Priest

Overview

A flexible caster of Light and Shadow that can heal with shields, direct heals and heal-over-time, or deal steady Shadow damage.

Priests wear cloth and have few escapes, so they rely on tanks and teammates. Healers mix shields, direct heals and heals over time; Shadow Priests stack damage-over-time spells and finish targets with Shadow Word: Death. Every Priest now gets Fear Ward and Devouring Plague at level 20 regardless of race.

Specs

• DisciplineHealer

  Shields and protection. Soul Warding lowers Power Word: Shield's cooldown and cost, and Penance arrives at 21 points.

  Full build coming after launch
• HolyHealer

  Pure healing. Holy Binding at 16 points and Prayer of Mending at 31 points add strong group tools.

  Holy build and talents →
• ShadowCaster DPS

  Damage over time. Shadow Word: Death, Devouring Plague and a stronger Shadowform make it a real damage spec.

  Full build coming after launch

What changed from Classic

• New
  Fear Ward and Devouring Plague for everyone (level 20)

  Both used to be racial spells. Now every Priest learns them. Devouring Plague's cooldown is 24 seconds as of the October 16 beta build.

• New
  Shadow Word: Death (level 32)

  Instant Shadow damage. If the target survives, you take 10% of your maximum health. Cooldown was raised to 18 seconds on October 16.

• Changed
  Divine Spirit is baseline (level 30)

  No longer a talent; every Priest can buff Spirit.

• Changed
  Prayer of Healing heals the target's party

  You can now heal another group in a raid instead of only your own.

• Changed
  Renew from several Priests stacks

  More than one Priest can keep Renew on the same target, and Renew can crit.

• New
  Penance (Discipline, 21 points)

  A 2-second channel that damages an enemy or heals an ally every second, on a 12-second cooldown.

• New
  Soul Warding and Divine Aegis (Discipline)

  Soul Warding makes Power Word: Shield cheaper and faster to reuse. Divine Aegis turns critical heals into a short absorb shield.

• New
  Holy Binding and Prayer of Mending (Holy)

  Holy Binding replaced Binding Heal on November 2: when you Flash Heal someone else, you are healed for 50% of it. Prayer of Mending bounces between party members as they take damage.

• Changed
  Shadowform is stronger

  Shadow spells cost half as much mana and their critical strikes hit harder, and you can cast any non-healing spell in form.

• New
  Dark Inspiration (Shadow)

  Mind Blast and full Mind Flay channels raise Spirit for you and your party. Added October 16.

• Changed
  Racial spells refreshed

  Each race's Priest spells were updated. Gnomes get new ones: Confounding Flash and Contingency Plan. Undead Devouring Plague is replaced by Dark Sacrifice.

• Removed
  Lightwell and others

  Lightwell, Improved Prayer of Healing, Force of Will, Improved Vampiric Embrace, Improved Fade and Shadow Infinity were removed; Unbreakable Will is merged into Silent Resolve.

Abilities