The Priest is primarily a healing class and are considered to be the best healing class in World of Warcraft. The Priest is a great class to play for both PvP and PvE scenarios and are more often than not very welcome in dungeon groups and raids due to their healing capabilities.
Although the Priest is primarily designed as a healing class a nice Shadow talent build will focus more on a priests damage output and will make for a nice PvP (player vs player) build.
The Holy Priest build provides the best mana efficient healing build and will see that the Priest is very welcome among raid groups and generally welcomed among groups across the board.
The Discipline Priest build will reduce damage taken and improve the Priests healing capabilities. The Discipline build is more focused on the Priest alone and less on abilities that will benefit an entire group.
The Priest class are definitely suited for the more social gamers in Azeroth who like to group up and complete dungeons and raids. Some may find the Priest a little slow and boring in the earlier levels but as you progress and your character grows stronger you'll see just how valuable the Priest is with many windows of opportunity presenting there selves.
One slight down fall to the Priest is they are prime targets in PvP battles due to their healing capabilities. Taking a Priest out first is a strategic move to stop them healing not only there selves but their group members to.
If you're looking to play the Priest class and are planning on mainly solo questing your way through the game then the Shadow talent tree should be the primary focus of your build. The specs from the Shadow talent tree also offer the best build for leveling a Priest quickly.
One thing to take into consideration when first exploring Azeroth as the Priest class is that they are more fragile than most of the other classes, like the Warlocks they are only able to armor there selves with cloth and rely on long ranged magic damage to defeat their opponents.
Can Priests Be Used For Leveling Alts?
Sure, the Priest can be used for both dungeon leveling purposes and solo questing. The build type will determine the Priests leveling capabilities. For solo questing the Shadow talent tree is the best option for the Priest as this will improve the Priests damage output. For dungeon leveling scenarios the Holy Priest build is the best option as this will improve the Priests abilities for there self and their group members.