A Priest is a battle-scarred cigar-smoking battle-pope with pure testosterone in his veins taking your best shot and then puching his fist down your throat.
- Shaithara
Contents:
Section I: Creating a Priest
Section II: Leveling
Section III: Grinding
Section IV: The Five Second Rule
Section V: Spirit Tap and You
Section VI: Itemization
Section VII: Healing
Section IIX: Miscellany
Section I: Creating a Priest
Priests have "class racials" in addition to their normal racial abilities. What this means is that an Undead priest and a Draenei priest would each have a couple of priest spells that are different. In the old days the choice was easy: Dorf or Undead. This is no longer true because of the introduction of new races in BC and changes to many priest racials in patch 2.3. This can make the choice rather nerve wracking if you're the type of player who likes to min/max his characters. I won't go into detail about each of these racials (details here), but I'll note a few of the highlights.
Dwarves: Stoneform is a solid defense against rogues and hunters. Chastise and Desperate Prayer give dorfs a nice defensive bias. Unfortunately Blizzard gave Fear Ward--the Dwarves' claim to fame--to all races then nerfed it. Since the dwarf abilities are mainly for personal defense, dorf priests no longer enjoy super-high demand.
Draenei: Symbol of Hope will restore about 16.65 mp/5 to the caster's party at level 70 if used every time it's off cooldown. Shadow priests are now used mainly to regenerate mana for their party, and Draenei are best suited for this role.
Night Elves: Starshards used to be as big a joke as Lightwell. Now it's a key part of our damage, and makes NE the best choice for raw DPS. Oh, and Shadowmeld has amazing potential in PvP. Just be creative.
Undead: Touch of Weakness is a better defensive ability than some people realize, but what UD are really known for is Devouring Plague. Though it's not exactly mana-friendly, it deals heavy damage to your opponent, heals you, and it's a disease which means that abilities that dispel magic won't affect it.
Blood Elf: The AoE silence can be devastating in battlegrounds if timed properly. If you'd like to make a Blood Elf, don't do it on Ravenholdt. We have enough of them...
Section II: Leveling
The primary talent tree for leveling is Shadow. It is possible to level as Discipline, Holy, or even without talent points, but I have found (after much experimentation) that Shadow minimizes downtime and maximizes a priest's ability to do things solo. I recommend that you spend your talent points in the following order:
After this you don't have to be so precise about your choices. I build toward this. First I finish up the Shadow tree, then Discipline. I don't really think that this is a great build at 70, but it will get you to 70 quickly.
More to come in the Leveling section.
Section III: Grinding
As you level, you will spend a lot of time killing things. That being said, there are a few things you should know about shadow priests. First, we do damage with "spell rotations". A warrior or mage may use the same attack multiple times in one fight, but we generally won't unless we have to refresh a DoT. True there are times when you'll want to use Mana Burn instead of wanding or silence a heal, but for the most part we use the same spell rotation on all mobs. Second, we don't excel at multi-target pulls. Make sure you position yourself to aggro and kill one thing at a time. Lastly, we don't have an arsenal of "Oh Shit!" buttons like some other classes, so if you start a fight, you better be able to finish it. Here's what a typical fight looks like:
Self-cast PW: Shield.
Cast Mind Blast or Vampiric Touch if you have it.
Cast SW: Pain.
Mind Flay.
Mind Flay. (The second mind flay should be Starshards if you're a NE and it's up. While you lose a charge of shadow weaving, you're dealing damage with a free, fairly powerful spell.)
Now the monster has 3 or 4 charges of Shadow Weaving and Misery applied to it.
Wand until dead.
You gain Spirit Tap.
Loot, skin and run to the next creep. Your mana will be full or almost full once you aggro it.
What if I aggro too many monsters?
Quickly decide if you want to fight or run away. If you stay and fight, put DoTs on the adds and continue burning down the original target. Spirit Tap will help keep your mana up, but you may need to use a Healing Potion.
Section IV: The Five Second Rule
The one thing that all priests obsess over is mana regeneration. Efficiency is the key to playing this class well. In order to understand mana regeneration, you must understand the 5 second rule (FSR).
Basically, whenever you cast a channeled spell, fire off an instant, or finish a spell with a casting time, you are in the "casting" state for the next five seconds. Yes, this means that canceling a spell while casting (not channeling) can keep you outside of the FSR. Mana only regenerates while not casting, which means that you will not regenerate mana when within the FSR. You do begin to regenerate mana as soon as this time has expired.
Section V: Spirit Tap and You
This talent is so crucial to shadow leveling that it deserves special attention. Here's the tooltip with 5/5:
Gives you a 100% chance to gain a 100% bonus to your Spirit after killing a target that yields experience or honor. For the duration, your mana will regenerate at a 50% rate while casting. Lasts 15 sec.
Most of your mana regeneration comes from Spirit. This talent means that when you deal the killing blow to an enemy, your spirit-based mana regeneration will occur at the normal (not casting) rate when within the FSR, and double that rate outside FSR. The benefit should be obvious. Sooo many priests take Blackout and ignore Spirit Tap, and it's nonsense.
Section VI: Itemization
Spirit is the single most important stat while leveling as Shadow. In their ignorance, lots of lowbie Spriests stack up stamina. Pay them no mind. Yeah we play on a PvP server, and yeah getting ganked/camped sucks, but I'd much rather focus on leveling fast than trying to survive an extra second when attacked by a 70 rogue. While in Azeroth you should always choose quest rewards and loot that maximize your spirit. Let's Hear it for Spirit!
Things get different in Outland. Lots of the quest rewards have spell damage, but spirit upgrades are few and far between. That's fine since both stats result in greater mana efficiency. Just try to keep a balance between the two.
Choose your wand based on its damage properties. You might want to keep a wand around for healing, but you absolutely need a DPS wand. The damage type (fire, nature, etc.) doesn't matter until lvl30. Once you start putting points into Shadow Weaving, wands that deal shadow damage become vastly better. I bought one from a vendor in SW at lvl41 and the rest were all quested.
Section VII: Healing
Here's a question that comes up on forums daily:
Hai, I just started a preist and rly want to levl up fast so i waz thinking shaydow but still want to b able to heal gud, so maybe this talent build? ((link to an attempt at a holy/disc dps build that fails at both dps and healing)) Halp plx.
You are a priest, and you DO NOT need to spec Holy in order to heal well. Paladins, Shamans, and to a lesser extent Druids all need to spec into their respective healing trees to be effective healers for anything beyond Deadmines. Priests don't run into this problem until much much later in the game. The following is a very basic beginner's guide to healing. It doesn't cover the advanced theorycraft or even Heroic healing (as I have yet to do this), but will get you through every PUG you choose to join before you hit 70. I'm going to cover some of our key spells and how to use them.
How Aggro works: Read Fortifications linked in the tanking section. The main thing for you to know is that keeping your distance from monsters lowers your threat, and you gain 0.5 threat points for every 1 HP you heal.
PW: Shield: This spell causes no threat if placed on the Tank before combat. But you shouldn't do that. Druids and Warriors both need to take damage in order to build rage so they can keep aggro on themselves. Some Paladins like the shield, but the truth is that they need to take damage because they hold aggro through reactive damage (like Blessing of Sanctuary and Ret Aura) and need you to heal them in order to get mana back. It's ok to put it on pallies if you're fighting a bunch of casters, but leave it off otherwise. If you apply the shield after combat has begun, you will gain threat from all monsters attacking your target as though you had healed him for the value of your shield. (In other words, shielding the tank for 1000 damage makes the mobs think you healed him for 1000, or damaged them each for 500.) Do this as a last resort if the tank is near death.
Renew: This is one of our most useful heals. Imagine a Flash Heal spread out over 15 seconds. Once the tank has had a couple seconds to establish aggro, I put this on him and keep it on. If you find yourself getting aggro from Renew, it's probably time to find a new tank or leave the group.
Flash Heal: This is a time-efficient heal that usually restores 1/4 of a comparably geared tank's HP. Time-efficient means that you can heal a lot in a short amount of time, but spamming it will make you go OOM quickly.
Greater Heal: This is a mana-efficient heal. Mana-efficient means that it restores a lot of HP compared to its mana cost. If you're in a smooth group you can let the tank's HP drop a little lower than usual. Time your Greater Heals so they go off when the tank is around 55-65%.
Prayer of Healing: I tend to use this as an "Oh Shit!" heal. If we're getting creamed I'll fire this off and Fade since all the healing I just did will probably make everything come attack me. If this happens, I position myself for wipe recovery.
Prayer of Mending: You can do some interesting things with this and SW: Death, but the main thing to know is that whoever gets healed by it also gets the threat from the healing. I always put this on tanks before the pull, then situationally afterwards.
Binding Heal: This is another heal designed for bad situations. Please reroll a hunter if you can't figure it out.
Circle of Healing and Lightwell: You don't have these if you went shadow. Priests generally only take these for specific encounters since you usually don't need them.
Vampiric Embrace: If someone says "Hey, you're shadow. Use VE", kindly tell them "You can have VE or you can live. Pick one."
Keeping DPS Alive: Good DPS will rarely pull aggro. If they do it on purpose to help the tank, they should be prepared to keep themselves alive until either you or the tank can help. If they do it because of something stupid, I usually don't heal them at all. Shield+Renew or Renew+Flash Heal is generally the most that DPS should need. Don't be stingy with heals, but remember that the Tank is your most important responsibility.
Section IIX: Miscellany
I'm sure that I'll have more to add in the future, so I'm reserving this section for the odds and ends. In fact, I have one already: Mind Control.
Theorycrafters estimate that MC builds around 10,000 threat points on the caster at maximum level. This threat can be wiped with Blessing of Protection or the mob can be taunted off you. Otherwise you get to tank it. Good luck!
