WoW Classic Holy Priest Leveling Talent Build from 1 to 60
On this page, you will find our Level by Level Holy Priest leveling guide for WoW Classic. Make sure to use the slider to make the guide adapt to your level. For more general leveling information, please refer to our Priest leveling guide. We also have an Discipline Priest leveling guide and a Shadow Priest leveling guide.
If you were looking for TBC Classic advice, please refer to our TBC Classic Holy Priest leveling guide.
Holy Priest Leveling Rotation, Talents, and Trainer Skills
Move the slider below to make the guide update to your level!
Talent Tree
Your first talent unlocks at Level 10.
- Levels 10 to 14 — 5 points in Wand Specialization
- Levels 15 to 19 — 5 points in Spirit Tap
The first 10 points spent in your talent tree are the most important for leveling as any spec and are used all the way to 60. Spirit Tap provides excellent Mana regeneration while casting, allowing you to continue pulling the next enemy and reducing your downtime. Wand Specialization buffs your wand damage, which is used for every enemy you are killing. As Holy, you can use your wand to pick off weak enemies in dungeons as well to gain the Spirit Tap bonus for additional Mana regeneration.
- Levels 20 & 21 — 2 points in Healing Focus
- Levels 22 to 25 — 3 points in Improved Renew
- Levels 26 to 29 — 5 points in Divine Fury
Especially early on with tanks not having AoE threat abilities you can often end up with enemies attacking you just due to threat generated from healing. Healing Focus helps you continue to do your job even while things are attacking you. Improved Renew buffs Renew which you will be using regularly both in dungeons and to top yourself up while on the go when questing. Finally Divine Fury not only reduces the cast time of your common healing spells, but also of Smite for dealing damage while questing.
- Level 30 — 1 points in Holy Nova
- Levels 31 to 35 — 5 points in Holy Specialization **
- Levels 36 & 37 — 2 points in Searing Light
- Levels 38 & 39 — 2 points in Holy Reach
Holy Nova is not used as a primary damage or healing spell, and is most useful when questing on heavily contested servers to quickly tag enemies before other players. Searing Light and Holy Reach give Smite and Holy Fire some added damage capability to assist with solo questing.
- Levels 40 to 42 — 3 points in Improved Power Word: Shield
- Levels 43 & 44 — 2 points in Improved Power Word: Fortitude
- Level 45 — 1 point in Inner Focus
- Levels 46 to 48 — 3 points in Meditation
- Level 49 — 1 point in Improved Healing
Dungeons and Healing not your thing? If you find by Level 40 that dungeon healing just is not doing it for you, and you spend most of your time questing solo, consider respeccing to Shadow now for the significant increase your damage dealt. If you are happy with your mix of dungeon healing and some solo questing, continue as you are!
The first two talents Improved Power Word: Shield and Improved Power Word: Fortitude both increase the effective health of your allies. Meditation is a great regeneration talent, and Inner Focus is also used to save Mana by using it on an expensive heal. Next up start filling out Improved Healing for the bonus healing.
Advanced usage of Inner Focus: After not spending Mana for 5 seconds, your character resumes regenerating Mana at full speed, known as the 5-Second-Rule (5SR). Because spells cast using Inner Focus do not cost Mana, that spell cast does not reset the 5SR which can help you regenerate even more Mana before having to cast a spell costing Mana. Typically you will use Inner Focus on Greater Heal or Prayer of Healing for maximum benefit.
- Levels 50 to 54 — 5 points in Spiritual Guidance
- Levels 55 & 56 — 2 points in Improved Healing
- Levels 57 to 60 — 4 points in Spiritual Healing
Spiritual Guidance, Improved Healing and Spiritual Healing are your final talents that improve the raw healing of your spells. Spiritual Healing in particular is based off of the spirit you have on your gear, keep this in mind when choosing gear upgrades.
These talents are great if you are mostly soloing and went Holy for added dungeon healing capability. If you are leveling in a group all the way to 60, you might want to play with a pure healing spec instead, such as the ones we list in our Healing Priest Talents page. If you do decide to head down this path, it is still suggested you sacrifice 5 points in Spiritual Healing and take 5/5 Spirit Tap, and swap 5/5 Unbreakable Will for Wand Specialization as they are valuable all throughout your leveling journey.
Leveling Rotation (DPS)
- Ensure you have Power Word: Fortitude active on yourself before pulling.
- Ensure you have Inner Fire active on yourself before pulling.
- Cast Power Word: Shield on yourself before pulling.
- Cast Holy Fire, ideally with the enemy as far away from you as possible.
- Cast Smite as the enemy is running towards you.
- Cast Mind Blast
- Cast Shadow Word: Pain.
- Cast Smite until you go below 25% mana or Improved Power Word: Shield drops off.
- Finish the enemy with your melee weapon.
- Wand off the remaining health on the enemy while your Shadow Word: Pain keeps ticking.
When played correctly, you should hardly ever have any downtime as a Priest. Playing correctly mostly means finding the right balance between how much Mana and time to spend on your skills, versus using your wand. Most of the time, after your initial casts you just have to apply Shadow Word: Pain then finish them off with your wand. Your Mana will have started to regenerate again already by the time you are close to killing the mob, and then when it dies, Spirit Tap will provide you with Mana and health sustain to keep going. That is the ideal order of events, though there will always be different scenarios that you will have to learn to adapt to.
Leveling Rotation (Healing)
- Power Word: Shield to buy time to save an ally with Lesser Heal.
- Power Word: Shield to buy time to save an ally with Heal.
- Power Word: Shield to buy time to save an ally with Flash Heal (fast) or Heal (slow).
- Power Word: Shield to buy time to save an ally with either Flash Heal (fast) or Greater Heal (slow).
- Lesser Heal to slowly heal a single target for a moderate amount.
- Flash Heal in an emergency to quickly heal an ally for a small amount.
- Greater Heal to heal an ally for a very large amount.
- Heal to slowly heal a single target for a moderate amount.
- Prayer of Healing if your entire party is quite injured and near one another.
- Renew to smooth out damage on your tank or when an ally needs healing and you are moving. **
At Level 14, you get access to Cure Disease (and at Level 32 the upgraded version Abolish Disease) which can be used to remove Disease debuffs from your allies. At Level 18, you can learn Dispel Magic allowing you to remove Magic debuffs from your allies. While you do not need to remove every disease and magical debuff, there are many that are beneficial to be removed as your Mana allows.
**Note: You should not pre-cast Renew at the start of combat to try and maintain as much time regenerating mana as possible. For example when you need to cast Heal on the tank, follow up immediately with Renew and then go back to wanding until more healing is required.
List of Trainer Skills to Buy
The below suggestions focus on the skills that are most important to your leveling, but even still, this is by no means the only way to go about it, since it will vary on how much gold you actually acquire throughout the leveling process. The most important thing (and this can impact your skill buying decisions) is to make sure you have enough gold to buy your first mount as soon as you hit Level 40.
If you want to save a bit of additional gold, once you learn Holy Fire you can stop learning Mind Blast and remove it from your rotation. If you plan on AoE farming for gold at level 60 be sure to purchase additional ranks of Holy Nova.
- At Level 1, buy Power Word: Fortitude once you have the copper for it. This increases the Stamina of whomever you cast it on.
- At Level 4, buy Shadow Word: Pain and Rank 2 Lesser Heal. Shadow Word: Pain is very Mana and damage efficient, provided that your targets live for the duration of the DoT.
- At Level 6, buy Power Word: Shield and Rank 2 Smite.
- At Level 8, buy Renew. Renew is decent at healing up any sustained damage you may take. Only buy Fade if you plan on doing group content, as it is useless when playing alone.
- At Level 10, buy Mind Blast, Rank 2 Shadow Word: Pain, Rank 3 Lesser Heal, and Resurrection. Mind Blast does a lot of damage and will take a big chunk out of your target's health at the start of a fight.
- At Level 10, make sure to get your race-specific Priest ability!
- At Level 12, buy Inner Fire, Rank 2 Power Word: Fortitude, and Rank 2 Power Word: Shield.
- At Level 14, buy Psychic Scream and Rank 3 Smite.
- At Level 16, buy Rank 2 Mind Blast and Rank 1 Heal. Lesser Heal is more or less obsolete at this point and you can replace Heal with it on your bars.
- At Level 18, buy Rank 3 Power Word: Shield, Rank 3 Shadow Word: Pain, and Dispel Magic.
- At Level 20, buy Holy Fire which will be your opening spell from now on, and make sure to get your second race-specific Priest ability!
- At Level 20, buy Flash Heal and Rank 2 Inner Fire.
- At Level 22, buy Rank 3 Mind Blast, Rank 2 Heal, and Rank 4 Smite.
- At Level 24, buy Rank 3 Power Word: Fortitude, Rank 2 Holy Fire, and Rank 4 Power Word: Shield.
- At Level 26, buy Rank 4 Shadow Word: Pain and Rank 2 Flash Heal.
- At Level 28, buy Rank 4 Mind Blast, and Rank 3 Heal
- At Level 30, buy Rank 3 Inner Fire, Shadow Protection, Rank 3 Holy Fire, Rank 5 Smite, and Rank 5 Power Word: Shield.
- At Level 32, buy Rank 3 Flash Heal.
- At Level 34, buy Rank 4 Heal, Rank 5 Mind Blast, and Rank 5 Shadow Word: Pain.
- At Level 36, buy Rank 4 Power Word: Fortitude, Rank 4 Holy Fire, and Rank 6 Power Word: Shield.
- At Level 38, buy Rank 4 Flash Heal, and Rank 6 Smite.
- At Level 40, buy Greater Heal, Rank 6 Mind Blast, Rank 7 Smite, and Rank 4 Inner Fire.
- At Level 42, buy Rank 7 Power Word: Shield, Rank 5 Holy Fire, and Rank 6 Shadow Word: Pain.
- At Level 44, buy Rank 5 Flash Heal.
- At Level 46, buy Rank 7 Mind Blast and Rank 2 Greater Heal.
- At Level 48, buy Rank 5 Power Word: Fortitude, Rank 6 Holy Fire, and Rank 8 Power Word: Shield.
- At Level 50, buy Rank 7 Shadow Word: Pain, Rank 5 Inner Fire, and Rank 6 Flash Heal.
- At Level 52, buy Rank 8 Mind Blast, and Rank 3 Greater Heal.
- At Level 54, buy Rank 9 Power Word: Shield, Rank 8 Smite, Rank 7 Holy Fire.
- At Level 56, buy Rank 7 Flash Heal.
- At Level 58, buy Rank 9 Mind Blast, Rank 8 Shadow Word: Pain, and Rank 4 Greater Heal.
- At Level 60, buy Rank 5 Greater Heal, Rank 8 Holy Fire, and Rank 6 Power Word: Fortitude.
Holy Priest Quest Guide
While leveling, you will need to complete various class quests to unlock Priest specific racial abilities. The following guide outlines all of these quests.
How to Advance your Holy Priest at Level 60
Once you hit maximum level, we suggest you to read the Healer Priest Guide, which covers all there is to know about healing on your Priest at level 60.
Some of the most relevant pages to skim over are as follows.
- The Healing Priest Talent builds guide has multiple builds for Healing Priests. Some are purely healing oriented, with a heavy investment on the Holy tree, others mix in Discipline talents for powerful abilities to buff and empower your allies.
- Our PvP Priest guide is where you can find the various recommended PvP builds. While healing will surely be a big part of your duties, you can expect to find some damage dealing builds in there as well.
- Goldmaking Guide for Healing Priests exists to explain to you some simple techniques you can employ to farm gold quickly at level 60, even while on a healer specialization.
- Our Healing Priest Rotation guide teaches you how to actually heal in a variety of situations, and you can find some advanced tips on how to manage your mana, spell ranks and specialty skills here as well.
- Browse Healing Priest Stats guide if you wish to learn more about your different stats and how they affect your gameplay.
- Finally, the Gear guide for Healing Priests will tell you which gear pieces to farm at level 60 and where you can farm them at.
Changelog
- 18 Nov. 2024: Page updated for Classic Anniversary.
- 14 Sep. 2020: Corrected an error with Lesser Heal not being available until level 4.
- 26 Sep. 2019: Page added.
Classic Dungeon Guides
Classic Profession Guides
Classic Race Guides
Classic Class Overviews
This guide has been written by Abide, TBC veteran for nearly a decade. Abide is a Warrior tank and multi-class expert currently playing on Faerlina as Horde. You can find him in the the Icy Veins Discord. You can also see him live on Twitch.
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