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Priest FAQ v4

Post by Primar

Introduction

This guide is designed to cover most of the basic questions that get asked on these boards, and should hopefully give new Priests a good idea of what the class is about. We'll do our best to cover all of the aspects of interest for the various specs and playstyles.

The majority of this guide was co-written by Aylia and Primar, with contributions from other members of the community as well. Thank you to everyone who has helped out!

Table of Contents

Post 1: Introduction; Class Description; Common Abbreviations
Post 2: Priest Races introduction; Horde Races
Post 3: Alliance Races
Post 4: Priest Levelling
Post 5: Gear for levelling; Levelling tips
Post 6 and Post 7: Stats for a Priest.
Post 8: Common Builds
Post 9:Glyphs
Post 10 Professions; Primary Professions.
Post 11: Primary Professions continued; Secondary Professions.
Post 12: Useful AddOns
Post 13 and Post 14: General FAQ
Post 15: Credits

Class Description

At its heart, the Priest class is a hybrid of two roles - healing and DPS. Depending on our talent spec and gear selection, we are capable of strong single-target healing and damage mitigation through the Discipline tree, excellent group and raid healing through the Holy tree, and solid DPS and mana/health regeneration via the Shadow tree. Regardless of our choice of spec, our class is welcomed in groups from levelling to end-game.

Common Abbreviations

General

i5sr or ifsr - In five second rule.
oo5sr or oofsr - Out of five second rule.
mp5 - The item bonus "Restores X mana per five seconds." (Example)
GCD - Global cooldown.

Healing

DS or IDS - Divine Spirit or Improved Divine Spirit. It is often implied that either abbreviation is referring to the improved version of the spell as it is uncommon to spec for only the normal version.
PW:S - Power Word: Shield
Fort, PW:F, or PoF - Power Word: Fortitude or Prayer of Fortitude
CoH - Circle of Healing
PoH - Prayer of Healing
PoM - Prayer of Mending
PI - Power Infusion
PS - Pain Suppression

Damage

Post by Primar

Priest Races

As of the 3.0.2 patch, priests no longer have race specific abilities. All races now have Devouring Plague (formerly Undead only) and Hymn of Hope (formerly Draenei only, a reworked version of Symbol of Hope) as baseline abilities. Desperate Prayer (formerly Dwarf/Human only) is now a Holy talent.

All other priest racial abilities have been removed from the game. These include Starshards, Touch of Weakness, Hex of Weakness, Chastise, Feedback, Elune's Grace, Shadowguard and Consume Magic.

The standard racial abilities remain, though many of them have been altered in some way. As it currently stands, all the races have a well balanced selection of racial talents. Some may be more useful in certain situations to you that others, but none are as game-breaking as they once were. If you're not sure what race to go with, pick one that you enjoy - there's nothing worse than getting to a high level, then realising you dislike your choice of race.

Horde Races

Blood Elf

Arcane Torrent - This is very useful for PvP for the extra Silence, and PvE for the small amount of regen.
Magic Resistance - This is one of the better racial resistance spells available now, since it works for all schools of magic.
Arcane Affinity - Not much to say here. If you want to be an enchanter this will help you level a bit faster, but it's pointless when you reach max skill. You don't get any extra recipes that other people don't get by having a higher max skill.

Troll

Berserking - This is the main reason Trolls love their racials so much. +10% casting speed is brilliant; +30% is even better. No reason not to use then as much as possible. As a note, to get the full +30% buff, you must be at or below 40% of your health.
Regeneration - This one is barely noticable in most situations, and isn't anything to get particularly excited over. Priests tend to have low health regeneration anyway, and 10% of that happening in combat won't make much difference.
Da Voodoo Shuffle is situationally useful, generally moreso in PvP than in PvE.
Beastslaying - +5% damage is +5% damage. Not much to say here, but you will be fighting a large number of Beasts when leveling.

Undead

Will of the Forsaken - Once considered the defining racial of the Undead, Will of the Forsaken was nerfed in patch 3.0 and now only removes Charm/Fear/Sleep effects -- it no longer grants immunity. It's still very useful since it doesn't trigger a cooldown on your PvP trinket, but it's no longer as overpowered in PvP as it used to be.
Cannibalize - This will help reduce your downtime when grinding and will probably save you a bit of cash on bandages. Not amazing, but every bit helps.
Underwater Breathing increases your breath bar from the standard 3 minutes to 10 minutes. Not particularly useful - most quests that make you swim either give you water-breathing equipment, or don't require you to stay under for anywhere near 3 minutes at a stretch.
Shadow Resistance - Potentially useful in any situation where you face shadow damage.

Post by Primar

Alliance Races

Draenei

Heroic Presence - This equates to 1% Spell and Melee Hit at 80 for you and your party (it is not raid-wide). Even if you're a healing priest you'll often be grouped with DPS classes of some variety, and providing them with additional hit rating is very useful if they're not capped on their own. If you decide to go Shadow, it means that you personally need less hit rating to reach the hit cap.
Gift of the Naaru is somewhat useful. Free, targettable, scales with level and gear, with a 3 minute CD. Has applications in both solo and group play, but it's nothing amazing. It's worth noting that casting this will drop you out of Shadowform.
Shadow Resistance - Potentially useful in any situation where you face shadow damage.
Gemcutting - Not much to say here. If you want to be a jewelcrafter this will help you level a bit faster, but it's pointless when you reach max skill. You don't get any extra recipes that other people don't get by having a higher max skill.

Dwarf

Stoneform - Some people swear by it, and say it's the best thing ever. I agree it's nice, but I personally feel it's too situational to put Dwarves above other races. Definitely worth considering if you're planning to PvP avidly, and is situationally useful in PvE fights with Bleed debuffs.
Find Treasure - Basically broken currently. It no longer detects quest items in the environment, and there doesn't seem to be chests in instances or the environment in WotLK.
Frost Resistance - Potentially useful in any situation where you face frost damage.

Human

The Human Spirit is excellent for healing priests and will stack with the +5% Spirit from Spirit of Redemption. With the patch 3.0 changes, spirit is also useful to Shadow Priests. The extra 3% will help both Twisted Faith and Glyph of Shadow.
Diplomacy is brilliant. 10% less time spent farming. 10% less cash spent on reputation hand-in items. Everybody will need rep for something at some point, and this makes your life significantly easier.
Every Man for Himself - This means that you never have to use a Medallion of the Alliance again (unless you're simply wearing it for the extra resilience). They do the same thing, and they share the same cooldown.
Perception allows you to detect stealthed mobs and players as though you were 1 level higher, increasing the distance at which you will spot them. This can give you an edge in a PvP situation, allowing you to get the first spell off, or preventing them from stunning you. On a side note, Perception will not help or allow you to see Invisible mobs or players.

Night Elf

Shadowmeld - This is essentially a second Fade when used in combat -- while it is active you lose your current threat on mobs, and regain it when you cancel the effect. Depending on the situation, you can also use it to break combat and reset a fight/escape.
Quickness can potentially help your survivability, generally moreso in PvP than in PvE. Unlike the older version of this racial which simply gave you 1% dodge, there is no facing requirement for it to work, it is not negated by being stunned, and it will not cause warriors to be able to use Overpower on you.
Wisp Spirit isn't terribly useful. You really shouldn't be making use of this that often when soloing, when PvPing you'll generally get Spirit Rezzed, and when grouped/raiding you'll still have to wait for all of the non-night elves to run back even if you get there first.
Nature Resistance - Potentially useful in any situation where you face nature damage.

Post by Primar

Levelling a Priest

These days, there's roughly 2 main schools of thought when it comes to levelling. One school suggests levelling as a traditional Shadow build, for the simple reason that it works, and it works well. The second school suggests that low-level (pre-40) Priests will get more benefit point-for-point out of the Holy tree than the Shadow tree. I'll cover both of these here.

I'm leaving out Discipline from this section, because it's really not viable pre-40. It does become a perfectly solid option at higher levels, but all the low level Discipline talents tend to support the other trees, as opposed to provide direct benefit to the Priest.

It's also worth noting that none of this is set in stone - personal preference will play a large part in how you choose to level. What works for one player may not work for you; don't be afraid to experiment and see what you prefer. You can always respec if necessary!

~~~
10-39

Shadow:
Your first priority is 3/3 Spirit Tap, which will greatly reduce your downtime when levelling. The 2/2 Imp Spirit Tap is optional, and can be placed in Blackout instead if you prefer. Neither are brilliant for levelling.

From there on, it's a pretty simple path down towards Shadowform. If you'd prefer to pick up Silence for dealing with casters (or if you're on a PvP server), you can drop 2 points from Imp Mind Blast and 1 from Imp Vampiric Embrace without any problems.

Vampiric Embrace should be used as often as possible. While the healing done might not seem like much at the time, it'll add up over the course of several mobs, often completely negating the damage they do if your spell power is high enough.

Holy:
Again, Spirit Tap is your first priority, after which you can work down the Holy Tree, starting with Holy Specialization.

Between Holy Spec, Bovine Fury, and Searing Light, you'll have significantly more powerful Smites and Holy Fires. Desperate Prayer provides you with a nifty "oh crap" button when it's all gone a bit wrong, effectively giving you a free potion in a fight.

~~~
40-60

Shadow:
This is where Shadow truly starts to shine. Everything from Shadowform onwards is a solid DPS talent that means you'll rip through mobs.

Vampiric Touch is our cheapest and our most powerful DoT spell, in addition to providing us with Replenishment - you can use it in conjunction with Shadow Word: Pain, or stop using SW:P altogether, depending on your spell power.

Dispersion is brilliant for levelling. A supercharged mana potion on a 3 minute cooldown, as well as an "oh crap" button. Between this, Spirit Tap, and Shadowfiend (when you get it at 66), you shouldn't have mana issues at all.

Holy:
Discipline:
Suggestions for these builds are gladly recieved! I have no experience of higher-end levelling with either of these; if people would care to submit suitable builds and a bit about why they're good, that'd be brilliant. Thanks!

~~~
60-80

Shadow:
You'll notice that this is suspiciously similar to the standard Shadow Priest raiding build, which is awfully convenient. By this point, you've picked up most of the major talents that are useful to you, and it's just a case of filling in the blanks.

Veiled Shadows is taken for the cooldown reduction on Shadowfiend - being able to use it every 3 minutes saves so much time. Popping Dispersion simultaneously will generally return you to near-max mana.

Imp Shadowform is useful for the pushback reduction (and snare-breaking if you're on a PvP server).

While Meditation is pretty awesome, it requires too heavy an investment of points to get any earlier - you'd be missing out on loads of far better talents in the Shadow tree. I'd personally work my way down towards it last, once I've completed the Shadow talents - you may prefer to pick it up slightly earlier, though. It's your call!

Part of the reason I suggest leaving it is because Imp Inner Fire only becomes useful at level 71, when your Inner Fire spell begins to give you bonus spell power. Before then, it's just boosting the armor and charges, which isn't amazingly useful to you.

Holy:
Discipline:
Suggestions for these builds are gladly recieved! I have no experience of higher-end levelling with either of these; if people would care to submit suitable builds and a bit about why they're good, that'd be brilliant. Thanks!

Post by Primar

Itemization for Leveling

When levelling, there are 3 main stats you should be looking for: Spirit, Intellect, and Stamina. Some people recommend stacking high amounts of Spirit to gain the most benefit from Spirit Tap. While this is good, it's worth remembering that you can't regen if you're dead, and you can't get Spirit Tap if you're out of mana mid-fight. With this in mind, a healthy balance of Spirit, Intellect and Stamina is recommended.

At low levels, there's a few pieces of spellpower gear that are available, but these items tend to neglect other stats because of this. If you can get spellpower, that's fine, but be careful not to gimp your other stats because of it.

Once you hit 50+, spellpower gear becomes more abundant on gear and you should be aiming to have as much spellpower as possible.

From 60 onwards, spellpower is all that matters. The higher your damage, the faster you'll kill things, the faster you'll level. Regen at this stage tends to shift away purely from Spirit Tap, and is boosted by Dispersion (if Shadow), Meditation (if Discipline) and Shadowfiend.

Leveling Tips

Try to get a Lesser Magic Wand at level 5, and a Greater Magic Wand at level 13. At those levels, they do far more damage than you can do with your spells, with the benefit of being mana-free.
Your exact spell sequence will depend on your spec - generally speaking, you'll want to open up with a slow, powerful spell , apply your DoTs , then get the mob to around 30-40% health. Once it's at 30-40% health, wand it to death while your DoTs continue to tick.
Wanding the mob to finish them off maximises your time outside the Five Second Rule, and therefore maximises the benefit of your Spirit Tap buff - see the FAQs for an explanation.
Because SW:P, DP, and VE are instant cast, you can start strafing away from the mob as soon as you've finished casting your opening spell. This will maximize the time you can cast other spells for, since they have to run further to catch up while you're applying your instants.
Get the biggest bags you can afford. Your bags and your mount are probably the biggest investments you can make when levelling. There's nothing worse than having to run back to town every 5 minutes because you've got a bag full of Boar Livers; bigger bags means more loot means less time wasted means more gold and faster levelling. You can't go wrong!
If you can, find a friendly Mage who will sell you a portal to Dalaran or Shattrath, and set your Hearthstone there. From there, it'll allow you to teleport to any capital city in the old world, saving you loads of time when you need to buy skills or visit the AH, or just get from A to B.
Be very wary of buying green items from the AH. Most of the time, they'll be horrendously overpriced, and you'll replace them a couple levels later anyway. If you go on a spending spree every few levels, you'll quickly find that you haven't got the cash to buy your mount at level 30, which is far, far more important than gear.

Post by Primar

Stats

Spirit

Spirit is primarily a mana regeneration stat, which improves the amount of mana restored every 'tick' (2 seconds). However, Spirit also partially converted into spellpower through Spiritual Guidance (Holy) and Twisted Faith (Shadow).

Spirit is subject to the 5 second rule, which means that after spending mana on a spell, all Spirit regeneration is stopped for 5 seconds, after which it resumes normally. However, Priests have Meditation, allowing them to regenerate 30% of their normal rate even while casting.

Spirit is generally more important for Holy Priests, since Discipline Priests gain no additional benefit from Spirit, spend little time outside the 5 second rule, and regain most of their mana through Rapture.

Even though Shadow Priests gain spellpower from Spirit, the amount of DPS gained is insignificant compared to that of spellpower, crit, or haste, and mana regeneration is generally not an issue except in extremely long fights.

For a more detailed look at mana regeneration (with appropriate formulae and numbers, click here.

~~~
MP5

MP5 is the other mana regeneration stat, which restores a flat amount of mana every 'tick'. This regeneration is independant of the 5 second rule, and thus is always active no matter when you last cast.

MP5 can be useful in certain situations, but is generally not considered a high priority for any spec. MP5 by itself has a lower regeneration rate than Spirit when outside the 5 second rule, and it does not scale with stat-increasing buffs such as Blessing of Kings.

Holy Priests will get a much greater benefit from Spirit than they do from mp5, due to Spiritual Guidance and being able to get out of the 5 second rule through use of abilities like Holy Concentration and Inner Focus.

Although Discipline Priests spend most of their time in the 5 second rule, their regeneration comes mainly from Rapture which is influenced by Intellect rather than regeneration.

Shadow Priests place little priority on regeneration, focusing instead on high DPS.

~~~
Intellect

Intellect increases the size of your mana pool, with each point adding 15 mana. While not directly a mana regeneration stat by itself, Intellect also increases the amount of regeneration you gain from Spirit, as well as increasing the benefit of Replenishment, Shadowfiend, Dispersion, and any other regeneration based on max mana.

Intellect also provides a relatively small amount of Crit, with 167 points providing you with 1% chance to crit.

~~~
Stamina

Stamina increases your maximum health, with 1 point adding 10 hit points.

While Stamina is reasonably important in PvP situations, it tends not to be a priority in PvE content. Generally speaking, your gear will have sufficient Stamina on it to survive AoE and raid-wide damage attacks without needing to deliberately stack more, and no amount of Stamina will help you survive more than a few hits from a raid mob.

However, there are certain boss encounters that require you to have a certain amount of health in order to survive spike or unavoidable damage abilities, for which switching to a Stamina-heavy set of gear may be wise.

~~~
Spell Power

Spell Power directly increases the effect that your healing and damage spells have. The exact amount that the spell is increased by will depend on the spell's co-efficient - a percentage of your spell power is added to the spell's base amount to reach the final amount. For more information on spell co-efficients, click here.

Spell Power is extremely valuable to all Priests, since it affects how much we can heal or do damage. Generally speaking, Spell Power will be the highest priority we have stat-wise.

~~~
Hit Rating

Hit rating reduces the chance that an offensive spell will be resisted by the target. Since it only applies to offensive spells, this stat is not needed by healers. For level 80 characters, 26.23 Hit rating is equal to 1% chance to hit.

Shadow Priests will, by default, have 6% hit from talents - 3% from Shadow Focus, and an additional 3% hit when Misery is on a target.

In order to be hitcapped against a raid boss (considered +3 your level), you require 17% hit, or 289 rating. If you have a Draenei in your group, this is reduced to 263.
Against Heroic or instance bosses, or general mobs (up to +2 your level), you require 6% hit. This means that unless you plan to raid, you don't require any hit rating.

You should always try to reach the hit cap, as this is the most effective way of increasing your DPS and reducing the mana wasted on spells missing. Once you're at the cap, however, any additional hit rating will not provide you with any benefit.

~~~
Crit Rating

Crit rating increases the chance that your spells will be a critical hit, meaning that they do 150% of their normal damage or healing. For level 80 characters, 45.91 Crit rating is equal to 1% chance to crit.

All direct healing spells are capable of critting. Most healing priests spec for Inspiration, which can be very useful when healing tanks, helping their damage mitigation.

Holy priests have the option to spec for Holy Concentration and Improved Holy Concentration, which results in better mana conservation every time you crit. Discipline healers rely on crits to proc Divine Aegis, which is one of the defining abilities of the spec.

For Shadow Priests, Crit is roughly equal to Haste from a DPS perspective. Crit directly increases the amount of damage done by your DoTs through Shadowform, and most of our direct-damage spells will crit at 200% of normal damage through Shadow Power.

Post by Primar

~~~
Haste

Haste rating decreases the amount of time it takes to cast or channel a spell, and reduces the GCD between spells by a small amount. This allows you to cast more spells per minute than you would without any Haste. For level 80 characters, 32.79 Haste rating is equal to 1% haste.

The lowest that you can reduce your GCD to is 1 second, which requires 50% Haste (or 1640 rating). Realistically, this goal is unachievable without severely impacting on your other stats, but it's worth noting that Bloodlust/Heroism effectively grant 30% Haste for the duration of the buff.

For a detailed explanation on how to calculate Haste rating and spell cast times, click here.

For healers, the value of Haste tends to be a personal choice. Discipline Priests mostly use instant-cast spells and have an innate Haste buff from Borrowed Time, thus the value of crit is fairly low for them. Holy Priests also have a talented Haste buff from Improved Holy Concentration, and do not tend to prioritise Haste highly.

For Shadow Priests, Haste is roughly equivalent to Crit in terms of DPS. While it doesn't directly increase our damage, the lower GCDs and casting times mean we can put out more spells per minute than we otherwise would, as well as being able to fit 2 Mind Flay channels between Mind Blast cooldowns.

~~~
Spell Penetration

Spell Penetration reduces the hostile target's resistance to spells. It only works on targets that have resistances (meaning buffs or gear that increases a specific resistance), and it cannot reduce resistances below zero. Please note that this is not the same as Hit rating.

This stat is considered useless in PvE since there are very few mobs with school specific resistances, none of which are worth stacking Spell Penetration for. It has limited use in PvP against people with shadow resistance buffs (Shadow Protection, Shadow Resistance Aura, Mark of the Wild).

~~~
Spell Resistance

Spell Resistance is school specific (Frost, Nature, Fire, Shadow, Arcane) and increases your chance to partially or fully resist spells cast against you of that school.

In PvE, Resistance is limited to a very few specific fights, for which switching into a Resistance set can be beneficial or mandatory. Currently, the only fight like this in the game is Sapphiron, where Frost Resistance can be used to reduce the effects of his Frost Aura. However, even that can be ignored with sufficiently geared healers and a reasonable amount of Stamina.

In PvP, Resistance can be useful against classes that mainly use one specific spell school. However, you would need to sacrifice so much of your other, more important stats (Stamina, Resilience, Spell Power) that the trade off is rarely worth it - plus your resistance is completely useless against any other spell schools.

Post by Primar

Common Builds & Glyphs

Shadow

PvE
This is commonly accepted as the standard Shadow Priest raiding build. There is some flexibility regarding Imp Shadowform and Imp VE, but there is very little else of benefit worth putting those points into.

PvP
Aimed at Battleground PvP, Improved Mana Burn allows you to efficiently remove a caster from the fight, while still providing reasonable amounts of damage and survivability. Depending on how frequently you Dispel, you may wish to move 3 points from Focused Mind to Absolution.

Arena
Heavy use of MB > SW:D for burst damage means that Shadow Power can be a dangerous choice due to crit SW:D backlash damage. However, the trade off for this is reduced crit damage on MB and MF, so you may decide the reward from Shadow Power is worth the added risk. If you decide to go this route, you can shuffle points from Mental Agility, Imp PW:S, and/or Mind Melt in order to maximise your burst capability.

~~~
Holy

PvE
This build picks up all the essential Holy talents, leaving you 3 points free to spend as appropriate. The choice between Imp PW:S, Test of Faith and Lightwell will depend on your personal preference.

Glyph of Circle of Healing
Glyph of Flash Heal
The 3rd glyph depends on playstyle and number of players grouped with.

PvP

Arena

~~~
Discipline

PvE
This picks up all the important Discipline talents, with some flexibility regarding Divine Fury, which can be shifted to Healing Focus or Spell Warding depending on personal preference.

PvP

Arena

Suggestions for these builds are gladly recieved! I have no experience of high-end play with either of these; if people would care to submit suitable builds and a bit about why they're good, that'd be brilliant. Thanks!

Post by Primar

Glyphs

Major

Circle of Healing
Essential for any raiding Holy Priest.

Dispel Magic
Excellent for PvP, this glyph can still be useful in certain PvE situations. However, it does not affect Mass Dispel, and there are almost certainly more useful glyphs for PvE Priests.

Fade
Worthless. All this will do is make it more likely that Fade won't be available when you most need it; 10 seconds is more than enough for any tank to regain a lead on threat.

Fear Ward
Worthless in PvE situations, this glyph may find some use in PvP, since it allows you to refresh your Fear Ward more frequently.

Flash Heal
Very useful for both Discipline and Holy Priests, this makes Flash Heal's efficency on-par with Greater Heal. Highly recommended.

Holy Nova
While the glyph is nice, Holy Nova is rarely used when raiding, due to its mana cost and it only affecting members of your group. There's usually more useful glyphs to take.

Inner Fire
Average in PvP, and worthless in PvE. This can generally be skipped.

Lightwell
If you and your raid use Lightwell, this is essential. If you don't, you probably should.

Mass Dispel
Can be useful for PvP depending on how often you Mass Dispel, especially when combined with Absolution; however, there's very few PvE situations where you'd need this.

Mind Control
Worthless.

Mind Flay
Essential for any PvE Shadow Priest, this brings Mind Flay up to the same range as the rest of your spells, allowing you far greater flexibility with positioning and range. While it doesn't directly increase your DPS, it allows you to continue casting when you might otherwise have to move.
Not recommended for PvP, since it effectively removes the snare component - however, you may feel that the increased range makes up for this.

Power Word: Shield
Highly recommended for PvE Discipline, PvP, and levelling. While still good for Holy, there's other more important glyphs you may wish to take, plus your PW:Shields won't be as supercharged as Discipline.

Prayer of Healing
While the glyph is good, limitations with the spell itself (only castable on your own party) mean that it's not commonly used.

Psychic Scream
Worthless for PvE, this glyph has limited use in PvP, due to the wide array of Fear-breaking or immunity methods that most players have. It's extremely uncommon to see a PsyScream last for it's full duration.

Renew
This increases the HPS of renew, keeping the total healing done the same. Ultimately a personal choice (some healers prefer the longer duration in order to save mana), this is worth considering for both Holy and Discipline.

Shackle Undead
Worthless for PvP, and for PvE Shadow Priests (you should be hitcapped on anything you can Shackle anyway), this has some minor, minor use for healing Priests that are asked to Shackle. However, Shackling is so uncommon with the current state of the game that this is almost never worth taking.

Shadowform
Essential for PvE Shadow Priests. Arguable use in PvP, since you'll generally have low Spirit and be more focused on survivability.

Shadow Word: Death
Worthless for PvE - you shouldn't be using SW:D regularly anyway, and even if you did, the glyph adds such a miniscule DPS benefit. May have some use in PvP, for when you really need to kill someone on low health - but if you don't kill them, you're also taking more backlash damage.

Shadow Word: Pain
Essential for PvE Shadow Priests. Limited use in PvP, due to higher focus on survivability, and that you're unlikely to get much time to chain Mind Flay.

Smite
Useful while at low levels, there's very few situations at endgame where you would be both casting Smite and concerned about pushback. There's almost certainly more important glyphs to take.

Spirit of Redemption
Junk. You take SoR for the added spirit; the on-death effect is just a nice side-effect. +6 seconds isn't going to help much at all.

~~~
Minor

Fade
Has very little use in PvE; you shouldn't need to be casting Fade regularly in any fight. Can be useful for PvP Shadow Priests, when used in combination with Improved Shadowform for breaking snares.

Fortitude
Worthless for PvP. Little use in PvE, since it's uncommon for you to be casting PW:F or PoF while in-combat. If you regularly have players die then combat-rez/ankh, you may get some milage out of this.

Levitate
Useful? Not really. Cool? Hell yeah.
Why wouldn't you want to be able to cast Levitate as often as you like without having to carry Light Feathers with you? Especially given that our other minor glyphs are lacklustre at best.

Shackle Undead
Very few PvE situations would warrant this glyph, since range generally isn't the issue with Shackling. In PvP, this can be useful to shackle Death Knight ghouls, as well as being able to shackle them if they have Lichborne.

Shadow Protection
It's unlikely you'll ever need more than 10 or 20 minutes on Shadow Protection.

Shadowfiend
If you time your use Shadowfiend carefully, you can generally get it to stay alive for it's full duration. However, there are occasions when it can get killed by errant AoE or damage aura effects, and this can be a small boost if that happens.

Post by Primar

Primary Professions

All characters are able to have two primary professions. The current crafting professions are:

Alchemy
Blacksmithing
Enchanting
Engineering
Inscription
Jewelcrafting
Leatherworking
Tailoring

There are also three gathering professions, which also take up a primary slot. They are:

Herbalism
Mining
Skinning

It's fairly common to take one crafting profession and one gathering profession that are complimentary to each other -- for example, Alchemy and Herbalism. This is practical because you can provide yourself with materials to make things at no cost.

There are other options, however. If you are new to the game, or just new to a particular server and don't have a lot of money, you should consider taking two gathering professions. You can sell everything that you collect and make a decent amount of cash, allowing you to level without having to worry about cash for skills/mounts/gear.

On the other hand, if you are very established on your server and have a comfortable amount of money, you could consider taking two crafting professions. This way you get to benefit from the BoP/unique bonuses of two different professions rather than just one. You can always use an alt for gathering professions if you'd prefer not to have to buy your materials on the AH.

~~~
Alchemy
Alchemy is a solid choice for any Priest, allowing you to create your own Potions, Elixirs and Flasks, which can save you a lot of money. You also get Mixology which doubles the duration and increases the power of your Flasks and Elixirs.

In addition to this, Alchemy allows you to craft a unique BoP trinket that provides some stats and increases the amount of healing/mana restored from potions. The caster version of this trinket is lacklustre at best, and thus not a major selling point, but it's assumed that epic versions of the trinkets will be added in at some point over the course of the game.

Alchemy uses Herbalism to gather most of its necessary materials, so it's common to take the two professions together.

~~~
Blacksmithing
Blacksmithing is generally considered a poor profession for Priests since we cannot benefit from Mail or Plate gear and melee weapons, which makes up the majority of the things that they can craft.

However, there are still some benefits worth considering - Blacksmiths are able to add an additional socket to their bracers and gloves, providing greater stats and flexibility when it comes to activating metagems.

Blacksmithing is commonly paired with Mining to provide the raw materials for your crafting, or Jewelcrafting in order to gain the most from your additional sockets.

~~~
Enchanting
Enchanting can be fairly expensive to level, but will be well worth the effort in the long run. In addition to being able to enchant your own gear, or sell your Enchanting skills for a profit, you will be able to accumulate Enchanting materials via Disenchanting which can either saved for your own use, or sold.

Enchanters also have the unique ability to enchant their own rings.

Enchanting has no direct gathering counterpart, since it generates it's own materials through Disenchanting. However, it is common to see it paired with Tailoring, allowing you to convert cloth into Uncommon items, which can then be Disenchanted.

~~~
Engineering
Engineering is also fairly expensive to level, especially when you get closer to 450. As an Engineer you can make some epic goggles at 72, which will last you well into Naxx25.

In addition to the numerous toys, gadgets, explosives and fun trinkets you can craft, you also get several unique gear enchants that other professions can't get. Unfortunately, you can't have both these and normal enchants on an item - it's one or the other.

Most Engineering materials come from Mining, so the two are often paired together.

~~~
Inscription
Scribes are able to produce the various Glyphs available to each class, as well as crafting Darkmoon Cards which can be collected or sold.

Scribes are also able to inscribe their Shoulder items with more powerful enchants than are otherwise available through Sons of Hodir reputation.

Inscription is often paired with Herbalism, which provides the raw materials for their inks.

~~~
Jewelcrafting
Yet again, this one is not cheap to level. Being a jewelcrafter gives you access to special gems and trinkets. One of the biggest advantages of the gems is that they're prismatic - they count as all colours, which is brilliant for activating socket bonuses or metagems that you'd otherwise have to use a sub-optimal gem for.

It's common to take Mining with Jewelcrafting, since you can get gems from raw ore through Prospecting.

~~~
Leatherworking
Like Blacksmithing, Priests are unable to use the majority of crafted gear that Leatherworking can produce. The only real unique benefit we gain is from the Fur Linings that can be applied to Bracers, which are better than the comparable bracer enchant.

Leatherworking is usually taken with Skinning in order to provide the base materials for items.

~~~
Tailoring
Tailoring was once one of the most popular professions for Priests. While it used to be essential to have for the amazing BoP gear, we no longer get unique BoP sets.

The unique benefits Tailors gain are fairly lacklustre currently - various Cloak Embroideries, and cheaper (but not better) Spellthreads.

Tailoring has no direct gathering counterpart, since cloth is looted from mobs around the world. It is common to see Tailoring paired with Enchanting, allowing cloth to be directly converted into Enchanting materials.

Post by Primar

~~~
Herbalism
In addition to giving you the ability to harvest the various herbs found around the world, Herbalism also grants the Lifeblood ability. A free HoT, Lifeblood does not scale with spellpower, and is considered a Nature spell, meaning it can be cast in Shadowform or when you are locked out of your Holy school.

Herbalism provides raw materials for Alchemy and Inscription.

~~~
Mining
As well as letting you mine ore nodes, Mining grants the Toughness ability, providing you with more health the higher your skill is. While never a bad thing, the bonuses from other professions generally considered more beneficial for Priests.

Mining provides raw materials for Blacksmithing, Engineering, and Jewelcrafting.

~~~
Skinning
Alongside being able to skin dead Beasts for leather, Skinning also provides you with the Master of Anatomy buff. A minor crit buff, this is useful for all specs.

Skinning provides raw materials for Leatherworking, as well as occasionally being required in most other professions.

Secondary Professions

There are also three secondary professions:

You can take all three of these if you choose to, since they don't interfere with your two Primary professions in any way.

It's a good idea to have First Aid on all your characters. Bandages help immensely with grinding, leveling, and just general survival. You can heal yourself, but that costs mana, and if you're Shadow you have to spend more mana getting back into Shadowform. First Aid is dirt cheap to level, and you'll have more than enough cloth going spare.

Cooking and Fishing are more optional. It's nice to be able to cook your own buff foods, but if you don't want to put in the effort you can usually find someone else to cook for you or just buy food off the AH. Some people enjoy fishing (I personally find it relaxing), others think it's incredibly boring. If you've never tried it, give it a shot and see what you think. It's not for everyone.

Post by Primar

Addons
Addons are simply files that you put into your game folder that change some aspect of your User Interface (UI), ideally making your play experience better. They can give you more information readily available, make certain things easier to do, just make your screen look prettier, or a whole host of other things. While it's not essential to have these, there are certain addons that raiding Priests should strongly consider.

~~~
Recommended Sites

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Raid & Unit Frames

Replacing the default Blizzard unit and raid frames is almost necessary for healers. Custom frames will display a lot more information very cleanly, which makes doing your job easier, and are far more customisable than the default unit frames. They're also useful for non-healers as well, if for no other reason than that they look nicer.

~~~
Boss Mods

If you raid, chances are that your guild will require you to run boss mods. They give important warnings depending on the encounter, and timers that make it much easier to keep up with what is going on around you. Generally speaking, they both perform the same functionality - as always, it's personal choice.

~~~
Raid Assistance

Raid assist addons aren't strictly necessary for most people these days - their functionality has mostly been absorbed by both the default UI and other addons. However, if you find yourself as the raid leader or assist often, you may want these to make life easier.

~~~
Spell Timers

Although this is of more importance to Shadow Priests than healers, spell timer addons can still be useful to track your HoTs, cooldowns, and short-duration buffs. They're a lot easier to quickly check how long is left on a DoT than the default UI's buff icons, plus can track multiple targets, which is perfect for multi-DoTing.

~~~
Threat Meter

Again, more essential for Shadow Priests, but is still useful for healers, a threat meter monitors the level of threat that the raid is generating on a mob/boss. While the default UI has some basic threat functionality, a dedicated addon allows you to quickly see exactly who's where on the threat meter.

Omen

~~~
Damage Meter

Not strictly necessary for raiders, I personally find it extremely useful to have a instant check of who's doing what on a fight, as well as being able to break the fight down afterwards to see what I could have done better. As a side note, the order of who comes where on the meter isn't always important, especially when it comes to healers.

Recount

~~~

Please Note: For the safety of your account, only download AddOns from reputable sites like the ones listed at the start of the section. Never use something that claims to be an addon but is a .exe file. If something seems like it's too good to be true (such as an anything that claims that it will allow you to change your stats in game, etc.), it probably is.

There are people out there that try to mask programs that will steal your account info as addons. Be careful, and just use some common sense.

Post by Primar

General FAQ

What's the Five Second Rule?
This refers to the fact that normal spirit based mana regeneration stops for five seconds after casting a spell which costs mana. Being "in" the rule (i5sr) means you have cast a mana consuming spell within five seconds and are not regenerating mana at a full rate. Being "out of" the rule (oo5sr) means it has been five seconds or more since you cast a mana consuming spell and are regenerating mana at a full rate. For more detailed information please see The Five Second Rule, A Story of Love & Hate.

So what does the 5SR have to do with Spirit Tap and Wanding?
Spirit Tap lasts for 15s after you kill the mob, increasing your Spirit by 100% and allowing 50% of your regeneration to continue inside the 5SR. If you cast a spell to kill the mob, you would end up with 5s of 50% regeneration, then 10s of normal, 100% regeneration. Because wanding doesn't use mana, it means you can get the full 15s of 100% regeneration.

I bought a wand, but I can't work out how to use it! Help!
First off, you need to equip the wand (either by right clicking it or dropping it into your Ranged slot on your character sheet).
Then, open your Spellbook (P by default), go to the General tab and look for an ability called Shoot. Drag this to your action bar, and then push the button. You only need to press it once; you'll auto-shoot your target until they die, go out of range/run behind you, or you move/start another action.
While your wand's DPS won't be amazing once you start getting to a higher level, it's a useful way to do some damage while saving mana.

What's a global cooldown?
The Global Cooldown (GCD) is the 1.5 second cooldown between using the majority of your abilities. This is separate from spell or item-specific cooldowns (Mind Blast, for example), and is there to prevent players from simply firing off instant-cast spells as fast as they can mash their keyboard.

Although it's called a Global Cooldown, not all spells/abilities trigger it (Inner Focus does not), and most instant-cast consumables ignore the GCD (for example, Healing and Mana Potions).

Does overhealing generate aggro?
No. Only effective healing generates aggro, not overhealing. Overhealing is still something that should be avoided within reason, since it is a waste of mana.

What percent overhealing should I have?
There really isn't a good answer to this question. It will vary with your spec and with what your healing assignments are. For example, spamming CoH on your whole raid will generally result in a lot more overhealing than single target healing on a tank.

If you're worried about overhealing, ask yourself the following questions. Did you completely run out of mana before the fight was over (including using appropriate consumables)? Did anyone who you were responsible for healing die (unless they did something dumb)? Did you kill the boss? If your answers are no, no and yes... don't worry about your overhealing. You did your job, and that's all that matters.

I keep hitting Fade, but it doesn't seem to help! What am I doing wrong?
First, fade will do absolutely nothing for you when you are soloing. Nothing. Zip. Nada. Zilch. Don't use it, you're only wasting mana. It also does nothing in PvP. Threat mechanics do not apply to players, so that burly fellow with the giant axe is still going to want to bash your face in even if you get all transparent for a couple seconds.

Fade is ONLY useful when you are in a PvE group, and works by temporarily reducing your threat on mobs around you. It will reduce your threat to 0, generally causing anything attacking you to switch to a different target instead.

Important things to note:

Because Fade is temporary, you regain the threat that you dropped when the buff disappears.
You continue to generate threat at your normal rate while Faded - once the Fade wears off, you'll be back where you were, plus whatever you cast during the Fade.
Fade has no effect when there is nobody else on the threat list - if you aren't paying attention and accidentally pull a patrol in an instance and everybody else is in a different room having a picnic without you, hitting Fade won't help at all.

One more time in case you missed it: Fade is TEMPORARY. Spamming it does nothing but burn your mana and waste the cooldown, since the threat will return to you after 10s regardless. Wait until you have, or are about to pull aggro before using it.

Pfft, who cares about Fade anyway, I've got Psychic Scream! That way the mobs won't be hurting people, everybody wins!
Although this seems like a good idea at first, it can be very dangerous to use PsyScream in instances. It's very hard for you (or anybody else) to control where those mobs will run to, and there's nothing worse than pulling additional mobs.

It's still a tool available for you to use as long as you're careful and check that it's safe to do so.

What race should I make my Priest?
Check the section about Priest Racials above.

Dude, seriously, just tell me.
Fine. Gnome. +5% intellect is awesome!

My Mind Control sucks, it keeps breaking! Why?
There's a few reasons this can happen:

You're moving the mob too far away from your character. Any more than 25 yards or so, and it will break. Keep the mob fairly close to you to prevent this.
You're not hit-capped. MC repeatedly resist-checks throughout the channel - if you have low spell hit, it can break earlier than expected.
You're getting hit, or interrupted. Other mobs attacking you, or AoE will cause pushback, greatly decreasing the remaining channel time. Anything that would normally interrupt spells - Kick, Counterspell, knockback effects, stuns/incapacitates - will completely break the channel.
/emotes also break the channel as well, so don't try getting your mob to /dance.
Your target has been repeatedly Charmed and is subject to Diminishing Returns. Only applies in PvP, but it's worth bearing in mind.
Your target actively broke the MC with a Trinket or other Charm-breaking mechanism.

Post by Primar

Mind Vision and Mind Soothe are rubbish! What's the point?
While these are both very situational spells, they're not entirely worthless.

Mind Vision is very useful for quickly scouting an area or instance without any risks - checking for a rare spawn, seeing where patrols are, marking up packs that are out of LoS, or finding flag carriers in WSG/EotS. A useful tip is that you can "jump" Mind Vision from one target to another - simply select your new target while Mind Visioning, then hit it again, and you'll Mind Vision the new mob.
You'll need to be in the same area as your target to MV them - you can't MV a party member inside an instance while you're standing outside, for example. Equally, you can't MV something that you can't already see - you have to "jump" your MV to them.

Mind Soothe can occasionally be useful for sneaking past mobs when you don't want to pull them, or to get closer to them for whatever reason. Examples for this might be when you're trying to get past a mob in an enclosed space, getting close enough to Mind Control, or letting people get closer to mobs that have to be snared/killed. Not something you will use all the time, but certainly worth keeping in mind.

What are Spell Coefficients?
This is a property of spells that determines how much benefit they receive from spellpower from gear, buffs and talents. These values vary from spell to spell based on things like cast time or spell type (DoT/HoT, channeled, AoE, etc).

WowWiki has a comprehensive list of spell coefficients here.

Which is better for a Holy priest, Spirit or MP5?
Short answer, spirit. For more details see the stats section of the FAQ.

What is "lolsmite"?
This generally refers to holy DPS builds. While they can be fun or novel, they're not well regarded because they are inefficient/ineffective in any sort of group PvE.

This FAQ sucks!
That's not a question.

This FAQ sucks, because you didn't include . Could you add it in?
That's better! Improvements, suggestions, and other ideas are always welcome, and will get added when I have the time.

Post by Primar

Credits

In no particular order, thanks to Elrael, Paolo, KarlusDavius, Seneca, Valandilv, Aldones, Aylia, and everyone else who's contributed to this FAQ.

Cheers!

Post by Elrael

Just my first impression, it looks great.
You still use level 70 values and ratings. I amuse this is work in progress? Atleast you keep linking to wowwiki.

Haste for Disc/Holy - any good?
Short answer, 1% haste is 1% HPS increase, but also more mana spent.
With the changed Holy Concentration talents Holy priest atleast go for haste after a soft cap of crit. Also with spells like PoH and Greater Heal holy tends to "need" haste.

Not sure about Disc priest, except they use instant spells and flash heals and the faster the spell how less haste can decrease the casting speed. 10% haste of 1.5 is 0.1 where on 3.0 it's 0.2.

For Holy Priests, Spirit is generally considered superior to MP5.
Finally someone who doesn't shout vastly superior. =p You could add that point for point MP5 adds more mana regen, but due holy talent spirit also adds spell power. And MP5 is rare on gear, where spirit is everywhere.
I believe for every 1mp5 you can get 3-4 spirit and around 1100 int 1 spirit is 0.3 mana regen while in combat.

Edit: Slackers for raid are late.

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=bVcb0hZcxxcf0qihVIst
I think this is the core, and depending on taste you can switch points around to get Inner Focus/Lolwell/Desperate prayer.
Thise points either come from Surge of Light or Holy Specialization.

Edit 2: Slackers and raids =(
Anyways ptr build is probably like
http://ptr.wowhead.com/?talent=bVcbhZcxxcfMqih0euVo
With one point over for Inner Focus/Lolwell/Desperate prayer.

Post by Paolo

Awesome.

For the One True Endgame Discipline Raiding Build, henceforth shortened to OTEDRB (say that ten times fast):

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=bVcbuhxtMxoifRtcxdc

The three points in Improved Renew can be moved to fill out Divine Fury, depending on playstyle and preference, and subject to ridicule by those making the opposite choice. Other than that, moving points is done at your own risk!

Post by Primar

Things to do:

~~BUILDS BUILDS BUILDS (I'll go digging around in the Disc/Holy FAQ threads we have up later - can anybody confirm that those are actually useful builds?)~~
~~General formatting cleanup.~~
~~Add Inscription to Professions page.~~
~~Finish Aylia's addons page.~~
~~Rewrite stats page, because it's a bit of a mess.~~
~~Glyphs. I totally didn't forget, honest.~~

Things I want from you lot:

BUILDS BUILDS BUILDS (plus advice for Disc/Holy levelling and stuff)
Any other general question-type things?
Have I missed anything glaringly obvious, or has it changed since this guide was written?
Addon suggestions? What do you use/recommend?
Do the macros still work/are relevant? I don't tend to dabble much with such things, so I'm not sure.
Haste for Disc/Holy - any good?
Any other delicious nuggets of information which I may have forgotten about.
Go forth and find all the inevitable spelling/formatting mistakes! Cheers.

You still use level 70 values and ratings. I amuse this is work in progress? Atleast you keep linking to wowwiki.

I've changed most of the ones that I noticed when I came across them - if there's still any left over from the previous version of the FAQ, let me know which ones and I'll update them.

For Holy Priests, Spirit is generally considered superior to MP5.
Finally someone who doesn't shout vastly superior. =p

Heh, you can thank Aylia for that. I'm going to go back over that section to double check that everything's still correct and that there's nothing been added in since it was written - it was one of the sections I just quickly glanced over.
It's also going to be a bit awkward come patchday when Spirit regen's being changed, since I'm not going to be entirely sure as to what the finer differences will be. Hopefully a Disc and Holy priest will be able to give their input on that, as and when it's needed.

Anyways ptr build is probably like
http://ptr.wowhead.com/?talent=bVcbhZcxxcfMqih0euVo
With one point over for Inner Focus/Lolwell/Desperate prayer.

I'm planning to keep on top of this when the patch comes out - I'm reluctant to add stuff (builds, items, spells) that are PTR only, simply because of the possibility that they might change radically by the time the patch is actually released.

Thanks for the feedback.

Post by Elrael

It's also going to be a bit awkward come patchday when Spirit regen's being changed, since I'm not going to be entirely sure as to what the finer differences will be.
I believe it something like

Current mana regen = 5 * (sqrt(Int) * Spirit * Base_Regen)
PTR nerfs it with 40%
PTR mana regen = 3 * (sqrt(Int) * Spirit * Base_Regen)

At least I do see a lot of people using that argument

BTW, I spot the following level 70 ratings.

Base_Regen varies based on character level, for level 70 it is 0.009327 (For a complete list of values see wowwiki).
Base_Regen 0.005575

% Spell Haste = (Spell Haste Rating / 15.7)
32.79 for 1% spell haste

And crit rating isn't mentioned?
It is 45.91 rating for 1%. ;P

But you are not the only one sloppy with that, I just realized (thanks to you) that int per crit is been upped to 167, and I still used the TBC 80 int per crit. ><

Happy editing, I also got some edit work to do know.

Post by karlusdavius

Thing is, Haste is a personal preference and everyone has the same opinions. this is an FAQ, not a guide. so if i were you, i would avoid things like that like the plague and stick to explaining and answering simple questions.

Leveling as Disc/ shadow again is a personal preference. If somebody is looking at an FAQ for leveling advice, there is a strong chance that they are going to roll a priest for the first time. Therefor i would advise that shadow is the best way to level, as DIsc/Shadow requires to to no a priest pretty well and no what they are capable of.

Priest FAQ v4

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