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As mentioned throughout this guide, Priests really shine with a group. While it is possible to play a priest as a shadow form priest and effectively solo, priests really are the group healer. As such, you will constantly be sought out for groups to adventure with and heal for. Your best bet for advancement is to perfect your healing and grouping skills.

The PvP and PvE strategies have been moved to their own pages due to volume. Enjoy!

• PvE basic strategies
• PvP basic strategies
• PvP Class strategies

Primary early priest techniques -

Keep your buff spells up and shield yourself before pulling when solo. You can nuke most mobs down to near death before your shield wears out. In a group, make sure your eyes are on the health meters of your group mates. It's your job to keep them standing. Save those potions. They are instant heals that can get you out of a jam.

Healing Aggro (or threat) -

A very important thing to learn as a priest is how to NOT gain aggro (aggression) while in a group. It is the tanks job to hold aggro and your life will be saved many times over by not pulling it away from him with a big heal.

Let’s start with a simple definition of aggro and how it works. This is in no way 100% complete, this is the basics. Aggro is the rated aggression or threat that a MOB has towards someone. Each MOB has a table that tracks the threat points for all targets it is aware of. It is aware of everything in its threat range (varies depending on your relative level to it). Ignoring abilities that generate extra threat, each point of damage generates a point of threat against that MOB. The MOB will aggro (or go aggressive against) the target it has the most threat points against.

Now it gets a little complicated. Healing done to a player will generate roughly 0.75 points of threat per point of health healed. It is complicated though to determine which MOBS will gain those threat points. If a Warrior is fighting 3 MOBS (all focused on him) then they will all gain threat. For the next example assume a warrior, rogue and paladin are fighting three mobs with the warrior tanking two and the rogue and paladin fighting the other one. Healing the warrior puts threat points on two MOBS, healing one of the other two characters only puts threat on one MOB. In big combats it is sometimes very difficult to figure out how threat is going to work. The threat is added as each health point is healed, so over healing someone does not generate extra threat.

Also shielding a person transfers the damage protected to points of threat towards the priest. So if your shield on a warrior protects 500 points of damage, then you gain 500 points of threat. The threat is added to you as the damage is prevented, not on the cast of the shield.

Knowing the basics above though helps educate you on how threat and aggro works. Now we move onto how to manage it better and not draw it.

The first thing that should be obvious is that you do not want to cast big heals if at all possible. Big heals move you up the threat list very quickly. Also if a tank has two targets and is splitting his attacks between them to hold aggro, it will be very hard for him to gain aggro back and get the MOB off of you.

The second thing to notice is that if you cast shield and renew you gain no immediate threat, but gain it over time. This is very important as it allows the tank to keep aggro and other players to build threat over that time as well. This will help keep you down in the threat list.

Fade is also your friend and should be used any time after a big heal. Fade works by temporarily dropping a set amount of aggro points from all MOBS with you in their threat table. This amount is returned as soon as fade is done.

So putting all of the above together we learn to do the following:
- Heal over time to allow other to gain threat over the same time
- Shield to prevent having to heal and gain threat over time
- Try to use small heals and spread out heals to groups fighting different MOBS whenever possible.
- When you have to cast a big heal, make sure fade is ready to cast right after

Shadow Spec Grinding Technique -

One of our readers Kzargroth <Seismic> from the Laughing Skull server sent in the following notes and tactics:

I've been reading tactics about grinding with priest. I have 55 shadow priest at the moment and i haven't seen any mana efficient tactic on your guide. Using the "best tactic" at the site you could kill 4-5 mobs at your own level before mana break. I have grinded 2h (about 50-100 mobs at least) straight without any breaks, this far my exp/hour rate max is 47k exp / h in rested state. So this is my tactic:

Go full shadow spec with shadow form, use the rest of the points to Disc, and remember to take 5/5 to wand damage. I really don't use Pw:F or Innerfire at all, waste of mana as you will see. I'll be in shadowform. I start my fights with pw:s, then pull with mind blast. Continue with sw:p and mind flay. When mind flay end i'll just wand the mob to death. In this way you'll cast all your spell in the beginning so your mana regens the rest of the fight. With Spirit Tap 5/5 you'll get your mana regen up after fight. Pw:s last until the mobs are dead even if you're fighting mobs 2-3 levels above you. Wait 5-6 secs (or use it while running towards next mob) and start again. In this way I have been grinding 2h straight without mana breaks.

Raid Tank Healing Technique -

If you are lucky (or unlucky) enough to be the main tank raid healer there are several tactics that you should focus on. All are very simple, but require you to take a step back and think about them every once in a while as a reminder. They come down to several main points.

First, always remember that the Tank is your primary priority, without the tank, the raid wipes. This is sometimes hard to remember as you see another players life spiraling down. It's easy to want to toss them a heal. DON'T. As a general rule, if your the MT healer, then that is the only player you should be healing (there are exceptions, but learn them over time).

While MT healing, there will be spikes in damage no matter how well geared the tank is. You should do everything you can to smooth these out and to be ready for them. To smooth them out you should try to keep both prayer of mending and your Heal over Times (HoT's) on the MT as often as possible. This allows you lessen the regular damage coming in and worry more about the spikes as they occur. To be ready for the spikes I strongly suggest getting used to canceling heal spells. Always keep a heal spell casting, but keep an eye on the MT's health bar. If while casting just before it finishes the MT is still at a very high health, then cancel the heal. No mana spent means no 5 second mana regen rule, and just start the cast again. Doing this allows you to always be ready with a big heal when needed, without having to react to the damage. While doing this watch the HoT's and refresh them in-between the heal casts.

Raid Healing Technique -

If you are in a raid and not the Main Tank (MT) healer, you are more than likely the raid healer. This means you spend your time bouncing from one target to another healing as needed. There are several techniques that help with this as well. In general you will want to use HoT's, power word: shield, shorter cast time heals and AOE / Group heals. The trick is to watch what is happening and to know the fights. In some fights you need big heals on whoever is being hit, on other fights its all about AoE damage and you need to switch around allot.

Make sure you have all the raid groups that you are assigned to heal dragged out into the UI so that you can see everyone's health bar. When you need to save a single person, cast short quick heals, throw up a HoT on them and then cast the big heal if still needed. When you need to save a group of players, use your AOE or group heal abilities. With some fights when you know this is going to happen you can even practice the art of canceling heals similar to MT healing, keeping that group heal just about cast for when the damage comes in. This takes a lot of practice though.

The other really important part of group healing is always being ready with all your spells. Learn to use them all when needed. Lightwell helps you keep up ranged groups without actual effort, Circle of Healing and Prayer of Healing allow you to heal groups of players, renew helps mitigate DoT or continuous damage on players, etcetera. All of your spells have a purpose and use, learn them all.

I find that the best way to setup the U.I. for the priest is to setup several quick spell bars, each suited to a different purpose.

I use 3 main bars. The first bar contains the spells that I use most often with the easiest to hit hot keys. . This is the bar that you will use most of the time. The second bar contains additional buffs, heals and utility spells that you use occasionally, but perhaps not multiple times per fight. The third bar is for those spells that you need to get to quickly, but don't use on a regular basis.

It is also a good idea to replace any of the spells on your toolbar that you use different ranks of with a simple downgrading macro. An example of one can be found in the macro section below. By using one you can cast a full strength spell by clicking it, or a downgraded one by holding a modifier key and clicking it.

There are several U.I. Mods available to make your life simpler as a Priest. Many players feel very strongly about the interface that they use in WoW and customize it with many different MODs. To me, I can't play without a few simple MODs that include our Database mod (Shameless plug), Titan Panel, CT Raid Assist and Damage Meters. You can find these and many others in our UI Mod repository.

The main one however that NO Priest should be without is Decursive.

Decursive is a mod that notifies you when a member of your group or raid is cursed. When you click the button setup for it, it auto targets a debuffed character and cleanses them. Similar to whispercast, no more hunting for the right player, just click and forget. In several MC fights this is almost mandatory as it allows you to cleanse more than 1 or 2 players. We have a copy of Decursive for download here. It seems as though decursive is under constant attack by Blizzard though and can go down for long periods of time after every patch, so don't forget how to remove debuffs without it.

There are also a few common macros used by mage's that you should add to your system. They are as follows.

Healing and Announce Macro
( by Andarta of Illidan )
Here is my favourite macro so far. It heals your targeted group member. If you are not in a group, or do not have a group member targeted it heals you. Then returns your target to the previous enemy you were fighting. It also lets your group know who you are healing in party chat.

Downgrading Spell Macro

This macro is used to replace your normal heal buttons. By doing so you can prevent having a rank 1 and max rank heal button on your toolbar. All you need to do is click the button to cast a max rank heal, or hold down the control key while clicking to cast the rank 1 version. You can use a similar macro for any other spell you want by just replace the spell name in the macro.

Announce Buff

This Macro announces the buffs that you cast

Cast best spell by level Macro

This macro is setup to cast the best possible PW:F on the target but can easily be changed to any other buff that is level sensitive.

PW:S self without losing target Macro

This macro will cast PW:S on yourslef and then retarget your last selected player or MOB.

Have comments or suggestions? Thought of something that has been missed? Found an error? I would love to hear from you! Please post in our Priest Class guide forum or email me at messiah@tentonhammer.com

Have comments or suggestions? Thought of something that has been missed? Found an error? I would love to hear from you! Please post in our Priest Class guide forum or email me at messiah@tentonhammer.com