Classic Priest Healer Guide

Last updated on Dec 02, 2020 at 10:24 by Niphyr 28 comments

Welcome to our Priest Healer guide for WoW Classic, tailored for PvE content. Here, you will learn how all you need to know to play the Priest class as Healer. Click the links #below to navigate the guide or read this page for a short introduction.

If you were looking for TBC Classic content, please refer to our TBC Classic Holy Priest guide.

As a Priest, you have the ability to heal yourself and group members as a Holy or Discipline Priest, or do damage as a Shadow Priest. Healing Priests are the typical RPG style reactive healer with many tools to keep your allies healthy. Being a Healing Priest in classic is the desired role in all forms of content.

1.

Priest in the Season of Mastery

Although the Season of Mastery brings with it a number of changes to how you may experience the content of WoW Classic, these tweaks do not include any adjustments to how you play Priest. As such, this guide will cover all you need to know regardless of which version of Classic you wish to play.

However, due to certain pieces of content from later Phases now being available at an earlier date, gearing recommendations for Priest will be different. Because of this, we have created additional pages detailing your best in slot items for both pre-raid gear and the current raids available.

2.

Priest Strengths as a Healer

  • Can provide some of the best single-target and AoE healing in the game
  • Brings great utility to any group
  • Good for all types of content
3.

Priest Weaknesses as a Healer

  • Lack of mobility can be punishing if not planned well, with few spells being able to be cast on the move.
  • Requires good Mana management to not go out of Mana too quickly.
  • Squishy versus physical damage, primarily an issue in PvP.
4.

Race Overview for Priest

There are 5 races that can be a Priest in WoW Classic: Human, Dwarf, and Night Elf if you are Alliance, Undead and Troll if you are Horde. In addition to the standard racials, Priests also get two abilities that are unique to the race you are playing. You get the first at Level 10 and the second at Level 20. The only thing you need to do is complete short quests each time that involve you having to talk to certain NPCs. In the table below, you will find an overview of the benefits each Priest race gets, including the aforementioned abilities unique to each race.

Race Racial Level 10 Level 20
Human Perception Icon Perception Desperate Prayer Icon Desperate Prayer Feedback Icon Feedback
Dwarf Stoneform Icon Stoneform Desperate Prayer Icon Desperate Prayer Fear Ward Icon Fear Ward
Night Elf Shadowmeld Icon Shadowmeld Starshards Icon Starshards Elune's Grace Icon Elune's Grace
Undead Will of the Forsaken Icon Will of the Forsaken Touch of Weakness Icon Touch of Weakness Devouring Plague Icon Devouring Plague
Troll Berserking Icon Berserking Hex of Weakness Icon Hex of Weakness Shadowguard Icon Shadowguard
4.1.

Best Alliance Race for Priest

Dwarf is considered to be the best PvE and PvP race for Alliance. This is primarily due to the strength of Fear Ward Icon Fear Ward, but Desperate Prayer Icon Desperate Prayer and Stoneform Icon Stoneform are also very useful in their own right. The Human and Night Elf racials do not match up to this, though this certainly does not mean that you have to be a Dwarf for groups or raids to take you.

4.2.

Best Horde Race for Priest

Neither Troll nor Undead has particularly amazing racials for PvE, but Undead has a great racial for PvP in the form of Will of the Forsaken Icon Will of the Forsaken. The self-healing that Devouring Plague Icon Devouring Plague provides every 3 minutes is also not bad, and it gives you a little extra damage. As a Troll, you get Berserking Icon Berserking, which is decent in its own right, but the output increase overall is not that big of a deal. The utility and superior PvP racial that Undead offers is, therefore, more highly valued most of the time.

5.

Best Professions for Healing Priests

Tailoring is a very popular profession, due to the gear that can be crafted. Of particular interest is the Truefaith Vestments Icon Truefaith Vestments which are a Bind on Pickup item crafted using a recipe that drops from Balnazzar in Stratholme. This is a very powerful item that you will not replace for some time, some people choose to drop Tailoring once this item has been crafted. Tailoring pairs up well with Enchanting as you can Disenchant Icon Disenchant your crafted items, and create enchants which can be sold to other players.

Engineering has many perks that are useful in Dungeons, Raids, and PvP. It can be expensive to level, so taking Mining with it initially is advised to be a bit more self-sufficient.

Another really popular combination, especially for first-time characters, is Alchemy and Herbalism. This combination allows you to level Alchemy, and sell the consumables you create to fund the other aspects of your gameplay.

6.

Viability of Priest

Priests are very sought after in all content, and your playstyle can vary wildly depending on what your group needs you to do. In WoW Classic, you can hardly ever stick to only playing one role, and this is true for Priests as well. As a healing Priest, you are very useful for both PvE and PvP content, while a Shadow Priest is very good for PvP, but not as good for PvE. For example, Shadow Priests were mostly brought to raids to buff the damage of your Warlocks through Shadow Weaving Icon Shadow Weaving, so you never needed more than one Shadow Priest in your raid. Your raw damage was not as good as what a Warlock could do, even when we take away the inhibitions of threat and Mana, on top of taking up too many debuff slots in the process. For raiding, you would generally be much more useful if you could heal instead.

7.

Changelog

  • 02 Dec. 2020 (gear page): Updated for Phase 6 release.
  • 02 Dec. 2020 (enchants page): Updated for Phase 6 release & added common consumables section.
  • 09 Aug. 2020 (gear page): Updated for Phase 5 with BiS alternatives.
  • 28 Jul. 2020 (enchants page): Updated for Phase 5 AQ release.
  • 16 Apr. 2020 (gear page): Updated for Phase 4 ZG release.
  • 16 Apr. 2020 (enchants page): Updated for Phase 4 ZG release.
  • 09 Mar. 2020 (gear page): Reworked format of guide.
  • 14 Feb. 2020 (gear page): Fixed some missing gear options.
  • 11 Feb. 2020 (gear page): Updated for Phase 3 BWL release.
  • 11 Feb. 2020 (enchants page): Updated Arcanum enchant.
  • 11 Dec. 2019 (gear page): Added link to PvP BiS.
  • 14 Oct. 2019 (gear page): Updated for Dire Maul release and added Raid BiS.
  • 14 Oct. 2019 (enchants page): Updated consumables.
  • 23 Sep. 2019 (gear page): Healing BiS list updated.
  • 09 Aug. 2019 (gear page): Guide added.
  • 09 Aug. 2019 (enchants page): Page added.
  • 09 Aug. 2019 (stats page): Guide added.
  • 09 Aug. 2019 (rotation page): Guide added.
  • 09 Aug. 2019 (talents page): Guide added.
  • 09 Aug. 2019 (spells page): Guide added.
  • 09 Aug. 2019 (this page): Guide added.
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