Priest Guide for WoW Forever

WoW Forever Priest Guide Quick Summary:

• Priest keeps Discipline, Holy, and Shadow, but all three trees get meaningful new talents instead of just number tweaks.
• Fear Ward and Devouring Plague are now baseline for every Priest, while Shadow Word: Death joins the class at level 32.
• Discipline leans harder into shields and Penance, Holy gets better group healing, and Shadow gets a much more sustainable Shadowform.
• Gnome Priest is the new race-class combination, complete with two unique Priest racial spells.
• Exact level 60 builds, BiS gear, and final stat priorities are still WIP because the current beta only lets players test up to level 30.

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WoW Forever Priest Changes

Priest, like most other classes, including Paladin, Shaman, and Warrior, receives an overhaul. It’s not a complete redesign of the class, as its core identity remains intact, but this overhaul aims to fix annoyances the class had in Classic. The core of the specs remains unchanged: Discipline is shielding people, Holy is the best healer, Shadow is DoT DPS that chugs potions one after another to keep up the damage. The key difference from Classic is that developers try to make each tree more relevant with new skills and talents instead of the class relying mostly on its core spells. The talent system uses the familiar Classic structure, with major one-point talents at 11, 21, and 31 points, plus the new 16-point milestone added in Forever. Dual Specialization also becomes available at level 40, which is particularly nice for Priest because healing dungeons and questing as Shadow are very different jobs. Though, with what I know about Forever, healers are gonna have a tough time clearing content on their own. The most notable Priest changes in WoW Forever are:

• Fear Ward is now baseline at level 20: Dwarf is no longer the race you must pick just to bring Fear Ward
• Devouring Plague is baseline at level 20: Previously one of the biggest reasons to play Undead Priest, it’s now available to every race
• Divine Spirit is baseline at level 30: You don’t have to spend Discipline points just to get it
• Shadow Word: Death is learned at level 32: It deals instant Shadow damage, but hits you for 10% of your maximum Health if it doesn’t kill the target
• Fade has stronger threat reduction: Pretty useful considering Priest is borderline defenseless if more than one mob decides to attack them
• Prayer of Healing targets another party: Instead of only healing your own party, it can now heal the party of your selected target and their pets, which makes this spell so much less stressful to cast
• Renew can apply from multiple Priests: Two Priests can finally keep Renew on the same person without renewing each other’s timer

The trees themselves changed just as much. Discipline gets Penance, Soul Warding, Renewed Hope, and Divine Aegis, giving it a much stronger shield-and-direct-heal identity. Holy gets Binding Heal, Litany of Light, and Prayer of Mending, which make raid healing way less clunky. Shadow gets a redesigned Shadowform, new Devouring Plague interactions, and Shadow Word: Death support. All in all, Priest is still Priest. It just has more buttons that are spec-exclusive to give more identity to the class.

Gnome Priests in WoW Forever

Gnome Priest is one of the six new race-class combinations in Forever and probably the funniest of them visually. Gnomes receive two completely new Priest spells, which adds to their uniqueness and makes them a new exciting choice for this class:

Gnome Priest Spell	Effect
Confounding Flash	0.5-second cast that confuses up to 5 nearby enemies for 3 seconds. Damage breaks the effect.
Contingency Plan	Places a 30-second ward on an ally. If they fall below 35% Health, it triggers an absorb plus a heal-over-time effect.

Confounding Flash is a good panic button to escape sudden unwanted aggro. Contingency Plan is much more interesting for healers because it gives you a pre-planned safety cushion that stacks with Renew and Power Word: Shield. On a tank or somebody handling a dangerous mechanic, that can save you a reaction later. Gnome is far from the only race with interesting Priest spells, though. Blizzard reworked the entire racial Priest system:

Race	Priest Spells
Human	Divine Grace, Feedback
Dwarf	Desperate Prayer, Chastise
Night Elf	Starshards, Elune’s Grace
Gnome	Confounding Flash, Contingency Plan
Troll	Hex of Weakness, Shadowguard
Undead	Touch of Weakness, Dark Sacrifice

Notice that Fear Ward and Devouring Plague are no longer unique to Dwarves and Undead. No more forcing yourself to play a specific race just for the bonus every Priest needs.

Priest Pros and Cons in WoW Forever

A few things that you need to be comfortable with before choosing to play a Priest: you’re not gonna be the strongest DPS, and you’re not going to facetank. Your job is quite ungrateful and lacks flair cause people expect healers to do their job, and usually no one praises you for a timely save. You’re gonna be the raid’s mom, softening the blows that raid bosses throw at your raid group. Your mistakes will be put on a pedestal, cause one wrong cast in raids can lead to a chain reaction, ultimately wiping out the whole group. But you know that without you, the whole raid will fall apart. Being Priest is a responsibility, and it’s a very honorable class. Priest still has the same selling point it always had: they’re one of the most flexible healers in the game. Forever strengthens that even further without turning the class into a retail WoW where every weakness has been deleted, completely diluting what makes Priest a Priest. Below you’ll find more Priest pros and cons:

Pros	Cons
Two distinct healing trees	Cloth armor makes you squishy
Strong single-target and group healing	Mana needs active management
Excellent shielding through Discipline	Limited mobility
Shadow gets much better Mana efficiency	Shadow cannot heal while in Shadowform
Great raid utility and buffs	No tank spec
Fear Ward and Devouring Plague are now universal	Punishing mistakes
Multiple useful race spells	Leveling still relies heavily on wand usage early
Can heal dungeons without being full Holy	Some builds compete heavily for talent points

One thing I noticed is that Discipline and Holy no longer feel like two talent trees doing almost the same job. Discipline is clearly leaning toward preventing damage and protecting important targets, while Holy is better at reacting when damage has already been dealt. Developers describe Priest as their most versatile healer, and Forever makes those two healing identities more obvious.

How to Play Priest in WoW Forever

Priest uses Mana for everything, and learning when not to cast is almost as important as learning the right spell to cast at any given moment. Healing specs don’t have one rotation you have to stick to. You react to damage or prevent it altogether while avoiding burning through your Mana too fast. Shadow, on the other hand, plays like a normal damage spec, though problems with Mana still remain. Your early leveling will still revolve around your wand doing all the job to kill enemies. Here’s what you should expect from each Priest specialization:

Specialization	Role	General Playstyle
Discipline	Healer/Holy damage hybrid	Shields, Penance, direct healing, absorbing damage
Holy	Healer	Powerful direct healing, group healing, maintaining spells, making up for big hits the enemy inflicts on your tanks
Shadow	Ranged DPS	Damage over time and Shadowform. Chugging mana potions like pints

Each spec has a much more unique playstyle compared to how it was before, where Discipline and Holy had way more similarities than differences. Now it’s hard to call them interchangeable.

How to Play Discipline Priest

Discipline has more emphasis on Power Word: Shield than in Classic WoW. Your goal in WoW Forever is to predict damage and absorb it using shields. In a way, it’s almost like you block for another person’s character, which sounds pretty fun. If your shields can’t handle damage and some of it still hits the other player, you can use direct healing to make up for it. Renewed Hope links those two parts together because healing a target affected by Weakened Soul gives selected heals extra critical chance and shortens the remaining Weakened Soul duration. Penance is a new big addition. It can either heal an ally or damage an enemy, ticking immediately and then continuing through the channel. This isn’t modern Atonement Discipline, though. Damaging something with Penance does not heal your group automatically, so don’t go into Forever expecting Retail Disc gameplay. In addition to that, you have Power in Light that improves Smite and offensive Penance against enemies affected by your Holy Fire or Shadow Word: Pain, while Holy Precision gives Holy spells hit chance. Discipline plays more like a squishy Paladin on parries than a true follower of the divine, which makes this spec way more attractive for me and anyone who doesn’t like being a full healbot.

How to Play Holy Priest

Holy is the straightforward healer, but “straightforward” doesn’t mean easy. You have a wide variety of healing spells, such as Heal, Greater Heal, Flash Heal, Renew, Prayer of Healing, and Power Word: Shield. On top of that, Forever adds Binding Heal and Prayer of Mending. Binding Heal heals both you and your target, so you have a better survival rate than before. Litany of Light makes mana cost more forgiving by refunding a part of it when you alternate between different heals. Prayer of Mending is a Holy talent that you get deep into this tree. It’s a bouncing heal that triggers when someone you cast it on receives damage or a non-periodic heal. After this happens, it jumps to another party member. It can heal five times total. Holy is your choice if you plan on doing raids or dungeons a lot.

How to Play Shadow Priest

I’ve never been a massive Shadow Priest fan, but I know that there’s a fair share of players who like it. Shadow is another spec that receives a facelift. If you played the original Shadow, you know it had major problems with mana management. Forever tries to fix that, but we’ll see if they succeed with it after some time of the full release on November 4th. The basic spells are pretty much the same. 

• Shadow Word: Pain
• Mind Blast
• Mind Flay
• Devouring Plague
• Vampiric Embrace
• Shadowform

Shadowform is your core capstone talent for this spec. It’s now the best it’s ever been, truly justifying its capstone status. It now increases Shadow damage by 10%, reduces Shadow spell Mana costs by 50%, doubles the bonus critical damage of Shadow spells, and retains physical damage reduction. You can also cast non-healing spells without leaving the form. Healing spells are blocked, as expected. Shadow Weaving is also personal now. It boosts your Shadow damage now instead of applying a debuff that was the only reason to take one Shadow Priest to raid to make Warlocks stronger, which, let’s be honest, felt like you were picked last when playing basketball in school. Now, developers are trying to make Shadow Priest way stronger than he was before. Will the Shadowform buffs be enough? I hope so.

Best Priest Race in WoW Forever

The available Priest races are Human, Dwarf, Night Elf, Gnome, Undead, and Troll. Gnome is the only completely new Priest combination.

Race	Faction	Racials
Gnome	Alliance	Eureka!, Contingency Plan
Human	Alliance	Divine Grace
Dwarf	Alliance	Desperate Prayer, Chastise
Night Elf	Alliance	Elune’s Grace
Undead	Horde	Dark Sacrifice, Will of the Forsaken
Troll	Horde	Berserking, Shadowguard, Hex of Weakness

Recent beta tuning has already changed racial values multiple times, so it’s hard to identify one best Priest race in WoW Forever. I’d bet on Gnomes for their mana pool, Humans, or Undead, since they all have ways to make resource management less annoying, but if the release version of Priest has fewer problems with mana, this might change.

Priest Stat Priority in WoW Forever (WIP)

Since there’s still no access to level 60 Priest, it’s hard to talk about stat priority with full certainty. I can’t test endgame raid gearing in the current beta, but I know a thing or two about Priests to make educated guesses. I’ll create a Stat Priority list when the full version releases, but for now I can safely say which stats are the most important for Priest in WoW Forever:

Stat	Why Priest Needs Them
Spirit	Mana regeneration
Intellect	Larger Mana pool and scaling through Mental Strength
Healing Power	Direct influence on healing
Spell Damage	For Shadow and Holy offensive builds
Critical Strike	Divine Aegis, Inspiration, Shadowform boost
Hit	Also relevant to offensive Holy and Shadow spells

For Holy and Discipline, Spirit and Intellect are early priorities because you need enough Mana to survive long fights. Healing Power becomes increasingly important with levels and once gear starts dropping with meaningful stat boosts.

Best Priest Builds in WoW Forever (WIP)

The best Priest builds in WoW Forever are open for debate now. Though full talent trees are already datamined, the level 30 beta cap means that it’s impossible to test the level 60 builds yet. What I can identify are the main build directions:

• Discipline Shield Healer: Focus on Power Word: Shield, Soul Warding, Penance, Renewed Hope, Divine Aegis
• Discipline/Holy Damage: Power in Light, Holy Precision, Penance, all Holy talents improving Smite and Holy Fire
• Full Holy Healer: Binding Heal, Litany of Light, Spirit of Redemption, Spiritual Healing, Prayer of Mending
• Shadow DPS: Mind Flay, Vampiric Embrace, Shadow Weaving, Devouring Contagion, Darkness, Shadowform

I expect that new talents will be present in their respective spec builds every time since they were tailor-made to make the class feel better. With them, there’s already much more build variety than Classic Priest had. With the full game release, revisit this section for detailed guides about Priest builds for each spec.

Priest Leveling Guide in WoW Forever

For solo Priest leveling in WoW Forever, Shadow is the only real choice. The early game relies heavily on efficient spell usage and wand, since wand damage costs no Mana and you have big problems with it in the early levels of your Priest. Wand Specialization is reduced to only two talent points in Forever, which makes it an extremely cheap and efficient investment. Your Priest leveling rotation is gonna be:

1. Open with a damaging spell. Mind Blast is a good example.
2. Apply Shadow Word: Pain on targets that don’t die fast enough
3. Try to use additional spells beside those conservatively. Rely on your wand to kill the rest of the enemies

Spirit Tap will recover a portion of your mana after you kill an enemy. At level 20, every Priest gets Devouring Plague and Fear Ward. Your eventual goal is Shadowform, which grants you a huge power spike. As for other specs, Discipline is completely viable if you want to heal dungeons while questing. Holy can also level, but it’s gonna be painful. Holy for solo questing will turn every boar into a Dark Souls boss fight.

Priest Best-in-Slot Gear in WoW Forever (WIP)

The section about Priest’s BiS gear in WoW Forever will be fully developed when I get to level 60 in full release of the game. I’ve seen people showing BiS gear for level 30 Priests, which is the current beta cap, but I don’t think there’s much point in writing about it when beta is over, and the full game is just around the corner. Itemization has been reworked for old content, new dungeons were added, and there are hundreds of new profession recipes, which is why I can’t just list old Classic Prsiest Best-in-Slot gear either.

 

 

Best Priest Rotations in WoW Forever

Calling these “rotations” is generous for the two healing specs. Healing is too situational for such things, but you can think of these “rotations” as priorities. Adaptability is Priest’s best friend. What I’m trying to say is you don’t stick to the rotation if your tank is dying and my guide told you Flash Heal comes fourth. The only Priest spec that has a rotation is Shadow, and even then it’s just a stricter priority.

Discipline Priest Rotation

Discipline’s job is shielding other characters and finding windows for dealing damage. Most of your damage comes from Penance, but you’ll be mostly spending it on healing, unless everyone is already healthy. Here’s a spell priority for Discipline Priest:

1. Use Power Word: Shield before incoming damage
2. Use Penance when you need to heal a target fast
3. When Weakened Soul is applied on target, use direct heals
4. Use Flash Heal as a panic button for recovery
5. Use Heal or Greater Heal when you have an opening and need better Mana efficiency
6. Keep Renew on targets taking steady damage

If you’re playing the Holy damage version of this spec, keep Holy Fire on targets with big health bars, then use Smite and offensive Penance. Power in Light procs when you attack your own Holy Fire target.

Holy Priest Rotation

Holy Priest is easier to understand, but despite that, playing them is the most responsible job in the raid. Playing Holy is a balancing act. Just find someone who’s low on HP and use the most appropriate spells for the situation. Here are the cases where you need to use Holy Priest spells:

1. Use Renew when your target constantly receives damage
2. Heal is generic healing spell when you just, well, want to heal someone. Pretty straightforward.
3. Use Greater Heal when somebody lacks a large portion of their HP, and you have enough time to cast it
4. Use Flash Heal only when waiting for a better spell is more dangerous than spending a big chunk of your Mana
5. Use Binding Heal when both you and your target need healing
6. Use Prayer of Healing when the whole party is hurt
7. Keep Prayer of Mending bouncing against group damage
8. Alternate healing spells for Litany of Light to replenish Mana

Prayer of Mending is especially valuable during encounters where several players keep taking repeated damage. Binding Heal is super situational, but hey, at least now you can use this as a last-resort measure to avoid a wipe.

Shadow Priest Rotation

Out of all three specs, Shadow has the closest thing to a normal DPS rotation:

1. Maintain Shadow Word: Pain
2. Use Devouring Plague on big HP targets
3. Cast Mind Blast on cooldown when you won’t re-aggro enemies on you
4. Channel Mind Flay as your main filler
5. Use Shadow Word: Death when the target is low enough for this spell to kill it
6. Use Vampiric Embrace for healing and Spirit Tap synergies
7. Always stay in Shadowform unless you need to heal yourself

Use Shadow Word: Death cautiously. If it doesn’t kill the target, you take 10% of your maximum Health as punishment for miscasting it. Initially, it can be hard to identify when to cast it, but eventually you’ll adapt to it.

 

 

Best Priest Professions in WoW Forever (WIP)

My recommendation right now is Tailoring + Enchanting. It’s quite obvious, as Priests wear cloth. Tailoring will hook you up with caster gear while leveling, and Enchanting lets you get materials from trash that you’d sell anyway. Though professions have been significantly reworked in WoW Forever, I think this combo will remain powerful for casters. Another recommendation is Alchemy + Herbalism for players who rely more on consumables and self-sufficiency. Engineering is useful for PvP and utility, as usual. Despite that, these are tertiary options. I’m sticking with Tailoring + Enchanting as the default recommendation.

Best Priest Consumables in WoW Forever (WIP)

For now, it’s impossible to talk about best Priest consumables in WoW Forever, since professions received 600+ new recipes, and I assume there’s gonna be lots of consumables in this list. With the full release, I’ll be able to talk about the consumables more. If you need a quick recommendation: anything that gives mana is gonna be essential for healers, and Shadow Priest will need whatever gives Spell Damage or Hit. As for Food, it usually grants stats along with a minor XP bonus, so I’d advise you to check the Stat Priority section to understand what your character needs. As with all work-in-progress sections, this section will be updated with the release of WoW Forever on November 4th.

Read our other WoW Forever guides:

• Druid Guide
• Hunter Guide

F.A.Q.