Priest Leveling Guide From 1 to 80 for WotLK Classic

In this section you will find our Priest leveling guide. Check out the different specializations down below to find one that fits your desired playstyle.

Along side this Priest-specific leveling guide, you may want to know some general leveling tips and tricks to improve your leveling experience even more. Be sure to check out the guide below to further improve your time while leveling:

Priests have three talent trees to choose from, each focusing on using different weapons and tactics in the battlefield. Those talent trees are Discipline, Holy, and Shadow.

Discipline Priest offers a balanced playstyle, having an easy time alternating between healing and dealing damage. This is a good spec choice if you plan on doing group content from time to time while leveling.

Holy Priest focuses mostly on healing, making it a subpar build to pick if you are not strictly leveling in a group. Outside of healing others, this spec offers little to no benefit in offensive damage dealing capabilities.

Shadow Priest focuses purely on dealing damage, greatly enhancing your damage capacities. Shadow is a great spec for leveling solo, but will have a harder time trying to heal in dungeons, which is the role a Priest will fill in groups while leveling most often.

If you want to optimize your leveling speed, it is recommended that you use the Shadow Priest build as it will have the easiest and most effective leveling out of any of the specs.

One popular and efficient leveling strategy is dungeon grinding. Dungeons are much easier than people remember, they give higher experience, and with a solid group dungeons can match or even beat the experience-per-hour that questing gives.

If you choose to do this strategy, make sure to plan your spec according to your group's needs. You will probably be asked to provide heals as either Holy or Discipline Priest as you do not get your AoE spell, Mind Sear until Level 75. Shadow Priest still does great damage though, especially against high-health enemies.

If your goal is to hit Level 80 as fast as possible, it is not recommended to pick up professions while leveling. However, some professions are very useful for either leveling or at Level 80, and can be worth the time investment while leveling.

First Aid is a must-have profession at max level due to the no Mana cost healing it provides. Herbalism, Mining, and Skinning all are great choices for making gold and can also be useful for leveling other important professions later on, such as taking Herbalism to help level Alchemy. Finally, Tailoring is a great choice for Priest as it offers a powerful, unique cloak enchant at Level 80, so leveling it early is a good idea.

Once you reach Level 80 and want to further improve your Priest, be sure to check out our fully-detailed Priest guides that can be found below: