The Priest is the number one healing class, a must for a good group. The Priest can also manage hate and crowds, resurrect dead players and buff other players. The Priest is most useful in groups but can also solo when needed, thanks to the Shadow Magic spells.

One of the most useful spells that a Priest has is the Holy Word: Shield spell. It instantly shields a target and absorbs X damage. The shield works best on weak players like casters but also on tanks. The Priest has a few different buffs; one of them is Holy Word: Fortitude which increases the Stamina of the buffed player.

Along with all the healing spells and protection spells the Priest also has damage spells like Holy Smite, Mind Blast and Shadow Word: Pain. Other crippling spells are Mana Burn and Mind Rot (Drains mana).

As mentioned, the Priest has a few Crowd/Hate Control abilities too that reduces Hate and helps the Priest stay alive much longer.

Race Selection

Ah it dawns upon you, what race will my character be? For some, the choice is obvious, and others it is excruciatingly detailed. For Priests, the question lies deeper than appearance, as each of us is endowed with our own very specific racial abilities in addition to those you see on the character select screen.

First of all, let me offer my advice. Pick what you like, pick what seems fun, and pick what represents your personality. This game will probably be tweaked a million times over by Blizzard, so all the racial jazz may not be the same in another month. Sure, I will admit some races have better abilities than others, but when you type /wave and your character smiles and waves to someone else, do you want them to see a power-gamer or a person?

Ok, so what exactly can a Priest choose as their class and what do they get for it? For Horde, you may choose an Undead or Troll. Yep, Alliance offers one more playable race, and yes I have seen the nerf thread for it LOL! Here are what each race gets (with some information pulled directly from the Blizzard main site):

Undead
* Underwater Breathing- 300% increase in underwater breath
* Shadow Resistance- 10
* Cannibalize- Increase health regeneration by 200% while consuming a corpse - lasts 15 sec - 3 min cool-down. A nice asset for soloing but mostly for those who cannot heal themselves, ie not Priests.
* Will of the Forsaken- Makes yourself immune to fear, charm, and sleep effects for 20 seconds on a 2 minute cool-down. This ability is the cornerstone of the Undead. Priests and Warlocks alike fear this ability as it puts them at a large disadvantage in PvP. Furthermore, the ability can be used while under the effect of fear or sleep which lets you wait until they use their spell before you become immune.
* Touch of Weakness- The caster’s next damaging melee attack will cause 64 additional Shadow damage and reduce the melee damage caused by that target by 20 for 2 min.
* Devouring Plague- At the highest level this spell reads Afflicts the target with a disease that causes 904 Shadow damage over 24 sec. Damage caused by the Devouring Plague heals the caster. The spell is on a 3 minute cool-down and uses almost 1000 mana which is very relevant at level 60. This spell is a weapon in 1v1 PvP, but it otherwise loses much of its appeal.

Troll

* Regeneration - Increases health regeneration by 10% and also works in combat (normal regeneration works off the 5-second rule).
* Beast Slaying - 5% damage bonus against beasts. In many ways, this equates to a 5% experience bonus if you choose your hunting grounds with this ability in mind.
* Throwing Weapon Specialization - We use wands!
* Berserking - Activate when “Wounded” to increase melee and spellcasting speed by 25% - lasts 20 sec - 2 min cool-down. This ability seems good in theory, but in practice you are rarely thinking about it when you are “wounded” which I believe means you are below 20% of your health.
* Shadowguard - The caster is surrounded by shadows. When a melee or ranged attacker hits the caster, the attacker will be struck for 116 Shadow damage. Attackers can only be damaged once every few seconds. 3 charges. Lasts 10 min. This spell mimics a Shaman one. It is efficient enough to be used soloing and any extra instant damage in PvP is a good thing.
* Hex of Weakness - Reduces melee damage done by a target by 20 at its highest level. Too inefficient at its high mana cost for practical use.

Channeling

Channeling means that a spell requires constant focus by the caster for a set duration. For example, our best known channeling spell, Mind Flay, does an amount of damage every second for 3 seconds. During this 3 seconds, you are unable to move, cast another spell, or be interrupted by an attacker without breaking the effects of Mind Flay. The other Priest abilities, which require channeling, are Starshards, the Night Elf racial ability, and Mind Vision. It is important to note that our Power Word: Shield prevents an attacker from breaking the channel unless they use a move which specifically interrupts spell-casting such as a stun or shield-bash.

Beta Abilities

Ok, so bringing these up will probably just add fuel to the fire, but I believe everyone has the right to know. Simply put, many things changed in beta-testing with our spells and abilities, and the talents existed only for a very short time before release. Some will tell you that Priests have been continuously nerfed from day 1. The truth is that they were constantly balancing the game in beta, which is why it is called “beta-testing” I might add, and nothing was guaranteed. Since release, the significant revisions we have seen have been the removal of Mind Soothe from our repertoire of useful abilities and Power Word: Shield being unable to work on someone not in your group, a very decisive blow for the raiding Priest. The PW: Shield has recently been flagged to work on raid targets, however, and Priests are also due for an update from the devs on any other updates they plan to make to the class. In beta, we had the ability to sleep, which as you might suspect was a little too powerful given our other abilities. We also had Brainwash which in most ways is simply an inferior version of Fade. Spirit also worked without the “5-second rule” (see 2.7), giving Priests the ability to heal for much longer to a debilitating extent. Blizzard could not allow a Priest rotation to be able to infinitely keep a tank alive without mana worries, so this obviously needed to change. All in all, I honestly believe that Blizzard is doing a fine job.

Focus Effects

While I cannot give specific numbers, this is the way foci such as X damage or X healing generally work: given an item with 40 healing focus, you do not necessarily get 40 for every spell. The rank of a spell as well as its casting time is added into the equation. For example, the highest rank of Greater Heal will receive the full bonus, but the lowest rank of Flash Heal will receive nearly none of it. This scale is primarily to prevent players from getting 300 in healing foci and casting a rank 1 heal to get a ridiculous return on the mana cost. Of course, this stuff would be so much easier if they would just use percentages instead of straight up numbers but c’est la vie. One thing that should be noted is that healing foci have been reported to only work on heals you cast on yourself, but I believe this was addressed in the previous patch to work on everyone.

Wands

Priests, Warlocks, and Mages are allowed to use wands. Wands will give you a fair balance of both stats and damage as you approach the higher levels. Their advantage is that you can do damage from range rather than constantly following a mob around. Some things of note about wands:

1) Wand damage interrupts spell casting in the same way that melee does
2) Some wands deal shadow damage; however, this is not the same as casting a spell which does shadow damage. Shadow spells you cast will receive a bonus from whatever foci or talents you have such as Vampiric Embrace or dmg items. Wands are not a shadow spell and do not get these bonuses; the fact that they are shadow is only important in that its resist rate is determined by your opponents shadow resist.
3) Using a wand is not casting a spell, as you read above. As such, your 5-second rule is not triggered (see 2.7)
4) There is now an auto-shoot feature for wands. You need to either toggle off your wand or move to stop attacking.

Stats

Your personal “stats” or statistics are derived from the armour you wear. As a Priest you will want to focus on your intelligence, spirit, and stamina. For reference, I will append a list of what each stat does:

* Strength - 1 point adds 2 attack power, and 14 attack power equates in a 1 DPS increase.
* Agility - 27 adds 1% chance to get a melee critical hit; also increases your dodge
* Intellect - 1 point adds 15 mana and each 100 adds 1% chance to get a spell critical hit ( 50% damage or healing)
* Stamina = 1 point adds 10 health
* Spirit = 5 spirit will add 1 mana regen every 2 seconds and 9 will add 1 health regen every 2 seconds. Your total mana regen is found by dividing your current spirit by 4 and adding 13.

Until the devs release any new information about their plans for Spirit, the best rule of thumb to go by for now is to find items with intelligence, spirit, and stamina, in that order. Do not abandon spirit. While it isn’t exactly the best it could be, there is a phenomenal difference in regenerating 40 mana and 80 mana every two seconds. But no, Divine Spirit is a little too much to ask for 35 spirit although you certainly wouldn’t mind having at least 1 Priest on your raid who could do it.