The Priest

Devoted to the spiritual, Priests express their unwavering faith by serving the people. For millennia they have left behind the confines of their temples and the comfort of their shrines so they can support their allies in war-torn lands. In the midst of terrible conflict, no hero questions the value of the priestly orders. (source)

Quick Guide to All Priests

Being casters all Priests will have certain things in common, whether they heal or DPS.

• Int is the #1 stat for all Priests, Spirit is #2.
• Red Int gems (“Brilliant”) in all sockets, unless you need a bit more Resilience for PvP, then use the yellow Mystic gems. Buy the epic gems if you have way too much gold.
• Haste is a generally good secondary stat for all Priests.
• Enchants should be Int, Spellpower, Spirit, Haste.
• See below for PvE, PvP, and leveling info and builds.
• Race: Play what you like, but if you want to be more efficient…
• Humans, for the Spirit gain and PvP trinket escape
• Gnomes for size, escape, and mana pool (and Engineering boost if you like that skill)
• Trolls for Berserking and Da Voodoo Shuffle
• Goblins for escape (Rocket Jump) and Haste.

Gotwarcraft’s Priest Guides

• Priest Class Guide – An overall guide to the Priest class, covering specs, races, and more. Rolling a priest isn’t all kicks and giggles, there are some obvious disadvantages to being the number one healing class in the game, and being the honorary first target for anyone with half a brain in PvP is one of them.
• Priest Leveling guide – Shadow priests have quite a bit of their own unique playstyle to enjoy, such as face-melting with mind flay (lazers!), as well as certain mind control hijinks. Read on and learn how to maximize your shadow priest’s leveling experience.
• Discipline Priest – The Discipline Priest is by far the most durable of any of the Priest builds. Talents in the Discipline Tree focus on longevity, efficiency, utility and most of all, durability.
• Discipline Priest PvE Guide – Raid Healing with your D. Priest
• Shadow Priest – The Darth Vader priest spec, dark, evil-looking, and they bring a lot of damage and utility to their teams. This is also an excellent leveling spec.
• Shadow Priest DPS Guide – How to maximize your raid DPS as Shadow
• Holy Priest Raid Guide – Raid healing with your Holy Priest.
• Priest PvP Builds – Smash face in PvP. Well, melt face. PvP builds and tips.

Leveling your Priest? It used to be that Shadow was the only way to go (for leveling) and leveling before getting Shadowform was… painfully slow. Now we have the Dungeon-finder tool and PvP leveling. If you don’t care for the pace, frustrations, and occasional jerks in PvP or the dungeons then Questing is the way to go and it’s soooo much faster than it used to be (And is just as fast as Dungeoning.)   Here’s our favorite guide to get you to 85 ASAP (and 90 when Pandaria comes out.) This guides sits in your in-game window and shows you exactly where to go and what to do, every step of the way, all the way. It’s also smart enough to deal with heirlooms, Recruit a Friend, and leveling from PvP or Dungeons. Get yours here!

Patch 4.3 Notes for the Priest

• Divine Hymn now affects 5 targets, up from 3.

Talent Specializations

• Discipline
• Atonement will now account for the target enemy’s combat reach when calculating proper range, enabling it to be used on large creatures such as Ragnaros and Ala’kir.
• Divine Aegis has a new spell effect.
• Evangelism and Dark Evangelism can no longer be stacked at the same time.
• Holy
• Spirit of Redemption has been rebuilt to address a few functionality issues and make it more responsive. Spirit of Redemption otherwise remains unchanged.
• State of Mind has been redesigned and is now called Heavenly Voice. Heavenly Voice increases the healing done by Divine Hymn by 50/100%, and reduces the cooldown of Divine Hymn by 2.5/5 minutes.
• Guardian Spirit’s healing bonus has been increased to 60%, up from 40%.
• Holy Word: Serenity now has a cooldown of 10 seconds, down from 15 seconds.

Glyphs

• Glyph of Circle of Healing now also increases the mana cost of Circle of Healing by 20%.

Bug Fixes

• Echo of Light can no longer be triggered by certain spells before it is learned.
• Shadowy Apparitions should now benefit from effects on the priest that increase spell damage.
• Holy Word: Serenity should now properly gain bonus to crit from Test of Faith.

Priests in Mists of Pandaria

Mists of Pandaria is the next WoW expansion and Blizzard will be playing with talents and abilities for all classes, not just adding new ones. You can change out an early talent calculator and ability description on WowHeadNews.

Here’s the Blizcon 2011 introduction to the new Priest talents. Take these with a grain of salt since everything is likely to change between now and the MIsts release.

For a more in-depth and highly detailed resource on everything Priest related, from leveling to PvP to Raiding to earning gold and more, check out the
Killer Guides’ Priest guide.

Our class guides for whichever class you’re playing:

Death Knights – Druid – Hunter – Mage – Paladin
Priest – Rogue – Shaman – Warlock – Warrior

The GotWarcraft Gold Guide – Cataclysm Heroic Guides

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