Holy Priest Leveling Guide from 1 to 80 — The War Within (11.1.7)

While Holy Priest is more than capable of levelling, Priests generally, level as Shadow as it provides superior damage, significantly speeding up the questing process. That said, when venturing into Dungeons and PVP Battlegrounds, Holy Priest, is a fun change of pace and does a great job at keeping your allies alive.

This is our recommended Talent Build for Leveling your Holy Priest in The War Within.

Gearing is quite simple as a levelling Holy Priest with the value of Intellect being high. Your focus should be on obtaining as much Intellect on gear as possible, which means typically prioritizing item level. Intellect increases the amount of damage your spells do as well as how much healing they do. Secondary stats provide a similar benefit but significantly less power while levelling and can largely be ignored.

As a Priest, your weapon's contribution to your damage and healing is through the Intellect it provides. Focusing on wearing the weapon combination, either staff or main-hand/off-hand, with the most total Intellect should be your priority.

To keep things simple while leveling and learning the spec, use the slider to select your level, and watch as the leveling rotation grows with each level!

Move the slider below to make the guide update to your level!

Starting at Level 1, you only have Smite, so just spam this for now.

1. From level 59 onwards Holy Word: Chastise is a high priority thanks to the Divine Image and Voice of Harmony talents encouraging you to press it before anything else.
2. Starting with level 12, Mind Blast is replaced with Holy Fire, which becomes your highest priority damage spell to cast both single target and in AoE thanks to Burning Vehemence.
3. Halo will only damage enemies you are in combat with, so don't worry about it hitting enemies you aren't fighting.
4. Holy Nova is your first and only spammable AoE spell, which takes over as your priority for 3 or more enemies.
5. Shadow Word: Pain is your first damage over time spell. This should be put up on nearly every mob you fight and can be very helpful for tagging enemies quickly or grouping them up.
6. At 15 you get Holy Word: Chastise, which hits reasonably hard but also disorients the target. Its cooldown is reduced by casting Smite, so despite it having a 1-minute cooldown, you will often be able to cast it much sooner.
7. Mind Blast is a hard-hitting single target spell you should pre-pull with and use on cooldown.
8. Apotheosis is available at level 51. When cast, this talent provides you with increased cooldown reduction applied to Holy Word: Chastise when casting Smite.
9. Power Infusion is another major cooldown added to your kit you should use to squeeze out more damage when needed.

Most of the time, while questing, you will be grouping numerous enemies up using Shadow Word: Pain and then using AoE spells to kill them all together. Use Psychic Scream to fear mobs away if you ever pull too much or need to get away from enemies.

At level 6, you learn Power Word: Fortitude; make sure you keep this buff up on yourself and allies at all times.

Once you reach level 15, you will be able to queue for dungeons. This route is most suited for a healing spec like Holy Priest. As mentioned earlier in the guide, it is suggested if you plan on questing through your levels, you will find it much faster to spec Shadow for most or all of your leveling journey. To get a full understanding of the complete kit and how to fully utilize it, have a look at our rotation page. A summary of our casting priority can also be found below:

• Holy Word: Serenity on an injured ally.
• Holy Word: Sanctify when most of your group is injured.
• Flash Heal for emergency healing.
• Halo when most of your group is injured.
• Flash Heal for regular healing.
• Heal for regular healing, utilizing Trail of Light to heal multiple allies.
• Prayer of Mending when little healing is required.
• Renew while moving and healing is required.
• Smite an enemy when no healing is required.

At level 10, you also gain our baseline Mastery ability, Mastery: Echo of Light. This does not change your playstyle much at all; it just provides some extra healing from your spells in the form of a heal-over-time (HoT) effect.

A lot of spells you will learn early on are going to be class-wide spells. You will only start unlocking Holy-specific abilities and passives once you select it as your active specialization past Level 10.

To avoid overloading the guide with redundant information, which is easily understood from opening your spell book, we suggest you read the detailed spell guide for more information on each relevant spell and how it is used in WoW.