Priest Class Overview and Guides - WoW Classic

By Anshlun Updated: 2024/11/18

WoW Classic Priest Basics

Races: Humans, Dwarves, Night Elves, Undead, Trolls

Role: Primary Healer, Ranged DPS

Resources: Health & Mana

Armor: Cloth

Weapons: One-Handed Maces, Daggers, Staves, Wands, off-hand items

Stats: Intellect, Spirit, Hit, Crit, MP5, increased damage and healing.

Strengths: Strong leveling class, solo PvP, invaluable buffs and debuffs, high PvE (healing) priority

Weaknesses: Very mana intensive, low PvE (dps) priority, lack of mobility

Talent trees: Discipline, Holy, Shadow

Priest Healer SpecializationsDiscipline:

The Power Infusion build focuses more on boosting raid performance at the expense of some of the Priest's own healing power, placing Power Infusion on their highest DPS ally. This is the most common PVE healing build.

Holy:

Deep Holy builds are less common healing specializations, which have a few additional talents for both extra throughput and mana efficiency.

Shadow:

Shadow DPS builds enable the Priests DPS playstyle, which can be very strong, but is also extremely mana and threat intensive, which can be severely limiting in PvE encounters. Despite this, Shadow Priest are the only dps spec capable of debuffing enemies with , which can be useful if you are raiding with enough Warlocks, unless you have a healer willing to opt for the Tri-spec Weaving build. In PvP, Shadow Priests are extremely formidable, largely due to the wide array of offensive and defensive utility.

Unique Priest Quest Exclusive Epic WeaponBenedictionAnathemaThe Eye of ShadowLord KazzakThe Eye of DivinityMajordomo Executus

When you peer into the Eye, images of a great battle fill your mind.

This terrifying conflict appears to be taking place somewhere in Lordaeron.

You can barely make out a lone female figure, standing amidst a thousand corpses, fending off a sea of Scourge. She is hopelessly outnumbered.

Tendrils of light escape her hands, cutting through undead by the hundreds.

All for naught, it would seem. Moments later the priestess is swarmed by the corpses of the peasants that were surrounding her... The fallen have risen.

The Balance of Light and ShadowBest Priest RacesPriest Exclusive Racials

Level 10

Level 20

Dwarf

Human

Night Elf

Troll

Hex of Weakness

Undead

Alliance

Human racial spells are not overly useful for Priests, as they already have access to , though The Human Spirit synergizes quite nicely with Holy Priests talents for Spirit.

Dwarf is an incredibly useful PvE choice, primarily due to , which is incredibly useful in many raid dungeon and raid encounters. Although good Warriors are capable of breaking fear on their own, they typically take extra damage in order to do so, and most classes cannot whatsoever, so being able to immune it, even infrequently, leads to better threat, more damage, and less whelps. Especially with the new Season of Mastery changes, Dwarf is by far the safest choice.

Horde

Undead is easily the go-to choice for Shadow Priests, with their own innate Fear Ward, Will of the Forsaken, and the incredibly potent PvP spell .

Troll is an alternate option that has the useful haste cooldown , which scales based on the amount of health they have when casting it. is fairly useful in PvP, as it has a high chance of proccing at least once, and can even be useful on some PvE encounters, since certain mechanics can proc it without even dealing damage to you. Hex of Weakness is mostly a worse version of .

Best Professions for Priests

Engineering provides powerful bombs (e.g. Goblin Sapper Charge, Dense Dynamite) and special gadgets (e.g. Dimensional Ripper - Everlook, Ultrasafe Transporter: Gadgetzan) that no other profession can match. This is the only profession besides tailoring that actually benefits you in raids, especially on encounters like Viscidus.

Tailoring can create very useful leveling or even Best-in-Slot max level gear such as Truefaith Vestments, Bloodvine Garb and Flarecore Leggings, as well as make money selling bags.

Enchanting doesn't provide any intrinsic benefit, but complements Tailoring quite well, as it also doesn't require any gathering profession, allowing it to be a convenient money maker.

Alchemy is a surprisingly useful choice particularly for Priests which tend toward heavy consumable use. While everything the profession makes can be bought on the Auction House, Alchemy in conjunction with Herbalism can be helpful for self sufficient players.