Priest Class Overview

For the Alliance, Priests can be every race except for Gnome. For Horde, they can be Blood Elves, Trolls or Undead.

Priests are able to choose from 3 specializations: Discipline, Holy, and Shadow.

• Discipline focuses on a mixture of both offense and defense, heavily relying on buffing allies to increase their fortitude. Discipline becomes a powerful raiding spec in WotLK, having powerful healing and utility spells in its arsenal.
• Holy focuses purely on healing rather than buffing and fortifying the party, aiming to quickly heal up injured allies quickly. Holy excels at AoE healing, bolstering some of the highest healing output possible in the game.
• Shadow is a different playstyle from the other specializations, focusing on dealing damage rather than healing allies. Shadow Priest has a greatly improved ability toolkit in WotlK, making it a powerful damage dealer with great utility.

Priests are only able to wear Cloth armor. The low amounts of armor and typically health offered by this gear can make you rather fragile.

Priests are able to equip daggers, one-handed maces, staves, wands, and off-hands.

All major cities for both Alliance and Horde have a Priest trainer available in them. Simply talk with a guard in any major city and ask for the Priest trainer.

Shadow Priest has improved greatly in Wrath of the Lich King, going from primarily being a support class to being a competitive DPS class. WotLK also brings Priests an AoE ability, greatly improving one their weakest points from previous expansions.

Healing Priests have only improved in WotLK, remaining one of the most powerful healers choices in the game. Both Discipline and Holy have unique toolkits, fulfilling multiple different roles and doing a great job of covering the weaknesses of other healers.

While the typical answer to this question that Discipline Priest is better, that is not exactly the case. This question will largely depend on your raiding environment, as both Disc and Holy fulfill different healing jobs in a raid. Disc is much better at spot healing and quickly responding to individual targets taking high damage, whereas Holy greatly excels at AoE healing, quickly topping up multiple raid members. Choose the spec that best suits your raid's needs: Disc for single-target healing or Holy for AoE healing.

If a Priest sounds like a class you are interested in, check out our detailed leveling guides down below for each spec, helping you further learn each spec on your journey to Level 80.

• Priest Leveling Guide
• Discipline Priest Leveling Guide
• Holy Priest Leveling Guide
• Shadow Priest Leveling Guide

Beyond simply leveling your character, you may also be interested in our fully detailed guides for playing your Priest at Level 80. Check out the links below for more details on each of the available specs for Priest in Wrath of the Lich King Classic:

• Discipline Priest Guide for PvE
• Holy Priest Guide for PvE
• Shadow Priest Guide for PvE
• Priest Guide for PvP