Priest Class Overview

Priest remains a staple healer in TBC, with most raids running 1-2 of them throughout the expansion. The addition of Circle of Healing for Holy greatly boosts Priests AoE healing capabilities, allowing it to dethrone Resto Shamans as the king of AoE healers. Shadow remains a support-based DPS spec, bringing multiple desirable debuffs to a raid. Most notable is Vampiric Touch, which partially converts damage dealt by the Priest directly into mana for their party.

• Discipline Spec: Discipline gains two new major talents, Improved Divine Spirit and Pain Suppression, which can be utilized well in both PvE and PvP content. Pain Suppression in particular makes Discipline a great choice for a healer in PvP content.
• Holy Spec: TBC adds a ton of improved healing bonus talents, allowing you to greatly increase the effectiveness of your main healing spells. The new Holy spell, Circle of Healing, is an instant cast AoE heal that allows Priests to quickly top up damaged groups.
• Shadow Spec: Shadow remains very similar to how it played in Vanilla, with the main addition of Vampiric Touch. This new spell makes Shadow extremely desired by mana hungry classes, such as Arcane Mages and Resto Shamans.

Priests are able to choose from three specializations: Discipline, Holy, and Shadow.

Discipline focuses on a mixture of both offense and defense, as well as talents that make your Priest much more resilient. This spec is typically used in PvP scenarios.

Holy focuses purely on healing, taking multiple talents that increase the effectiveness of your spells, as well as give you new tools to heal multiple players at once.

Shadow is a different playstyle from the other trees, trading in your light magic for dark, void magic. In this spec, you will focus on damage output and debuffs, assaulting the minds of your enemies.

Priest is one of the strongest healers in the game during the Burning Crusade, having an extremely versatile kit that excels at both single-target healing, as well as AoE healing.

Shadow Priest in the Burning Crusade is not a "main" DPS spec. It is a support-DPS that brings much desired utility to the raid. Shadow Priest increases both the Magical and Shadow damage that enemies take. In addition to increasing the damage that others deal, one of your new spells returns 5% of your damage done as Mana gained to your party, making Shadow Priest extremely desirable to bring to raids for mana hungry classes.

Discipline is a niche spec for PvE content, with some raids choosing to utilize it early on for both Pain Suppression and Improved Divine Spirit, as AoE healing is not needed very much in early content. Holy is the preferred spec when any AoE healing is required, and will take over in later content. Discipline reigns supreme in PvP as the dominant healing spec, and is arguably the best healer for arenas overall.

In The Burning Crusade, Fear Ward is a a Priest spell rather than a racial, allowing all Priests to learn it.

Discipline Priest is one of the best healers, if not the best, for PvP based content such as arenas. Shadow is not nearly as strong in PvP as Discipline, but Shadow does have a few viable arena comps in all 3 brackets that it can climb the ladder with.

If you are still deciding if the Priest class is the proper choice for you, feel free to check out the video below from WillE, an avid player and long time content creator for World of Warcraft! This video will give you a solid overview of what Priest is like to play in The Burning Crusade.

Priests are only able to wear Cloth armor. The low armor and typical health offered by this can make you rather fragile. Priests are able to equip daggers, one-handed maces, staves, wands, and off-hands.

Healing Priests will prioritize Spell Haste (when it's available), bonus Healing, and Spirit. Shadow prioritizes capping out Spell Hit, then maximzing Spell Haste and Spell Damage. You can find our recommended best-in-slot gear lists below, alongside the stats priority for each specialization.

Addons and macros are beneficial to Priests in The Burning Crusade as they enhance gameplay efficiency by automating complex sequences of actions and providing crucial real-time information, such as cooldown timers and enemy debuffs. This allows players to maximize their damage output and responsiveness in both PvE and PvP scenarios, ensuring all offensive cooldowns are used in conjunction for the highest benefits.