Priest

The priest is World of Warcraft's devoted healer: a cloth-wearing caster who mends wounds, shields allies with holy power, and can turn to the dark arts of the Shadow when it needs to fight. In Classic (patch 1.12) priests were the backbone of raid healing on both factions, and each race's priests learned their own racial spells. A Shadow priest was also one of the game's strongest PvP opponents.

Role and identity

A priest has the widest set of healing spells in Classic. Lesser Heal is its first heal, followed by Heal, Flash Heal for speed and Greater Heal for raw power, along with Renew to heal over time and Power Word: Shield to absorb damage before it lands. Prayer of Healing heals the priest's whole party at once. Priests also dispel harmful magic, cure disease, and buff everyone with Power Word: Fortitude, which raises stamina.

On the other side of the class is the Shadow: Shadow Word: Pain, Mind Blast and, through talents, Mind Flay and Shadowform. Priests also have Psychic Scream to scare off nearby enemies, Mind Control to take over a humanoid, and Shackle Undead to hold undead in place.

Races and racial spells

In Classic the priest was open to humans, dwarves and night elves on the Alliance and undead and trolls on the Horde. Each race's priests learned two spells no other priest had, through class quests at levels 10 and 20:

The dwarf's Fear Ward, which makes a target immune to one fear, was the most important of these. It let Alliance tanks ignore the fears of bosses such as Onyxia, Magmadar and Nefarian, an advantage the Horde did not have.

Talent trees

Priests earn 51 talent points by level 60. They can be planned with our talent calculator.

• Discipline improves shields, buffs and mana. It has Inner Focus and Divine Spirit, and its 31-point talent is zzOLDSpell - Reuse 10060, which speeds up another player's spells. Many raid healers took deep Discipline for its mana talents.
• Holy improves healing. It has Holy Nova and zzOLDSpell - Reuse 724, and its top talent is Spirit of Redemption, which lets the priest keep healing for a few seconds as an angel after it dies.
• Shadow improves shadow damage. It has Mind Flay, Vampiric Embrace, which heals the priest's party as it deals damage, and Silence, and its 31-point talent is Shadowform, which raises shadow damage and lowers physical damage taken.

Leveling

Priests level as casters: they pull with Mind Blast or Smite, shield themselves, keep Shadow Word: Pain on the enemy and finish with a wand. Most leveled through the Shadow tree, since Mind Flay and Shadowform make solo play far faster, and respecialized to healing at level 60. Their low damage early on is offset by healing and shields that let them survive almost anything, and they are always welcome in a dungeon group. A good wand matters a great deal, since it costs no mana and lets the priest regain mana while it finishes off enemies.

Key spells by level

Class quests

Besides the racial spell quests, priests have two notable chains at the top level.

• Blood of Morphaz (level 52). A chain from the Cenarion Circle, starting with Cenarion Aid, ends in the Sunken Temple with Blood of Morphaz and a choice of priest rewards.
• Benediction (level 60). A priest who finds [The Eye of Divinity] in Molten Core takes it to Eris Havenfire in the Eastern Plaguelands. In The Balance of Light and Shadow the priest must keep a group of fleeing peasants alive under attack from the Scourge, using every healing and protective spell it knows. The reward, a [Splinter of Nordrassil], combines with the Eye of Divinity into the staff [Benediction], which can turn into its shadow form, [Anathema]. See Benediction.
• Atiesh. In Naxxramas, priests could assemble the legendary Atiesh through [[forever:quest:9257]].

In raids

Priests were the core of raid healing in Classic. A typical raid group had several of them, using Flash Heal and Greater Heal on the tanks and Prayer of Healing on groups of damage dealers when a boss hit the whole raid. They kept Fortitude on everyone, removed magic with Dispel Magic, and spent mana carefully, since healing efficiency mattered more than raw output in long fights.

Some fights depended on priests in particular. At Instructor Razuvious in Naxxramas, priests mind-controlled his Deathknight Understudies to tank him, and Shackle Undead was needed throughout the Scourge's raid. Late in Classic, guilds also took one Shadow priest to raids, because its Shadow Weaving talent raised the shadow damage of warlocks and Vampiric Embrace healed its party.

In PvP

A good priest is very hard to kill: Power Word: Shield, Renew and Psychic Scream keep it alive, and Fade drops it from enemy attention. Shadow priests deal heavy damage while healing themselves and can silence or scare healers at critical moments. Mind Control has special uses in PvP: priests could walk an enemy off a cliff, into a pool of lava or into a group of hostile guards. Mana Burn drains other casters dry.

Tier sets

See Tier Sets for how each set drops.

• Tier 0: Vestments of the Devout, such as [Devout Crown].
• Tier 1: Vestments of Prophecy from Molten Core, such as [Robes of Prophecy].
• Tier 2: Vestments of Transcendence from Blackwing Lair, such as [Halo of Transcendence].
• Tier 3: Vestments of Faith from Naxxramas, such as [[forever:item:22512]].

Trivia

• A priest who dies with Spirit of Redemption becomes a glowing angel and keeps healing for a short time, which many raid leaders found both useful and funny.
• Because Fear Ward was a dwarf spell, Horde players often pointed to it when arguing that the Alliance had easier raid encounters.
• Tyrande Whisperwind, the high priestess of Elune, and Anduin Wrynn are the best-known priests of the lore.

Later history

The Burning Crusade made Fear Ward a spell for every priest, ending the dwarves' monopoly and the long faction argument over it, and added Prayer of Mending and Circle of Healing. Blood elves and draenei joined the class. Shadow priests became a full raid role thanks to their mana-returning Vampiric Touch, and later expansions turned Discipline into a healing style of its own built around shields.

Sources

• Priest (Classic) on Warcraft Wiki
• Priest racial spells on Warcraft Wiki