Click here to get to 85 in 7 days with Dugi’s Leveling Guide!

OR

Click here to read my in-depth review!

Newly updated for Cataclysm! Priests in WoW are not your typical healbots.  Sure, they can spec Holy and be the ultimate raid healer, but unlike Cleric #14795 from Everquest (or most early MMO’s before WoW came along) they have options.  See, Blizzard understands that to know the light, you have to know the darkness as well… Enter Shadow Priests.  Shadow Priests are able to do vicious sustained damage over time while simultaneously healing and restoring the mana of their groupmates, and their own to boot.  If that’s a bit too evil for you, you can opt for a sort of middle path by specializing in the Discipline tree.  Discipline Priests are masters of preventing damage, with great single target heals and a little bit of damage on the side.  Priests are stuck with cloth armor for the whole game, but don’t despair.  There are a few different ways to buff your armor and reduce incoming damage as a priest, so it’s rare that you’ll actually be taking the damage you’d expect to when your armor is roughly the equivalent of magical toilet paper.   As far as racial options, the Priests of the Alliance are Human, Dwarf, Night Elf, or Draenei, and Horde players have the option of  Troll, Undead, or Blood Elf.

Priest Leveling Stats

As a priest, you’ll generally want to focus on balancing intellect and spirit for leveling, with more focus on Intellect for Shadow and Spirit for Discipline and Holy.  As far as gear suggestions go, before 60 you will generally find that it is much easier to get a good staff than it is to get a main-hand weapon and off-hand bauble.   Make sure to keep your wand up to date, as well.  If you’re trying to conserve mana while leveling, you will probably find yourself using your wand a fair amount, so it needs to be doing decent damage.

Priest Leveling Build

I’ve seen plenty of debate over this issue.  A lot of people feel that Holy is the way to go until you can get Shadowform at 40, and some even think that Disc or Holy are still better leveling builds even with the option of Shadowform being available, but I am 100% in the Shadow camp as far as leveling goes.  Looking at it from the perspective of someone who has every single character class 50+ and probably spends far more time playing the game (not to mention writing about it!) than is reasonable or necessary, there are very few class / spec configurations that rip through mobs as quickly and efficiently as a Shadow Priest.  With that said, my ideal Cataclysm priest leveling build would be as follows – click here.  Now, keep in mind that this is primarily a solo shadow priest leveling build, and if you are planning on grouping or doing much PVP, you will want to adjust the talent placement accordingly.

So where do you go from here?  Well, the easy answer is to go back and fill out any other Shadow talents you missed.  Since Shadowform cuts off your access to Holy spells, there’s very little synergy with any healing related talents, but you may find some stuff worth grabbing in the early portion of the Discipline tree.  Twin Disciplines is a flat 6% increase to all damage and healing done, which is pretty solid for a Shadow Priest.  If you want to buff up your defense a little bit, you can grab the talents that buff PW: Shield, and if you have enough points, you can even pick up Mental Agility and have much better longevity while soloing.

Other Priest Leveling Specs

Though I would, without hesitation, recommend leveling as Shadow, I understand that there are those of you for whom the playstyle is just not appealing.  So bearing that in mind, it is perfectly acceptable to level as Holy or Discipline or some combination thereof, and if you plan on spending most of the leveling process in a group, it’s actually likely to be a better choice as long as you like healing.  Holy and Discipline Priests each have different strengths when it comes to leveling and the individual intricacies of these specs are beyond the intended scope of this article, but as far as my opinion goes, if I had to pick one, I’d go with Holy.  It feels stronger overall for both soloing and instancing early on, and it’s hard to say no to those gigantic Holy Fire crits.

With the confusion created by Cataclysm, I don’t want to leave you Discipline and Holy players completely out in the cold, so I’ll hook you up with a spec for each.  If I were to spec Discipline for leveling, this would be my Cataclysm priest leveling spec – click here.

If on the other hand I decided Holy better suited my needs, my Cataclysm priest build would be this – click here.