Preliminary Mentions↑top

In this guide, we will offer you some quick and practical information for leveling up your Priest from level 85 to level 90. We cover rotation, talents and glyphs. We do not, however, cover statistics, gear, or any information about the zones you should be questing in.

This guide requires a basic understanding of how the Priest class works at level 85. This guide is not meant to reflect how you should play your character at level 90, or in a raid environment or dungeon.

While leveling up, you can complete 4 dungeons:

• Temple of the Jade Serpent;
• Stormstout Brewery;
• Shado-Pan Monastery;
• Mogu'shan Palace.

These dungeons have quests which reward you with vast amounts of experience.

In the next few weeks, we will extend this guide to cover the entire leveling journey, from level 1 to level 90.

In our opinion, you should level your Priest as Shadow, since this is much more efficient than leveling as Discipline or Holy.

1. Shadow Leveling Guide: 85-90↑top

1.1. Level 85

1.1.1. Talents and Glyphs

Before setting out on your leveling journey, you should take these talents and glyphs, for maximum efficiency. Obviously, this is not set in stone, and you have a lot of liberty.

Tier 1 talents all offer you small benefits in terms of crowd-control, which may help you while questing, but their impact is minor. Simply choose one of your preference.

In the spaces where no glyphs are mentioned, you can use anything you like.

1.1.2. Rotation

You have to adapt your raiding rotation to work against against targets which, generally, will not live very long. As such, you will probably only have time for one or two cycles before the target is dead. This rotation is very similar (practically identical) to your normal raiding rotation. We will summarise this rotation below, but keep in mind that we do not go into cooldown usage, although you should try to use your DPS cooldowns (also listed in the rotation page linked above) as much as possible.

1. Cast Devouring Plague whenever you have 3 Shadow Orbs.
2. Cast Mind Blast on cooldown.
3. Apply Shadow Word: Pain and Vampiric Touch if the target will live for 10 seconds or more (roughly).
4. Cast Shadow Word: Death when the target is below 20% health.
5. Spam Mind Flay when nothing else is available.

You should be using Shadowform, and you should always have Inner Fire active.

For survival, Desperate Prayer, Dispersion, and the occasional Flash Heal (in emergencies) should be enough to keep you alive.

Once you get used to using Angelic Feather, you will see that you can practically have a constant movement-speed boost in between mobs, speeding up your progress greatly.

1.2. Level 86-90

The only change occurs at level 87, when you gain Void Shift, a new ability. This spell has no use whatsoever while leveling up by yourself. If you are leveling up with other players, you can use it to swap health percentages with a party member, in order to save the one of you who is in danger of dying.