You Can Do It!
Posted on May 3rd, 2008 by Gavin under Efficiency Tips, Faster Leveling
If you’ve ever tried to level a priest, you know it’s a big fat pain in the robe until you get well into the 40’s. We’re going to outline some talent selections that will take some of the pain out of the process for you.
One of the most important things to concentrate on as a young priest is gear with +spirit. Before level 40, it can be tough to find gear with + to Spirit and + to Spell Damage. When in doubt, take spirit. At higher levels, you’ll be able to get gear with both.
Next, always hit the AH every time you’re in town and make sure you’ve got the highest damage wand you can find for your level. You’ll be wanding a LOT when leveling. We love wands because they do high damage and are pretty cheap for the most part on the AH. Using your wand will help you regenerate mana while still fighting, and the damage will end up being pretty comparable to spells until after level 40.
Now let’s talk about your secret weapon. Low level priests don’t have any really terrific DPS offensive skills. So you’re going to use Shadow Word Pain to amp your attack, then one offensive spell, and then wand them to death. A priest with no mana is dead, dead, dead. So what we’re doing here is giving you the biggest possible mana pool and doing whatever it takes to protect it. As long as you’ve got mana, you can heal yourself faster than mobs can damage you in most cases, then you can just run away and try again. Or you can wand for a while, bubble, heal, then wand some more.
At level 10 you’ll start getting talent points to spend. Here’s how to place them until level 40:
- 10-14: 5/5 Spirit Tap
- 15-19: 5/5 Wand Spec (trust us)
- 20-21: 2/2 Improved Shadow Word: Pain
- 22-24: 3/5 Shadow Focus
- 25: Mind Flay (This skill isn’t great before lvl36 anyway)
- 26-27: 5/5 Shadow Focus (HIGHLY recommended over Blackout)
- 28-29: 2/2 Imp Psychic Scream
- 30-31: 2/2 Shadow Reach
- 32-34: 3/5 Shadow Weaving
- 35-37: 3/3 Focused Mind
- 38: Vampiric Embrace
- 39: Silence
These talent buffs will make your run to 40 so much easier. The real key is in Spirit Tap. This little gem doubles your mana after a kill, and has a chance to add 50% mana regeneration as well. Combined with plenty of +spirit gear, and you’ll almost never have mana issues.
The wand specialization is a nice buff to your wand, and the rest of the shadow talents really help your DPS and survivability. If you plan on grinding all the way to 70, you’ll probably stay Shadow Spec. If you are already running heals for guild-mates at lower levels, you won’t have to worry too much about going solo all the time and you can respec holy.
Up to level 40, you won’t miss the increase to your heals too much with the Shadow Talents, you should be able to heal just fine with your base spells.
Hey just thought id say that this is the talent tree i used many moons ago when i leveled my priest. Also i would say that i think it is a complete myth that priests are slow up to 40. I did 1-40 in about 3 days and im no powerleveler. I spend hours leveling professions, camping Tarren Mill at lvl 30 and not really getting on with leveling at all. I also hit 300 eng and had 1200g for my mount by 60.
o and to add the priest was faster than my rogue which i did at a similar time but took like 9 days, i mean WTF!?
Is Shadow the only way to level a priest? Actually no, as discipline is not specialized in a particular magic, it contributes to general spell casting, which includeds mana preservation. I have an undead disc priest who actually fights even or better sometimes than my shadow priest. Why? Because priests need mana and discipline supliments numerous stats such as intel, spirit and spell power that you wont find as readily in the other builds.
I agree that having high spirit is essential for a priest but never in my experience has my powerword shield lasted me long enough to wand/shadoword pain someone to death. I know you can recast it but that mana is basically the same as using an offensive spell.
Priests are screwed without mana but I think a priest and a mage have similar mana issues. I wouldnt say one class is particularly better at leveling if they have appropriate gear.
One way I have of saving mana for my shadow priest is first aid. It doesnt matter what spec you are in fact as it is basically a free heal. A psychic scream will give you plenty of time to use a bandage which should heal 1/2 of your health or more. With this, you can spend more mana on offensive spells and less on healing.
Also, this build looks like it could be used for grinding, but it doesnt look viable for pvp. I pvp at all tiers (after 19 >.>) with all my characters, so respec’ing every 10 levels isn’t an option.
I will have to disagree completely with leveling a priest as shadow. My holy priest had no problem leveling, though I did get tired of a few dungeons. In fact at level 20 I raced a shadow priest to 70 and beat them by 14 levels, was not a noob player that I raced either. Healers are in such high demand that it is easy to get dungeon members to help you with a quest. Often many holy priest have rogues for friends that they use as “killers of quest” while keeping the rogue or whatever alive. It is not hard at all to raise in levels as a healer. My 70 priest is over 2k to healing which means she gets to go everywhere for the end game stuffs!!!
I don’t quite understand why you put completely fill out Shadow Focus at 26/27 there’s simply no point in doing that. At any level below 70, unless your fighting mobs that are about 4/5 levels higher than you(and as a priest you’ll rarely be doing that) 3 points in shadow focus are enough to suffice. Those 2 points actually would probably be worth more going into Blackout -_-
Personally I was leveling my priest holy, and up til’ 20 it was pretty hard to kill stuff quickly. But once I got holy fire, It became much easier to level as holy. Even though shadow does amazing in PvP, Holy is good for instances and end-game. If you advertise that your a holy priest once or twice a day in trade, you will probably get asked to heal for a dungeon at least twice a day. People always sit in Org (or SW) on their mains, so they’re also bound to have alts. My server in particular is low on healers, leveling wise, and end-game. So if you make some friends while instancing, your bound to make many friends and few enemies as a healer =D
Compared to levelling my warrior i found levelling a priest rediculously easy, so stop winging