by Jessie Tobias

Created on: October 13, 2009   Last Updated: October 14, 2009

The priest class of World of Warcraft is a spell-caster with two basic modes of play. The first is that of a healer, who casts healing spells to restore their comrades' (and their own) health points. The second is that of a damage-dealer, who casts spells to kill enemies. Priests usually have a relatively low amount of health points and a large amount of mana points.

The three different talent specializations available to priests are Holy, Discipline, and Shadow. While the Holy and Discipline talent trees focus on healing and keeping the priest and their fellows alive, the Shadow specialization features damage-oriented talents, designed to help the priest kill their enemies quickly. While all priests have basic healing and damaging spells, putting talents into a specialization tree will unlock more spells and abilities, allowing the priest to be more effective in their chosen role.

In World of Warcraft, the priest is the only class with two distinctly different healing specializations to choose from. These are the Holy spec, which features several group-healing spells and focuses on responding to wide-spread damage, and the Discipline spec, which focuses on preventing damage through armor increases, damage reductions, and energy shields.

The priest's damage specialization allows the Shadow priest to learn additional damaging spells, and features Shadowform, a talent that allows a Shadow priest to become a translucent silhouette of their former selves. While in Shadowform, the damage done by the priest is increased, and all damage taken is reduced. However, the priest cannot use Holy spells in this form; instead of healing spells, Shadow priests rely on a talent called Vampiric Embrace, which heals them (and all players in their party) for a percentage of the damage done by their shadow spells.

The priest is limited to wearing cloth armor, and is able to wield one-handed maces, daggers, and staves, and wands. Since cloth armor is flimsy and doesn't do much to reduce damage, priests prefer to cast their spells from a distance. This is not always possible, however, and when being attacked directly, the priest does have a few tricks up their sleeve.

Power Word: Shield is a Discipline spell that encases the priest in a shining bubble of energy, absorbing a certain amount of damage. When the shield is cast, it applies a debuff called Weakened Soul to its target, preventing them from being shielded again for 15 seconds. Should the shield drop before the monster is dead, the priest can use healing spells to keep themselves alive until they are able to shield themselves again. If the priest is overwhelmed, Psychic Scream, a Shadow spell, forces attackers to flee in terror for a short period of time. The priest can use this respite to heal themselves, apply some extra damage to their target, or if they're low on mana, just run away. Both of these spells reduce damage and help keep the priest alive.

When leveling, attacking from maximum distance and doing as much damage as possible before the monster reaches them is a priest's goal. Once the monster begins to attack, the priest must balance their mana points between dealing damage, shielding, and healing themselves. All of these spells take mana, so adventuring priests might want to have mana potions handy, just in case.

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