Priest Leveling Guide from 1 to 80 (2025)

Last updated on Sep 09, 2024 at 18:00 by Publik, Clandon, and Niphyr1 comment

On this page, you will Priest-specific information pertaining to leveling from 1 to 80, as well aslinks to leveling guides for each of the Priest specs.

Welcome to our Priest leveling guide. Here you will find all youneed to know to level up your Priest efficiently. In addition, you may wishto check out our general Leveling guide,complete with detailed information on XP, mounts, addons, consumables, tips, andmore. We encourage to read it to increase your leveling speed even more.

Whether you choose to level solo or in a group, the Priest offers lots of funabilities and options while leveling up. You have astrong DPS specialization with Shadow Priest and can alsochoose between two different healing specializations if you ever want to heal adungeon or group environment. While questing, you will find yourself being aDamage over Time (DoT) machine as Shadow.

Priests have three specializations to choose from while leveling: Shadow,Holy, or Discipline.

Generally speaking, you should always level as Shadow since it is the onlyDPS specialization and therefore much faster. That being said, Discipline isstill somewhat offensive, so if you like that spec, you could make thatwork as well, especially if you are healing through Dungeons.

If you ever want to venture into dungeons while leveling, Holy or Disciplineare great options to get faster dungeon queues and heal through that content.This can also be something you prefer to do while leveling in a large group tomake it easier to pull larger mob sizes.

The following abilities are ones that all Priests will learn regardless ofspecialization. Depending on your specialization you will have access to muchmore abilities to help fill out that specialization completely.

Until you are level 10, use Smite as your filler ability and keepup Shadow Word: Pain once you get that ability. This, paired with using Mind Blast will be your rotation until you decide to pick a specificspecialization to level as starting at level 10.

• At level 1, you unlock Smite, which is a casted ranged abilitythat will act as your filler spell for several levels.
• Level 2 gives you access to your first damage over time spell with Shadow Word: Pain. You should generally try to keep this up on as manymobs as possible. Be sure to still pull with Smite and then use ShadowWord: Pain to optimize damage.
• Starting at level 3 you get access to your first healing spell with Flash Heal. This is a quick but somewhat Mana-costly spell you can useto heal yourself or allies.
• Level 4 gives you Power Word: Shield, which gives you your first typeof Discipline spell that typically rewards predicting when someone will takedamage, rather than reactively healing them back up.
• At level 5 you get another Shadow-themed spell with Mind Blast.This is a harder-hitting spell than Smite and should be used oncooldown.
• Once you reach level 6 you get access to our group buff, Power Word: Fortitude. Make sure to keep this up at all times on yourselfand other allies for increased health pools.
• Level 7 gives you your first crowd control ability with Psychic Scream. You can use this to AoE fear enemies that are nearbyfor a quick getaway or to get some damage out while they are not hitting you.
• At level 8 you get Desperate Prayer which is a great self-heal thatalso acts as a small defensive.
• Level 9 gives you the ability Fade to remove all your threat forthe next 10 seconds which is a great spell while doing dungeons or leveling toshift aggro to another player or even your Shadowfiend pet that youlearn at later levels.
• Right before you can start doing dungeons you learn Resurrectionat level 10, to help recover a pull gone wrong after combat if someonedies.
• Level 12 gives you the Levitate spell, which is not used veryoften, but can make traveling down cliff sides easier and safer to get aroundquickly.
• At level 14 you get Mind Vision, which is a unique spell thatallows you to see through a target's point of view, which can be handy to scoutout an area for treasure chests or rare NPCs. Note that you can re-cast thison a new mob as long as they are in range while currently Mind Visioninganother mob.
• At level 16 you learn the passive spell Focused Will, which causesall melee attacks against you to reduce you damage you take by 15% for 8seconds, making it the perfect solo-leveling spell for survivability.
• Once you reach level 18 you get access to Mind Soothe. Thisis a casted ability that makes all enemies in the target radius have a lowerchance of attacking you. This can make it easier to skip packs of mobs.

Once you hit level 10, you gain access to the talent tree for Priests.Depending on the specialization you choose, you will gain a few baselineabilities, and then that determines which spec tree you get access to.Eventually you can spend talent points in the class tree to get allof them, these are just what you start with at level 10.

• Discipline: Shadowfiend and Renew
  • Discipline Priest Leveling Guide
• Holy: Renew and Prayer of Mending
  • Holy Priest Leveling Guide
• Shadow: Shadowfiend and Shadow Word: Death
  • Shadow Priest Leveling Guide

When choosing Heirlooms it generally is advantageous to pick items that haveHaste on them. Haste is the most impactful stat in terms of gameplay on yourPriest and generally allows you to kill enemies much faster than you wouldotherwise.

Once you've reached Level 80 and your leveling journey has found its end, you definitelywant to check out the in-depth information on how to excel in all types of PvE content bychecking out our Priest Specialization Guides!