Priest Guide for Midnight - Patch 12.0.1

Priest Guide for Midnight Quick Summary:

• Priest has amazing HoT and burst healing, and lots of useful utility. It has very poor mobility and can be sort of squishy if played incorrectly.
• The best races for Discipline and Holy Priests are Drachtyr and Goblin for their movement abilities and mastery boosts.
• The best races for Shadow Priests are Mag’har Orc and Goblin. Mag’har has a great cooldown that has the same timing as main dps cooldowns of Shadow Priest, and Goblin grants a Haste boost.
• Max these stats on Priests: Strength, Mastery, Haste, Crit Strike, and Versatility.
• Best profs for Priests are Tailoring, Alchemy, and Enchanting.

If you want to get that new shiny BiS gear, you’ll need a ton of gold, and there’s no better place to buy it than our Midnight Gold Boost. Try it now and get all the best gear today.

 

 

 

Priest Changes in Midnight

Priest received the strangest rework possible. The majority of classes got a lot of new abilities with the removal of old ones, but the Priest barely has anything new. In fact, I think Priest suffered a lot after pruning, though his core gameplay didn’t change much. Iirc, pruning was supposed to make Priest have fewer buttons and more options, but things didn’t go as planned, and Priest is now stripped of many of his abilities without really being given anything new.

• Plea: New ability for Disc Priest. A substitution for Renew.
• Ultimate Serenity: New ability for Holy Priest. Removes your Holy Word: Sanctify. Holy Word: Serenity now cleaves and makes AoE spells reduce the cooldown of Serenity.
• Tentacle Slam: A new Shadow Priest AoE (kinda) spell that applies Vampiric Touch to enemies it damages.

Dark Ascension, Divine Star, Divine Word, Halo, Heal, Lightwell, Luminous Barrier, Power Word: Life, Premonition, Psychic Horror, Renew, Shadow Covenant, Shadow Crash, Shadow Word: Pain, Shadowfiend, Symbol of Hope, Void Bolt, Void Shift, Void Torrent: Have all been removed.

Priest Pros & Cons

Now, let’s talk about the reasons you might want to play or ignore the Priest as your next main. Most notably, Priest is a support class. While you may use him as a DPS, Shadow Priest has never been that good to justify taking it. It’s more like an off-meta pick to see how far you can push him if you’re bored with other classes or have tried everything.

Pros	Cons
Powerful burst healing with Discipline Priest	Very poor mobility on all specs.
Holy Priest can heal all the time, even if he dies.	Disc Priest is very taxing on mana.
Decent priority damage with Shadow Priest.	While Priest has self-sustain, he’s quite squishy.
Lots of useful utility and damage reduction spells.

If you want to be more than just a healbot, I recommend Discipline Priest, as he does healing through his damaging abilities and is, in my opinion, the best specialization out of the three. His burst is amazing and helps the raid to survive heavy damage.

How to Play Priest in Midnight

Priest’s game plan changes from spec to spec quite significantly. On Discipline, you want to prepare for high burst damage. On Holy Priest, you try to apply constant AoE healing while preparing your single-target healing to support your tanks. Let’s take a deeper look at the main principles of each spec:

• Discipline Priest: ABC - Always Be Casting. Atonement is your main source of continuous healing, and it heals for 35% of the damage done. Keep your Penance and Smite on cooldowns. Your healing cycle consists of applying Atonement in as many ways as possible on as many people as possible. Then you deal damage to maximize your Atonement healing.
• Holy Priest: Previous rules partially apply to Holy Priest. You need to keep your Holy Word: Serenity and Holy Word: Sanctify on cooldowns. Exceptions being when you know a big wave of single-target damage is coming. Then you want to store them for this moment. Holy is also a great AoE healer. It’s less stressful than on Disc, as a failed big cooldown on him can lead to people dying in stacks. If you’re only a beginner, I recommend trying Holy Priest.
• Shadow Priest: This spec focuses on building Insanity, which is their resource, to deal big damage with Shadow Word: Madness. Never let your insanity cap. Apart from that, you want to keep casting. Shadow Priest has a good choice of cooldowns of various durations. Always prioritize the ones that have a lower cd to maximize your DPS. Track your Mind Devourer and Shadowy Insight procs and react to them when they are triggered.

The Priest isn’t a very complex class. I’d rank it as an average difficulty. Specifically because of Discipline Priest and Shadow Priest. Disc Priest can be punishing if you misuse your cooldown, and Shadow Priest is quite hard to dish out competitive damage with.

WoW Midnight Best Priest Races

Though this class guide is primarily raid-focused, I’ll list the races suitable for Mythic+ dungeons as well. Priest has limited use in M+, as he works in a way that supports playing as part of a healing group rather than as a single healer of a party. Nonetheless, there are some races that can help you with M+ a bit.

Discipline & Holy Priests

1. Drachtyr: Usually picked for Awakened and for movement racials that help to mitigate the low mobility of a Priest.
2. Goblin: Rocket Jump helps with movement, plus Rocket Barrage is good to deal additional damage, though you won’t be using that often.
3. Night Elf: Are best in M+. Good utility in the form of Shadowmeld, also Wisp Spirit is useful for Holy Priests.
4. Dwarf: Are best in M+. Stoneform and Might of the Mountain are possibly one of the best combinations of racials in the game.

Shadow Priest

1. Mag’har Orc: Ancestral Call is a decent damage cooldown that’s timed with out main damage cds.
2. Goblin: Time is Money provides Haste with Shadow Priest. Plus Rocket Jump, as mentioned before.

Dwarf & Night Elf are also good for the same reason as described above. Honestly, you’re not tied to these classes, as they provide marginal use in most cases, if we’re not taking M+ into account. In Mythic+, Dwarves and Night Elves can’t be surpassed by anyone.

 

 

Priest Stat Priority WoW Midnight

Priest has Intellect as their primary stat. You can find it on the cloth gear. As for other classes, it increases your Spell Power and dps/healing with abilities. The secondary stats are the same as for everyone - Haste, Versatility, Crit, and Mastery. They’re pretty equal in their importance and should be simmed for your character to see which stat you’ll profit from the most. 

I’d say that for Priest, Mastery and Haste are the most important ones. Haste reduces the cooldown, which is extremely important on Discipline Priest, and is useful on other specs. Mastery has a direct influence on Shadow Priest’s performance, as Mastery: Shadoweaving is one of the most important abilities on it. 

The rest of the stats work as usual, with Crit providing a higher chance of double healing and Versatility making us a bit less squishy.

Best Priest Builds for WoW Midnight

Note that the builds that follow are for Raids, not Mythic+ dungeons. Don’t use them for that! They won’t work as intended and will lead to very poor performance. Below, I’ll provide three builds. Two support builds for Disc and Holy, and one DPS build for Shadow. Let’s jump straight into it.

Best Discipline Priest Build

I already kind of described how to play Priest above, but let me add a bit more. Always maintain Atonement and convert your damage into healing. You start rotation with Power Word: Shield and Power Word: Radiance to apply Atonement on as many targets as possible. Follow that with Penance and Mind Blast for a big burst of Atonement healing. Use fillers to keep the damage going, primarily with Smite. Use Evangelism to extend the Atonement when the raid encounter's big damage is coming up.

Best Holy Priest Build

Not much has changed for Holy Priest in the core. Your rotation revolves around frequent Holy Word usage and using your smaller cooldowns for reactive healing. Prayer of Mending provides constant passive healing. Holy Word: Serenity is the strongest single-healing spell in your arsenal and should be used before heavy damage to one ally. For group healing, your best option is Holy Word: Sanctify or the upgraded version if you’re running the Ultimate Serenity (you should). Flash Heal is your cd reduction with spot healing, and Prayer of Healing works the best when you need to heal multiple allies. When there’s no need for healing, use Holy Fire and Smite. Preserve Divine Hymn and Apotheosis for major damage windows during the raid.

Best Shadow Priest Build

Shadow Priest has the lowest skill ceiling out of the three specs, even taking Holy Priest into account. It’s a typical builder-spender spec. You’d want to maintain Vampiric Touch on your enemy at all times, since it increases your damage and self-healing for more sustain. Your insanity is primarily built with Mind Blast and Mind Flay. Your main spender is Shadow Word: Madness. You can use Shadow Crash to spread Vampiric Touch on multiple enemies so your DoT affects them all. Just cycle these spells, and that’s it for the most part.

 

 

Priest Best In Slot Gear in WoW Midnight

Yay, the BiS is finally here, and we can list all of it for you! The gear is virtually identical for all three specs and works equally well on them, so I won’t be spreading it into three separate columns for each of the specs and will provide all info in one. Most items drop from the Raids or from the Vault. Let’s go over the BiS gear for Priest:

Slot	Gear	Where to Get
Head	Blind Oath's Winged Crest	Raid/Catalyst/Vault
Neck	Amulet of the Abyssal Hymn	Midnight Falls
Shoulders	Blind Oath's Seraphguards	Raid/Catalyst/Vault
Cloak	Draconic Nullcape	Vaelgor and Ezzorak
Chest	Robes of Endless Oblivion	Midnight Falls
Wrist	Wraps of Watchful Wrath	Magister’s Terrace
Gloves	Blind Oath's Touch	Raid/Catalyst/Vault
Belt	Whisper-Inscribed Sash	Belo’ren
Legs	Blind Oath's Leggings	Raid/Catalyst/Vault
Boots	Dream-Scorched Striders	Chimaerus
Ring	Eye of Midnight	Midnight Falls
Ring	Sin'dorei Band of Hope	Belo’ren
Trinket	Locus-Walker's Ribbon/Gaze of the Alnseer	Crown of the Cosmos/Chimaerus
Trinket	Vaelgor's Final Stare	Vaelgor and Ezzorak
Weapon	Belo'melorn, the Shattered Talon	Belo’ren
Offhand	Tome of Alnscorned Regret	Chimaerus

The Gaze of the Alnseer is the BiS trinket specifically for Shadow Priest. The Locus-Walker’s Ribbon is for Disc and Holy Priests and shouldn’t be used on Shadow. Don’t forget to enchant your gear to make it even better.

Best Priest Professions

In Midnight, professions don’t really matter this much. You can pick whatever you want on your Priest. The all-rounder good professions are usually Alchemy and Enchanting. With Alchemy, you can create your own consumables, and with Enchanting, you can make your gear better. The armoring professions, like Blacksmithing or Tailoring, are always good, depending on what your class wears.

Best Consumables for Priest

As with every part of this guide before, there’s not much difference between consumables for Disc and Holy Priests, but the Shadow Priest’s consumables are different. Take a look at them.

• Discipline Priest: Flask of the Blood Knights, Thalassian Phoenix Oil, Lightfused Mana Potion.
• Holy Priest: Flask of the Shattered Sun, Thalassian Phoenix Oil, Lightfused Mana Potion.
• Shadow Priest: Flask of the Magisters, Light’s Potential, Blooming Feast, Thalassian Phoenix Oil.

Consumables are basically long-lasting buffs (for the most part), and they can be quite expensive to buy. If you are someone who respecs often, I’d suggest you learn Alchemy to not go broke.

Read our other Midnight guides:

• Druid Guide
• Mage Guide
• Evoker Guide

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