Classic priest leveling guide

12-Jan-2023

I've started playing leveling my first alt on classic, since it's been a while since i last leveled a char to 60 i think it's fitting i go over a few ideas and tips. The only reason i haven't been leveling my toons while testing for BC is that i've been doing most of my testing on private servers, if you'd like to do the same i can recommend this wow private server list since it's where i found the server i currently play on. Now let's move on to the guide.

Priest is mostly easy to level since most of it's class features lend pretty well for extended fighting what with it's healing. The pros are :
– You don't have to carry food around, since you can just heal yourself.
– You will generally have a spot on most raids since healers are under represented in most servers.
– People will generally want to group with you even outside of raids.
– Priest is one of the few classes with a generally high skill floor and a very high skill ceiling.
– It's pvp potential is up there with warlocks(depending on spec).
– Leveling is made even easier with wand talents.
– You get a nice weapon for both healing and damage specs off a class quest.

With the only downside being that you're usually forced to play healer in raids since shadow priests are generally phased out in favor of mages and/or warlocks.

Choosing your race

There's no question about best races for late game. The best alliance race is dwarf since their Fear Ward just out classes any other racial priest ability hands down. The second one by a few miles is human, since their racial ability gives them additional spirit which makes leveling even easier, however priests generally shouldn't have any problems on that front.
For the horde there's actually a couple of legitimate choices. While i recommend undead since their racial will of the forsaken is useful in every part of the game, and argument could be made for troll since their racial ability Berserking let's them gain faster spellcasting which translates to more DPS or HPS depending on your spec. I still favor undead for my horde priests however.

General tips

– Use the wand. This one is pretty self explanatory, when you hit level 10, mosey on over to your nearest weapon master and get a wand skill and a wand. This will not only probably increase your actual dps but it will do so without costing you any mana. I also advise to putting your talent points
6-10 into Wand specialization, which nets you an easy 15% damage increase with wands, which is very noticable.
– While on the topic of talents the best talent for leveling an unassuming Spirit tap in the first row of shadow tree. It basically doubles your spirit for 15 seconds, while also allowing you to regenerate half your usual rate of mana while casting, which may not seem like a lot but at 5 points in it, it basically lets you farm mobs with no down time at all.
– Going off the previous tip you should obviously put priority on spirit on your gear, since Spirit Tap pretty much doubles it, it's literally one of the most insane talents in the game, while seeming quite unassuming.
– The downside is that you will probably want to respec after hitting 60 since with this spec you will pretty much be specced for leveling.

Gear priority

AS mentioned earlier i advise you to get a wand as soon as you can. To do so i think getting enchanting is a pretty good idea for priests, since you can make your own. Greater Magic Wand which you can make yourself and start using should hold you over till level 27 when you can get the Gravestone Scepter from a BFD quest which is quite nice and should hold you over till about 46. After that just prioritize Spirit > Intelect > Stamina.

These are my general tips for priest leveling. However if you'd like to check out endgame specs without having to level your alt i can wholeheartedly recommend trying them out on a private server.