The Priest is the iconic healer in World of Warcraft. However, until you reach end game, you don’t want to spend every waking moment inside instances. It’s possible with the Random Dungeon Finder, but if you follow the steps in this Priest Leveling Guide, you will get to experience the full scope of the game as a Priest in WoW.
Priest Leveling Guide Part 1: Proper Spec
When leveling your priest, you will be doing a lot of questing, and for that you will want to pick Shadow as your primary spec. It’s highly mana efficient with some built-in survivability tools, like fears, stuns, slowing effects, self healing, and mana regeneration. The Shadow Priest is a face melting, terrorizing questing machine. Now, for instances, you can also be a very viable DPS and even heal at the lower levels. However after level 30, you definitely need to pick up either discipline or Holy as a healing spec for dungeons. Discipline will take a much different approach, as it focuses on reducing damage taken than restoring health lost. Either way, you want a healing spec to make dungeon times shorter, or even instant. At lower levels, both specs can use the same gear as well.
Priest Leveling Guide Part 2: Gearing up
The gear you wear is going to be all cloth. It’s all you can wear. You can wield staves, one handed maces, daggers, wands, and off-hand frill items. Do not ever buy gear on the auction house. It’s a waste of Gold. You can earn all the gear you’ll ever need through questing, dungeons, and if you need to, crafting. Intellect is your primary stat as a priest. Gems, and Enchants should all go toward Intellect. It increases your mana pool, and your spell power. Weapons will also have a spell power bonus, in addition to intellect. Spirit is helpful to keep your mana regeneration high, though it is not entirely necessary.
Priest Leveling Guide Part 3: Professions
You definitely want to pick up the secondary professions, Cooking, Fishing, and First Aid. You can heal yourself, but that mana is better spent on questing. You’re better off using bandages and meals in between bouts. In addition, the buffs from food can be very beneficial while leveling, and at max level. In regards to primary professions, you can’t go wrong with gathering. There’s good gold in it, you get passive bonuses, and you get an experience bonus for every herb you pick and every node you mine. As far as crafting professions, Alchemy, Inscription, Tailoring, Jewelcrafting, and Enchanting are all sure bets. Each of these professions has perks, and they can all be profitable. It’s possible to take on two crafting professions, but unless you’re using a good WoW Gold Guide, you may find yourself struggling to keep up the costs. However, once you learn some good patterns/cuts/recipes, you can start earning some great profits, if you know what to sell, and how to manipulate the market.
Overall, this Priest Leveling Guide should get you off to a decent start, but the World of Warcraft is massive, and it’s easy to get lost. I personally use a WoW Leveling Guide so I don’t get lost in all there is to do in the game.
