Priest Guide Index

• Priest Guide Main Page
• Priest Guide Chapter 1 - Basics - Credits
• Priest Guide Chapter 2 - Quests
• Priest Guide Chapter 3 - Trainers - NPCs
• Priest Guide Chapter 4 - Equipment
• Priest Guide Chapter 5 - Spells - Talents
• Priest Guide Chapter 6 - Roles - Tactics - Techniques
• Priest Guide Appendix - Where to Hunt

6.1.1 - PvE (1 on 1)

• First: You should always have a PW:Pain on your foe. Its very mana efficient even if the rate of damage is low.
  For a 1-on-1 fight, the first question is whether your PW:S lasts long enough to shield you from damage. If you have the improved (15 second) shield, and the mob you're fighting takes more than 15 seconds to bring it down, you win. You can then use PW:Pain and wand; you'll regenerate mana fast enough to keep the shield up forever, and victory is automatic (assuming you don't get adds). Or, you can kill faster with whatever combination of mind-blast/smite/mind-flay you wish and spend the time/money drinking to restore mana.
  Note that all this requires is getting the improved PW:S. It doesn't matter whether you're holy or shadow; you win. [Written by Neilla of Malygos and posted to the official forums]
  
• Don't be afraid to melee. Sure, you're vulnerable as a caster in cloth but your heals are pretty mana efficient, so you can take care of your own health quickly during or after a fight (assuming no complications). This can help you conserve a lot of mana. You may want to learn to use a staff or dagger which seem to have better +stats for priests than do one-handed maces. [ Krux of Garona ]
  
• Consider getting a wand to supplement non-casting damage. Place the wand in your ranged weopon slot. Yes, you can hold the wand and your main melee weopon at the same time. Drag the shoot icon from your ability book to the action bar. Learn to intersperse it with your melee attack. Later, you can use it in groups to add a bit more damage while still conserving mana for when the $!@% hits the fan. Enchanters make a wand that is usable at level 9, try the auction House for others. There's a common one usable at level 15. [ Krux of Garona ]
  
• Try to avoid casting smite while in melee. Its casting time is too long and multiple casting delays will make it pretty inefficient. You can get away with this a bit early on, but later it's pretty infeasible. [ Krux of Garona ]
  
• Generally in PvE, priests should stick to a single target at a time especially early on when you don't have as many options for reducing casting delays due to damage. If you get an add, either run (possibly casting shield, renew and/or psychic scream), or finish one off quickly so you can concentrate on the 2nd. [ Krux of Garona ]
  
• If you expect a tough fight and don't mind using a bunch of mana on it, pre cast PW shield, allow a bit of mana to regen by waiting for 10 seconds, then pull the critter you want to fight. It will probably reach you with about 15 seconds left on the shield, and tear through it in about 10. Then , if you're in trouble later on in the fight, the weakend soul debuff which keeps you from recasting your shield will have worn off and you can use another shield to get some uninterrupted casting time. [ Krux of Garona ]
  
• Remember that mana only starts regenerating 5 seconds after your last cast. Cast multiple spells in a cluster, then melee for a while to allow mana regeneration during a fight. [ Krux of Garona ]
  
• Once you've taken a bit of damage, cast renew on yourself. It's instacast so you can do it easily while in melee. Versus critters near your same level it will often heal approximately the same amount as the damage they do. This gives you 15 seconds when your health isn't dropping. [ Krux of Garona ]
  
• Shadow Word Pain is your friend. Cast it early in the fight to get the maximum effect from it. Consider casting a 2nd round of it later in a tough fight, especially against an armored foe against whom your melee damage may be subpar. [ Krux of Garona ]
  
• Look out for quick hitting mobs, especially dual wielders. They can cause substantial casting delays once they get within melee range.
  Inner Fire and Power Word Fortitude should always be up. [ Krux of Garona ]
  
• Train First Aid and save a bit of mana and let it continue regenning by making & using bandages occassionally to heal after combat.
  Be careful using psychic scream. The critters affected often bring friends back with them and pursue you quite a ways. Be doubly careful with this in an instance. [ Krux of Garona ]
  
• Remember to buy your spell upgrades and replace them on your action bar as needed. [ Krux of Garona ]
  
• Make a trip to the Auction House once in a while to check on weapon, wand or armor upgrades. This can significantly increase the speed at which you kill and the size / regen speed of your mana pools or how much health you have to work with. [ Krux of Garona ]
  
• If you solo significantly, consider getting the shadow tree talent Spirit Tap. It increases your mana regen speed if you get the killing blow on a creature that gives you experience (not grey). This will reduce your downtime and have you spending less on drinks, well, mana restoration drinks anyway. There's no buffer for your ale addiction. [ Krux of Garona ]
  
• More and more I've been finding my tactic has been: Mind Blast to pull, Mind Flay while it runs to me, SW:Pain, PW:S, Mind Flay until PW:S is off, re-shield (it will last the 15 seconds against most foes within 2 levels of me, or at least long enough that the damage I take is no threat to my life) and start Mind Flaying again, until its dead or close to dead. If the mob is low on health and my shield is down, I will usually finish it off with Mind Blast (it's not worth it to use Mind Flay if you're going to have to reapply an expensive PW:S that will mostly go to waste). Against foes with a lot of health I may have to reapply SW:P during the fight at some point, though if the mob is at 1/4 or less life, I usually won't bother with reapplying Pain.
  
  Mind Flay is the best efficient DPS we can do. Chain casting Smite/Mind Blast may be better DPS, but it's horribly mana inefficient. High DPS is good in a fight because it means less damage taken and shorter fights, thus it seems to be the most "time efficient" option we have available to us against equal to higher level enemies.
  
  Running out of mana is not a problem against mobs within 2 levels of me if I start the battle with about half mana. If I get an unwanted add that I don't feel I can handle, I throw up Renew and PW:S and run, and cast Psychic Scream if necessary. [Written by Quinsta of Azgalor and posted to the official forums]
  
• " Mind blast, walk backwards while casting SW:P (adds a little bit of distance)(if you have 2 points in the talent that increases shadow spells distance throw in a vampiric embrace in there) and then mind flay. Everything will get off before the guy reaches you and if you got points decreasing the cooldown of mind blast, it'll be ready to cast right after or just keep mind flaying away. " [Written by Zexcells of Kargath and posted to the official forums]
  
• My best advice is get a UI mode like CTMOD load up all your spells to hotkeys and memorize them. Be able to know what you want to use without thinking about it or using a mouse click. This is classic blizzard Warcraft 3/starcraft, hotkeys make the difference in a hard fight. And make sure you use all your spells, for god sake they cost a #@$%load. [Jundicator of Kel'Thuzad ]
  
• Prerequisite talents for this pattern: 15 second shields, also useful but not critical is spirit tap.
  
  Melee Mobs:
  Before Combat
  Fortitude buff
  Inner Fire
  Shield
  
  I start in the safest place away from aggro points/other mobs and prefer to stay in the 30 yd max range area to begin.
  Mind Blast (opening move to pull mob)
  SW: Pain (usually moving backwards, to avoid patrol paths)
  Touch of weakness as the mob is approaching.
  Staff hit (this sets the touch of weakness, and degrades the meelee mobs attack strength)
  Staff whacks repeated until shield goes down
  PW: Shield
  Mindblast
  
  At this point, my mana is at about 65-70%, the Mob should be under 50% at this point I usually whack away behind shield, Sometimes a new Pain Dot is appropriate but usually whacking till end behind shield leaves you with about 90% health (if not more) and 70-80% mana. Meaning your ready for next mob.
  Biggest benefit of this approach is mana management, which isnt as quick to kill, but gets you onto your next victim without a water break
  
  Caster Mobs
  Pre combat remains fort/inner fire and shield.
  Mindblast
  SW: Pain
  Then I change it up
  Mana burn as many times until shield runs out
  Shield
  Return to mana burn
  at this point the mob is out of mana down to 30-40% health and runs towards you for meelee
  touch of weakness (maybe another pain dot)
  Whack until shiled runs out
  PW:Shield
  Whack until dead
  
  Once again, a mana friendly plan that will leave you around 70-80% mana and 90% health. thakes a little longer but water break isnt needed.
  No spec tree really needed outside of disc for the shields. [ Burny of Frostwolf ]
  
• Spec shadow. Take the tree all the way up to mind flay. Max out improved renew, spiritual healing, improved inner fire, improved Power Word: Shield, and improved Fortitude. I also suggest 5 points in Improved Wand, with a good wand (44-50dps+).
  There, you can now solo like me. Go to Sorrow Hill in Western Plaguelands. Make sure you're level 51+. There are skeletons there. That's what you'll be killing.
  Start off by shielding yourself. Then pull a skeleton with SW:P. He'll chase you. As soon as he's in range, mind-flay. Your shield will keep your channel from being interrupted. Keep mind flaying, as fast as you can, until your shield wears off. Mob should be at about 5% hp at this point. Wand it off to finish it.
  Spirit Tap will regenerate a good bit of mana. Move on to the next skeleton/ghoul. (Ghouls are easier).
  During these fights, you will do, with SW:P and Mind-flay going, 230-250dps. You can do four-five mobs on a 5200 mana pool before drinking.
  With SW:P, Wanding with a 41dps wand, and Renew going as you tank, you'll be doing approximately 140-165dps. Not too bad, but it's better to flay. [ Dolalin of Durotan ]

6.1.2 - PvE (Group Fights)

• If its 2-1 against a critter you can effectively shield against, you need to put up your shield, nuke one of them, and try to kill it before you die. You won't be able to keep PW:S up all the time and you'll get interrupted a lot. Under these circumstances, Focused Casting can be a life saver. Once you kill the first one, you can go back to wand/PW:S/PW:Pain and victory is automatic.
  
• If you're facing a critter which can take your PW:S down in less than 15 seconds, you might have a problem. There are two ways to play this: nukeing or attrition. In the first scenario, you'll be using some combination of Mind Flay, Mind Blast, and Smite to kill your enemy before you run out of health and mana. If you run out of either, you die; the choice of which combination of spells you use is situational depending on your talents and how hard the mob you're fighting hits. In the attrition scenario, you need to be able to make up the damage you take during gaps in your shield coverage, either via renew or via healing AND have enough non-casting time to recover most of the mana you are expending. In order to maximize mana recovery, you want to cluster your spells: you want to recast PW:S, PW:Pain, and renew/heal one after the other to maximize the amount of mana you recover.
  
• Note that, in all these scenarios, it is VITAL that you have sufficient wand (or staff/mace) talent to hit whatever you're fighting. One of the biggest mistakes a priest can make is to neglect wand/staff to the point where its not a viable option; if you can't reliably hit with your wand you will only have the option of PW:Pain/Mind Blast/Mind Flay and you will be in danger of losing a fight due to running out of mana. [Written by Neilla of Malygos and posted to the official forums]

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 [email protected]