Holy Priest Leveling Guide from 1 to 90 — 12.0.5

While Holy Priest is more than capable of leveling, Priests generally level as Shadow as it provides superior damage, which significantly speeds 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.

Leveling Information

Beginner Leveling Guides

If this is your first character, or want to know more about the leveling process in Midnight, we've got you covered with these two guides!

Basic LevelingMidnight Leveling

Gearing is quite simple as a leveling Holy Priest, especially with the high value of Intellect. Your focus should be on obtaining as much Intellect on gear as possible, which means typically prioritising 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 leveling 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. When using Heirloom items, we recommend using those with Critical Strike and Haste, as they will slightly improve the gameplay flow while leveling.

Itemization

Leveling Heirlooms

Learn how to use Heirloom gear to level your characters as fast as possible!

Heirlooms Guide

While endgame enchants and consumables are often disabled or heavily scaled during early leveling, there are still several items that can be used to make the process smoother, faster, and less frustrating.

The War Within enchants will still work throughout the leveling process, and can be a cheap way to add small boosts of power. Enchants that grant haste or speed are particularly valuable early on when gear upgrades are sparse. Prioritise the following.

• Enchant Ring - Radiant Haste (helps as you lose haste while leveling)
• Enchant Boots - Scout's March
• Enchant Cloak - Chant of Burrowing Rapidity
• Enchant Bracer - Chant of Armored Speed

Tempered Potion - Combat potions that remain usable at lower levels can significantly speed up difficult pulls, elite quests, or story encounters. Stock a small supply for moments where burst damage, healing or survivability matters. Be sure to use these before you get to max level content!

Silvermoon Health Potion - Having a small stack of health potions reduces reliance on cooldowns and self-healing, especially during early levels when defensive toolkits are incomplete. These are particularly helpful for soloing elite quests or accidental overpulls.

Certain consumables can dramatically improve leveling flow.

• Goblin Glider Kit
• Gunshoes or Potion of the Reborn Cheetah
• Light-Step Hoofplates
• Thunderous Drums
• Draught of Silent Footfalls
• Fried Bonefish or Bear Tartare

If you are just starting your journey into Midnight, we have a Level 80 import string for you. You can follow the point-by-point allocation of the below tree once you start gaining levels in Midnight.

To help with understanding what changes for your spec as you level up and progress through the talent tree, use the slider below to select your current level. Each time you level up, move it along, and the section will level up with you!

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. At 13 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.
2. Apotheosis is available at level 51. When cast, this talent provides you with increased cooldown reduction applied to Holy Word: Chastise when casting Smite.
3. Power Infusion is another major cooldown added to your kit you should use to squeeze out more damage when needed.
4. Holy Fire, is a high priority damage spell to cast both single target and in AoE thanks to Burning Vehemence.
5. Holy Nova is your first and only spammable AoE spell, which takes over as your priority for 3 or more enemies.
6. 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.
7. Smite is your filler spell for 1 or 2 enemies when nothing else is available to cast.

Most of the time, while questing, you will be grouping numerous enemies up using Dispel Magic and then using AoE spells to kill them all together. Use Psychic Scream to stop enemies attacking you if you ever pull too much or need to get away from them. You can also use Fade utilising the Spectral Illusion talent to distract enemies while you kill them.

To improve your mobility, you can use this macro to cast Angelic Feather on yourself, granting you a speed boost: /cast [@player] Angelic Feather. When you are out of Angelic Feather charges, you can cast Prayer of Mending on yourself for a short speed boost thanks to Body and Soul.

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 that 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 utilise 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.
• Benediction when available.
• Prayer of Mending on an injured ally.
• Flash Heal for regular healing.
• Holy Nova while moving and healing is required.
• Continue your damage rotation above 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.

Class Guides

Priest Class Guides

Finished leveling your character? Check out our max level guides!

All Priest Guides

Niphyr

Guide Author

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This guide has been written by Niphyr, a long-time healing Priest and theorycrafter. You can follow him on Twitter.