all targets.
• Use Vampiric Touch to apply and maintain its DoT on all targets (level 28+).
• Use Mind Flay as a filler.

Where To Level

Getting Started

Like all classes except for Death Knights, you’ll begin in the starting zone for your character’s race. Completing your starting zone should get you through the first dozen or so levels. After that, you can head to your faction’s capital city to train professions, use the Auction House, and decide where to go next. A good place to start is the Hero’s Call Board in the center of The Trade District in Stormwind City or the Warchief’s Command Board in front of Grommash Hold at The Valley of Strength in Orgrimmar. This board will always have a couple of quests directing you to a zone in your level range.

Leveling Beyond Your Starting Zone

Level 20 is when you’ll be able to get your first mount. After that, you should train new riding skills as soon as they become available to help you get around more quickly. Don’t forget to also train your professions, upgrade your gear, and pick up glyphs when you have new slots available. At level 30, you can learn Dual Specialization from your class trainer, which will allow you to have an alternate build that you can swap to when you feel the need.

For the first 58 levels, you’ll be questing or dungeon grinding in Classic zones and instances on the continents of Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor. When you get into the higher levels, you should head to the next expansion’s zones as soon as you’re able to: Outland at level 58, Northrend at 68, Cataclysm at 78, and Pandaria at 85. There’s a big jump in loot and experience for each expansion that makes it well worth abandoning whatever you were doing before and moving on.

If you’re not worried about taking the fastest, most direct path to level 90, feel free to break up your leveling process by trying out different activities. There are plenty of things to do in World of Warcraft that grant experience besides questing and killing mobs. You can get a little bit of experience from gathering with Archaeology, Herbalism, or Mining. You can run dungeons with other players, or compete against them in PvP battlegrounds. The new pet battle system also gives experience.