Priest guide for WoW Forever

The priest is the cloth healer by definition and, as Shadow, a very solid periodic-damage caster. It uses mana, wears cloth and has two tools no other class matches: Power Word: Shield and the widest variety of heals in the game. In return it is fragile and slow at killing outside Shadow. In Forever, on top of that, every priest race has its own spells, and several of them change in this build.

Discipline (healer)

The mana and shields tree: Meditation regenerates mana while casting and Mental Strength raises intellect. It is the most comfortable healer spec for leveling in a group and the one that tolerates long dungeons best. In the beta, at level 20, most leveling is done by wanding with Discipline talents.

Holy (healer)

The pure healing tree: Spiritual Guidance turns spirit into healing, and Inspiration and Holy Spirit make crit matter too. It is the raid and group healer with the most healing per mana once you have gear.

Shadow (damage)

Shadowform, Shadow Word: Pain and Spirit Tap, which refunds mana on kills. DoTs do not crit, but they scale with spell power and do not miss twice. It is the solo leveling tree and the damage tree for dungeons when there is another healer.

Six documented changes, all general, and two of them touch the healer's foundation. Renew can now crit, which gives crit value on a spell that had none in Classic. And Power Word: Shield can overwrite an existing shield on targets without Weakened Soul: in Classic you had to wait for the shield to drop, in Forever you can refresh it before it breaks. For a dungeon healer at level 20, this changes the rhythm of every pull.

The other four are priest racials, the part of the class where Forever moves furthest from Classic. Gnomes, who could not be priests in Classic, debut Contingency Plan (now able to crit) and Confounding Flash (with a cast visual and a Holy orientation). Starshards, the night elf racial, gains spell pushback resistance through Twilight Focus. And Dark Sacrifice, the new undead racial, no longer breaks crowd control on damage, and its tooltip shows the mana gained scales with spirit.

Off the class list but important: wands no longer gain spell power, which affects the priest more than anyone because on the way to level 20 much of the damage is wand. And the Cooldown Manager tracks every priest spell by default, which is listed among the build's known issues.

Recommendation: Shadow from 10 to 60 solo; Discipline if you will level by healing dungeons. Shadow is the only priest tree that kills at a reasonable pace: Spirit Tap refunds mana on every kill and DoTs work while you walk away. Holy for leveling is slow and mana-hungry; leave it for when you have a fixed group or raid.

Recommended talent order, broadly:

• From 10 to 20, the first Shadow talents that raise Shadow Word: Pain damage and refund mana. At level 20 in the beta the wand does much of the work, and in Forever it no longer gains spell power, so pick the best wand by DPS.
• The 16-point milestone arrives around 25-26; if you would rather not think, Forever ships two class presets.
• From 40, with Shadowform, there is no debate: every remaining point in Shadow until 60.
• If you heal dungeons, level as Discipline for Meditation and Mental Strength: it is the tree that runs out of mana the least. A reset costs 1 silver in the beta, so you can switch according to what you are doing that day.

Pacing:

• No level scaling: the priest is fragile against orange mobs: shield, DoT, wand, and never two mobs at once without Weakened Soul available. You can now refresh the shield before it drops; use it.
• Water: you do not conjure it. Buy plenty or ask a mage; the campsite sets up vendors if you run dry.
• The three one-hour campsite buffs before Shadowfang Keep make up for the damage you lack.
• Legacy Points: each character spends them across three trees (Professions, Adventure and Resourcefulness). The only perk shown so far is Well Rested, more rested experience; we will not guess what the rest do.

For both healing trees, healing and spell power are worth the same and come first; then mana per 5 s and spirit, which for Holy also adds healing through Spiritual Guidance and for Discipline feeds Meditation. Intellect gives total mana and some crit, and spell crit has gained value in Forever because Renew now crits. For Shadow, spell power (or specific Shadow damage) ahead of everything, spell hit up to 16% against bosses and crit behind, because DoTs do not crit. The wand scores in the ranged slot for all three trees: at level 20 it is real damage.

At level 20 the priest is the class most dependent on Tailoring: Discipline and Holy equip six new Forever recipes and a single dungeon piece, the Mindthrust Bracers from Shadowfang Keep. Shadow wears five Tailoring pieces and four from dungeons: the same bracers plus Necrology Robes and Witching Stave from Shadowfang Keep and Ghamoo-ra's Bind from Blackfathom Deeps. The remaining slots hold pieces with no source recorded yet.

On the way up, Shadowfang Keep and the Scarlet Monastery hold three BiS pieces each for the class (Necrotic Wand and Scorn's Icy Choker serve all three trees), and Razorfen Kraul, Razorfen Downs and Blackrock Depths two each; the Death Speaker Scepter from Razorfen Kraul is the healers' only dungeon main hand in the BiS, from 30 to 50. Uldaman adds the Beacon of Hope for Discipline and Holy. The new beta dungeons have no loot in our database yet. Full list per level on the priest BiS page.

The priest is the class with the most racial weight in Forever, because every race has its own spells and this build changes four of them. The new combination is the gnome priest, with Contingency Plan and Confounding Flash as racials, and on top of that Eureka becomes a 10% discount on mana abilities. Night elves keep Starshards (now with pushback resistance) and the undead have Dark Sacrifice. Humans and dwarves for the Alliance, trolls for the Horde. There is no Skyborne priest. If racials matter to you, check each one's detail in the changes section; if not, every race levels the same.

Tailoring + Enchanting, no debate: six of the healers' level-20 BiS pieces are Tailoring recipes, neither profession needs gathering and Enchanting uses the leftover cloth. Forever adds more than 600 new recipes and a passive bonus per profession, so Tailoring performs better than in Classic.

For gold, Herbalism + Alchemy: mana potions you will need yourself. Cooking for the small experience bonus of crafted food, and First Aid even if you heal, because bandages cost no mana. Each profession's leveling path is in the profession guides.

• Leveling as Holy. It is slow and mana-hungry. Shadow solo, Discipline to heal dungeons.
• Waiting for the shield to drop. In Forever you can overwrite it when Weakened Soul is absent; refresh it before it breaks.
• Hunting wands with spell power. They no longer gain it. Compare wands by DPS: at level 20 they are your finisher.
• Ignoring crit as a healer. Renew now crits in Forever; crit has gained some value.
• Fighting orange mobs. Without level scaling, a cloth priest against a mob three levels above is a corpse. Yellow.
• Going without water. You do not conjure it: buy plenty, ask a mage or use the campsite vendors.
• Picking a race without reading the racials. It is the class where they matter most; four of this build's six changes are racials.
• Trusting the Cooldown Manager's list. By default it tracks every priest spell; trim it or switch it off.