I will go ahead and try to explain strategies to that regard as well, as I have experimented with the PvP priest. This guide will be written with the knowledge of the state of the priest during closed beta, so I will try and research any new changes. I’ve been taking a break until release so I can keep the game fresh for me.
Start
When you first start out as a priest, you’ll find yourself with only a few spells, namely Power Word: Fortitude (the priest’s stamina buff), Smite (your holy magic based nuke), and Lesser Healing (if you need me to explain what this is, please choose another class!). You will also notice that they are marked as “Rank 1”. As you level, you will gain higher “ranks” of these spells which are, of course, more powerful versions of what you already have. In addition to these spells, you start out with a weapon proficiency in 1-handed maces. Although priests start out with only the 1-handed mace skill, you are able to learn how to use daggers and staves through a NPC trainer found in the main cities. Some of you may be wondering which weapon skill is the best. My initial answer to you is that most times, except when you are soloing or fighting easy encounters, you won’t be melee’ing very much. Although many people like to go against the mold, the priests are meant to be a group’s primary healer. So, most times you will find yourself standing back and healing, but this will mostly take place when you start grouping later down the road in your teens. With that said, there are many different weapons with stats and passive/active effects that can help the priest. In early levels, I’ve found that staves with enhancements to intellect and spirit are very prominent. When you start fighting in the Scarlet Monastery, there is a very nice dagger which can add a high amount of intellect. A higher level instance of the Monastery has the chance of dropping a mace which adds to your overall healing power. My advice would be to train all weapon skills and switch to whichever weapon you find to be your best option when it drops.
It is not as apparent when you first start out, but priests are a great solo class by virtue of the spell Power Word: Shield. The first rank of this shield is gained at level 6. The rank 1 version of Power Word: Shield absorbs up to 44 damage, while the rank 10 version obtained at level 60 absorbs up to 942 damage. This is the single best spell in the game, in my opinion, but it does fade relatively quickly, in about 30 seconds, so it is usually best cast right before you or the tank is about to engage a mob. Without the use of talents, there is a 30 second waiting period before you can cast it on the same person again, but we’ll get into talents a bit later. Another great use for Power Word: Shield is to give you more time to heal the person if they are losing health very quickly. It is an instant cast spell, so it can save lives in the right situations. For example, if you begin your heal and your tank is losing health very quickly, you can cancel the heal, then essentially give him an instant 942 hp, and then start casting a quick heal. As far as soloing goes, I usually lead off with a Power Word: Shield on myself, and then pull the intended mob or NPC. This shield coupled with your Power Word: Fortitude effectively increase your health pool. The most important aspect of the shield, though, is that you can continue casting heals and nukes uninterrupted, as if you were not getting hit at all.
At level 4, you receive the 1st rank of Shadow Word: Pain. This spell is a “damage over time” or “dot” for you rpg newbies. It is an instant cast spell, which you will find beneficial when chasing a mob, or person, down. The 1st rank will do 30 damage over 18 seconds, while the highest rank does 852 damage over 18 seconds. It can help wittle down those mobs while you choose to melee or are grouped. This does stack with other priests’ Shadow Word: Pain, so during a raid encounter, stacking these would prove to be very beneficial. Since it is essentially doing damage for you over time, you do not have to constantly re-cast it, thus allowing you to regenerate your mana if need be. A sample soloing situation would look like:
Holy Word: Shield self > Smite > Smite > Shadow Word: Pain > melee
I’ve found the above example to be relatively efficient early on in the game. Of course, you’ll have to fine tune the casts according to your mana, but generally you smite the mob/NPC to half health, use pain word, then melee to begin regenerating your mana. By the time you finish the fight, or by the time you find the next mob, you should have regenerated much of your mana, thus limiting down time. Later on down the road, at level 10, you’ll gain a quick nuke called Mind Blast which you can add to the mix. Though you should be using your mana efficiently, it is always good to have a supply of food and drink on you just in case. I usually just find a mage and ask politely if he/she wouldn’t mind summoning me food and/or drink.
Grouping
For grouping, the spells you will be using most often will be your healing line of spells, which include: Renew, Flash Heal, Lesser Healing, Healing, and Greater Healing. Renew is much like a healing version of Shadow Word: Pain. It heals the target player over time for a certain amount of health. At rank 1, the amount of health healed is 45 hp over 15 seconds; while at rank 9 it heals 810 hp over 15 seconds. In many cases, this is an extremely efficient method of healing the person. It costs little mana, and allows you to rest in between heals in order to regenerate the lost mana. If there is any spell that I keep on a tank while we are grouped, it is renew. Depending on the tank’s gear, renew is often good enough to keep him/her healed throughout the fight. You may need to throw a small heal in now and again during those moments the mob goes crazy and deals loads of damage, but for the most part, renew is probably the most efficient healing spell. A sample healing situation might look like:
Renew ? Shadow Word: Pain mob/NPC ? wait 15 seconds ? Renew ? Lesser Healing (or Flash Heal when you get it to top off the tank’s health bar)
Your healing strategies will differ with each fight. At higher levels, you will have Flash Heal, Renew, Prayer of Healing, and Greater Healing in your arsenal. Prayer of Healing is a group healing spell. It is nice in certain situations where a mob may be performing area effect (AE) attacks on the group, but this spell shouldn’t be used all too often due to the high mana cost. I often use it to top off the group if everyone has taken damage after a fight, and then quickly consume a drink to regain mana. During general encounters with a group, I find that greater healing is your best bet. It is a very big heal with the highest rank healing upwards of 2396 to 2674 hp, but the downside is that it has a relatively long casting time. It takes 4 seconds to cast, so timing is crucial when using greater healing as your main method of healing. I can’t tell you the correct time to start using greater healing. It depends on the rank of healing or greater healing that you have, and the rate at which your tank is losing HP. In most cases, starting greater healing when the tank reaches half health, or a bit above half health, is enough to heal him/her back to full when greater healing lands. But again, you need to tailor the timing according to your healing rank and the encounter itself. Some mobs deal damage faster, some don’t deal too much burst damage. If your tank is not losing health quickly, then a simple renew would be fine.
Boss
Boss encounters are quite different than the normal encounter. You’ll find that the tank will most likely lose health at too quick a rate for you to time greater heal to land and for renew to do much good. For those cases, keeping renew on the tank and then spamming flash heal as needed would prove to be a great healing strategy. You may burn through your mana quickly with this method, though. Being a priest is very meticulous. It takes a form of precision that most other classes will not recognize.
As far as gear goes, the main stats a priest will be focusing on are primarily intellect and spirit, with stamina not too far behind. Intellect will increase your overall mana pool, while spirit increases your overall mana regeneration rate per tick (a tick is about 2 seconds). Some priests like to go full intellect, while others go full spirit. I aim for a balance of the two, but having full intellect gear as backup will help during high end boss encounters. You cannot begin to regenerate mana until 5 seconds after your spell has been cast, so during those encounters where you will be healing non-stop, a huge mana pool would prove very useful. Although you are not meant to be a tank, having extra stamina is always a plus as a priest as you will catch a lot of agro through the hate generated by your healing spells. When you seem to catch agro and the tank hasn’t pulled the mob off of you, your Fade spell is a saving grace. Fade lasts 10 seconds and lowers the hate a mob has towards you. If fade doesn’t seem to work to get the mob off of you, then you have Power Word: Shield to help you take some extra damage while the tank tries to taunt off of you.
They have changed talents a bit since I’ve played, but I will do my best to describe sample trees that may prove useful for whichever type of priest you want to play: PvP, PvE, solo. The discipline tree remains the same, so I will start off with a sample talent build in discipline. The single most useful talent in the discipline specialization line is Inner Focus. When activated, it reduces the mana cost of your next spell by 100%, and also increases the chance for you to get a critical spell. Having a spell with a free mana cost is extremely valuable during those situations where you run out of mana and just need that one extra heal (i.e. an extra greater heal free of cost).
Discipline Build
Here is the minimal build for discipline for a primary healer:
Discipline Mastery
Unbreakable Will Rank 5
Improved Power Word: Shield Rank 3
Improved Power Word: Fortitiude Rank 2
Mental Agility Rank 5
Mental Strength Rank 5
Inner Focus Rank 1
Discipline Total: 21
Although Unbreakable Will never seemed to be all that powerful, you do need to invest in it or Silent Resolve. Unbreakable Will increases your chance to resist stun, fear and silence, so I find it to be a better investment than a talent that reduced threat generated by your damage spells when you are primarily healing.
Improved Power Words are a great benefit, especially the Shield version. The investment into gaining rank 3 in Improved Power Word: Shield will reduce the time you must wait before you can cast Power Word: Shield on the same person by 15 seconds.
Mental Agility reduces the mana cost of instant cast spells by 10%, while Mental Strength increases your overall mana by 10%.
And then, of course, Inner Focus which reduces your next spell’s mana cost to 0.
The Holy tree has shifted around a bit, and they have also removed the most useful spell of the Holy line, Combat Resurrection. It was a quick casting resurrection spell that resurrected the target with no sickness and most of their health and mana. The Holy tree wasn’t very impressive to begin with, but for someone who will be looking to be primarily a healer, it’s the best option to increase your mana efficiency.
Holy Build
But, anyway, here is a sample holy build for the primary healer:
Holy Mastery
Improved Renew Rank 5
Holy Specialization Rank 5
Spiritual Healing Rank 5
Subtlety Rank 4
Improved Healing Rank 5
Spirit of Redemption Rank 1
Master Healer Rank 5
Holy Total: 30
Improved Renew, at rank 5, will increase the amount healed by Renew by 15%, thus allowing it to heal more HP per tick.
Holy Specialization is mostly a throw-in talent. It increases the chance to gain a critical effect by your holy spells by 5%, which isn’t all that much. It’s not a very important skill, but something nice.
Spiritual Healing increases the amount healed by all your healing spells by 10% at the highest rank.
Subtlety will reduce the threat generated by your heals by 16% at rank 4. I chose to forego rank 5 in order to invest 1 point into Spirit of Redemption. Ultimately, the 4% difference between rank 4 and 5 is negligible, and you won’t notice much of a difference agro-wise. Spirit of Redemption is new to me as a talent. It was not in the game when I played, but it seems like a nice saving throw to a group, pending you have an extra class that can resurrect in the mix. I see a lot of utility in it as far as boss and raid encounters go.
Improved Healing and Master Healer are probably self-explanatory. Improved Healing will increase the amount that Lesser Heal, Heal, and Greater Heals will actually heal for by 15% at rank 5. Master Healer will reduce the casting time of your Heal and Greater Heals by 0.5 seconds. It may seem small, but anything that will shorten the duration of your 4 second Greater Heal cast is nice to have.
Holy Nova is a fun spell to have, but it isn’t a necessary talent to me. As far as the holy tree ultimate, it actually is somewhat disappointing. If you choose to use Holy Nova, you’ll have to give up Inner Focus in the discipline tree.
Here is a recap of a healer’s build:
Holy Mastery
Improved Renew Rank 5
Holy Specialization Rank 5
Spiritual Healing Rank 5
Subtlety Rank 4
Improved Healing Rank 5
Spirit of Redemption Rank 1
Master Healer Rank 5
Holy Total: 30
Discipline Mastery
Unbreakable Will Rank 5
Improved Power Word: Shield Rank 3
Improved Power Word: Fortitiude Rank 2
Mental Agility Rank 5
Mental Strength Rank 5
Inner Focus Rank 1
Discipline Total: 21
As far as soloing and PvE goes, many people like to have Spirit Tap in the Shadow tree. At rank 5, spirit tap increases your mana regeneration by 100% during periods of non-casting, and by 50% during times you are casting spells provided that you get the killing blow on a mob that gives you experience. This is a very valuable tool while soloing and has its usefulness during general PvE encounters. If you want to gain Spirit Tap with your healer’s build, then I would probably give up the 5 points into Master Healer and put them into Spirit Tap.
Shadow Build
For those who primarily would like to PvP, here is a build that I’ve found to be a consistent damage dealer:
Shadow Mastery
Blackout Rank 5
Improved Shadow Word: Pain Rank 2
Shadow Focus Rank 5
Improved Psychic Scream Rank 2
Improved Mind Blast Rank 3
Mind Flay Rank 1
Shadow Reach Rank 3
Silence Rank 1
Shadow Weaving Rank 5
Vampiric Embrace Rank 1
Darkness Rank 5
Shadowform Rank 1
Shadow Total: 34
Discipline Mastery
Unbreakable Will Rank 5
Improved Power Word: Shield Rank 3
Improved Power Word: Fortitiude Rank 2
Mental Agility Rank 5
Improved Mana Burn Rank 2
Discipline Total: 17
As far as PvP builds go, I find this one of the strongest. The shadow mastery tree of the Priest is probably our best designed talent tree as far as utility goes. It can totally change the game of the priest and make them an efficient damage dealer.
Blackout provides the priest with a 10% chance to stun their target for 3 seconds with any shadow spell you cast on the target. Although it is only a 10% chance, I have found that goes off quite a bit.
Shadow Focus reduces the target’s chance to resist your shadow spells by 10%. Some may argue the utility of Shadow Focus, but I find that it really does help during PvP if someone has high resists towards shadow.
Psychic Scream is one of your best shadow spells. It is an instant cast area effect fear. It comes in handy during both solo and group PvP, as well as solo PvE, situations. If someone gets the jump on you, you can fire off a psychic scream and fear kite them. It makes encounters so much easier.
Mind Flay is the bread and butter of the shadow mastery tree. Coupling mind flay with Power Word: Shield makes you a very dangerous damage dealer. It is a channeled spell which does a certain amount of damage per tick depending on which rank you are trained in. You can buy higher level ranks of Mind Flay at the Priest trainers. Along with the consistent damage that mind flay deals, it has the added effect of slowing the target’s movement speed down by 50%. An example encounter may look like:
Power Word: Shield self ? Psychic Scream ? Shadow Word: Pain target ? Mind Flay ? Mind Flay ? Mind Blast
While your target is busy running away from your psychic scream, you can DoT him and slow his movement back to you. Shadow Reach can help you in this regard as it increases the range of your shadow spells. For added measure, you can throw Vampiric Brace on the target. This will heal you for 20% of any shadow damage you deal to the target.
Shadow Weaving and Darkness both have the effect of increasing your shadow damage against a target. Shadow Weaving makes the person or mob vulnerable to shadow spells, thus lowering their resists by a bit and increasing your shadow damage.
Shadowform is, by far, the best talent ultimate of all the trees. It has the upside of increasing your shadow damage by 15%, while also reducing any physical damage dealt to you by 15%. The downside of being in shadowform is that you can only cast shadow and discipline based spells. This rules out the use of Smite and any of your heals while you are in shadowform. You can deactivate it quickly to gain the use of your heals again, but that is your call. Vampiric embrace is sort of your “replacement heal”.
Silence and Mana Burn are there to help you deal with casting classes. Silence stops the target from casting for 5 seconds, so the timing of its usage is pretty important. Improved Mana Burn will allow you to deplete your enemy’s mana even quicker due to reduced casting time.
The shadow/discipline build mentioned is mainly for PvP, but can also be used in solo PvE combat. You may choose to invest into Spirit Tap for soloing. I’ll let you decide which talent(s) to give up in order to gain Spirit Tap. Other than that, the previously mentioned build is good for either PvP or soloing in PvE (or for being a damage dealer in a group if that’s your thing).
Well, I think that’s it for now. I’ve rambled on for a few pages and I’m sure some of you got tired of reading halfway through. For those who have read all of it, I hope that what I’ve said has helped you gain a bit more insight into the class. Please feel free to post and correct anything I may have said that you feel is wrong. I’m writing this based on the knowledge gained from closed beta, and from what I’ve read, much has been changed around for the priest class.
Thanks again for reading and I hope you enjoy playing a priest!
