Season of Discovery Discipline Priest Healer Leveling

The highlighted leveling build above puts a focus on maximizing your Mana regeneration and lessening the costs of commonly uses abilities like Power Word: Shield and Shadow Word: Pain. The goal is to minimize downtime as much as possible. As a Priest you do not have means to pull multiple mobs, so your goal should be staying active as long as possible.

• Chest — Twisted Faith
• Hands — Penance
• Legs — Homunculi
• Waist — Mind Spike
• Feet — Void Plague
• Helm — Eye of the Void
• Wrist — Surge of Light
• Back — Vampiric Touch
• Ring — Holy Specialization
• Ring — Shadow Specialization

Twisted Faith greatly increases the damage dealt by your Mind Blast and Mind Spike abilities to targets that are afflicted by our Shadow Word: Pain debuff. Shadow Word: Pain should be active on almost every enemy you fight so this is an almost entirely passive damage increase while leveling.

Penance is a great tool both for dealing damage and self healing, this should be used on cooldown to either attack an enemy or heal yourself. It is incredibly efficient as both a damaging and healing spell, just ensure you have Power Word: Shield active when casting it to avoid any possible spell pushback.

Homunculi deal considerable damage and apply an Attack Power, Attack Speed, and Armor reduction debuff to the mob you are currently fighting. On top of the damage they deal, the damage reduced by these debuffs can often be the difference between having to stop and drink or being able to continue fighting.

Mind Spike is a great, spammable nuke that can help you focus down a priority target. While this is an incredible tool for killing fleeing enemies or a particularly dangerous mob, it is important to stay conscious of the Mana you spend while casting it.

Void Plague is an incredibly powerful DoT that allows you to focus more on casting other abilities such as Penance or Mind Blast to quickly deal with enemies. As a Priest we are not often bursting down a kill target so you can often get the full value of the DoT effect.

Eye of the Void summons an Eye that will apply various curses to its target, reducing the targets outgoing damage and increasing its vulnerability to incoming Damage types, similar to Homunculi. This is a great way to get through mobs even quicker with only a single global usage.

Surge of Light causes your Critical Strikes to cause your next Smite/ Flash Heal to be instant, either increasing your kill speed or giving you the ability to heal yourself on the fly.

Vampiric Touch is another great source of Shadow damage-over-time and should be applied as early as possible in any kind of encounter to take advantage of not only the damage but the 2% Mana return from Shadow damage dealt to the target while it is active.

Holy Specialization and Shadow Specialization both increase your hit rating with your Holy and Shadow spells by 6% while leveling this is tremendous as you will be nearly hit capped if not entirely hit capped with both of your schools of damage Holy Fire is the only damaging ability you may be using that would not benefit from these effects.

If you are unsure where to find these Runes or are just curious what other options may be available, feel free to check out our Priest Rune guide included below to get a better idea of how to plan this all out in your leveling journey.

Leveling as a Priest acts much more as a list of priorities as opposed to a definitive rotation, listed below is what ideally your encounters while leveling should look like.

1. Keep Power Word: Fortitude active on yourself at all times.
2. Keep Divine Spirit active on yourself at all times.
3. Keep Inner Fire active on yourself at all times.
4. Summon your Homunculi and keep them active as often as possible.
5. Summon your Eye of the Void and keep it active as often as possible.
6. Cast Power Word: Shield if you are going to be taking damage.
7. Apply Vampiric Touch.
8. Apply Void Plague.
9. Apply Shadow Word: Pain.
10. Cast Shadowfiend if the mob will survive its full duration to maximize mana return.
11. Cast Penance whenever possible.
12. Cast Mind Blast whenever possible
13. Cast Mind Spike in situations where a mob is fleeing or needs to be killed quickly.
14. Wand off the remaining health on the enemy.

Discipline really offers the best of both worlds as it is the best solo leveling spec for Priest, but also an incredibly strong healer should you find yourself in a group for a difficult quest or a dungeon. Healing does not operate on a traditional rotation, but revolves around picking the right ability at the right time in order to most optimally use your Mana.

• Penance is by far the most efficient heal available, but make sure you are in a situation where you can channel it for its full duration.
• Flash Heal should only really be used in an emergency situation where the target would otherwise die. Flash Heal does a relatively small amount of healing and costs a considerable amount of Mana compared to alternatives so try to avoid this when possible.
• Heal is a slow, incredibly efficient heal. Heal is the ability you will be primarily using to heal in groups, but be aware of its slow cast time sometimes it will not be enough to keep someone who is taking heavy damage alive.
• Renew is a heal-over-time effect that has a high Mana cost associated with it. This should only be used in a situation where you are focused on healing other party members or you are moving and unable to stop and cast.
• Power Word: Shield applies a buff that absorbs incoming damage to a friendly target. This should be used to preemptively stop incoming damage or avoid spell push back.

In Season of Discovery, Mana tools such as Shadowfiend and Dispersion have been added to combat Mana issues while playing your Priest. The goal is to use these tools as often as possible to minimize the amount of time you spend drinking. Shadowfiend should be used against an enemy that you are confident will survive the entire duration of the spell; the Mana gained through this scales with the amount of times it attacks the target. Dispersion can be used whenever you find yourself low on Mana, but it is important to keep it on cooldown so you can spend more time in combat.

Your main hand weapon is little more than a stat stick when playing a Priest, but your Wand is a massive part of your leveling experience. Even if a wand offers better stats your primary focus should be on the damage it deals. Your wand very much acts as your auto attack, so always try to use the highest DPS wand available to you.

Leveling Professions while leveling can slow down your time if you are in a rush to max level however, working towards leveling them while you are out in the level appropriate zone will generally save you more time in the long run if you level as you go, this is especially true with Gathering professions such as Herbalism, Skinning and Mining. These can be used both to create supplies for the crafting profession of your choosing or simply to supplement your income by selling the material on the Auction House to help pay for things like new abilities and even a mount at level 40.

First Aid is incredible even as a class that can self heal the fact that you can quickly heal yourself at no mana cost can sometimes be the difference between surviving an encounter or dying.