Intro

I have a level 70 shadow priest that I raid with, levelled one more to 40some and yet another to 20some. I feel I have a fairly good understanding of the priest class and the most efficient way to spec up while levelling and would like to convey some of that to all of you who are starting your first priest.

This guide is not a detailed levelling guide, like Jame’s or whoever, nor is it a complete grinding guide for where to go to level.

This is purely a pointer guide, to where you should put your talent points, when to respec, a little bit about equipment choice and a wee bit about castsequences.

Disclaimer

Remember that even though I’ve taken in a few comments and opinions of others in this guide, it is primarily a guide to how I would level up my next priest. Mileage may vary and you may like to do things a slightly different way. There’s no shame in trying out something a little different (or a whole lot different if you absolutely want to try leveling up as holy/disc), but that’s not what I personally would do.

Shadow or Holy?

This is a question that comes back, time and time again. There must be a 100 threads on the subject and the discussion pretty much always ends up with the same conclusion. Yes, you can kill stuff with your holy spells and talents. No, you won’t be as effective as you will in shadowform, and yes, you will be drinking a whole lot more with holy.

It boils down to this: As a shadow priest you’ll be able to maintain a much higher XP/hour ratio than you will as holy.

So, let’s go on with shadow!

Talents

You reached lvl 10, woohoo! Now, you start looking at your shadow tree and there’s soooo many exciting things to do. But first things first. Where do we start?

lvl 10 – 1/5 Spirit Tap
lvl 11 – 2/5 Spirit Tap
lvl 12 – 3/5 Spirit Tap
lvl 13 – 4/5 Spirit Tap
lvl 14 – 5/5 Spirit Tap

Spirit Tap is a GREAT levelling tool. What is does is doubling your spirit for 15 seconds in addition to give you a 50% regen rate while casting after you kill a mob or player in range to yield experience or honor. Enough spirit and you’ll never run out of mana.

lvl 15 – 1/2 Improved Shadow Word: Pain
lvl 16 – 2/2 Improved Shadow Word: Pain

Always have Shadow Word: Pain ticking on your victim. SW:P is a damage over time spell that deals X amount of shadow damage every tick for Z seconds. What Improved Shadow Word: Pain does is extend the amount of time the dot runs, meaning you don’t have to reapply it as often.

lvl 17 – 1/5 Shadow Focus
lvl 18 – 2/5 Shadow Focus
lvl 19 – 3/5 Shadow Focus

Shadow Focus is a support spell. You may have noticed that some of your spells are resisted every once in a while. Well, this spell makes sure that doesn’t happen as often. For solo levelling purposes you should get by fine on only 3 points here, but filling it is nice for instances where the mobs may be of higher level than you. Not gonna do that yet, though…

lvl 20 – 1/1 Mind Flay

…because we want to get this spell as soon as humanly possible. This is your bread and butter spell. This is a channelled spell that slows your enemy to 50% of their speed while doing decent damage to them at the same time. There is no cooldown on this spell, so this is what you’ll be using all the time between Mind Blast cooldowns.

lvl 21 – 1/5 Wand Specialization (Disc)
lvl 22 – 2/5 Wand Specialization
lvl 23 – 3/5 Wand Specialization
lvl 24 – 4/5 Wand Specialization
lvl 25 – 5/5 Wand Specialization

This is our first visit to the Discipline tree. Discipline offers loads of nice talents, but unfortunately we’re not going to be able to use too many of them. We’re shadow priests, remember? Wand specialization raises your damage with wands by 25%. This may not seem much to you, but it really adds up. You’re also going to get a talent later that raises shadow damage taken by your victim, so make sure to look for shadow damage wands. More about that in the itemization section later.

lvl 26 – 1/5 Improved Mind Blast
lvl 27 – 2/5 Improved Mind Blast

Speaking of Mind Blast, putting two points in this talent will reduce the cooldown of Mind Blast by 1 second. I never put more than 2 points in this talent, since this will let you reach a pretty decent cast sequence with 2 x Mind Flay between your Mind Blasts. In a perfect world, this would actually mean wasting a second, but with a little lag, slow fingers and such, you’ll likely never (rarely) miss that second.

lvl 28 – 4/5 Shadow Focus
lvl 29 – 5/5 Shadow Focus

Finish this talent up.

lvl 30 – 1/2 Shadow Reach
lvl 31 – 2/2 Shadow Reach

This gives you improved range, meaning you can start your first Mind Blast from farther away, again meaning you get more time for Mind Flay. All good.

lvl 32 – 1/5 Shadow Weaving
lvl 33 – 2/5 Shadow Weaving
lvl 34 – 3/5 Shadow Weaving
lvl 35 – 4/5 Shadow Weaving
lvl 36 – 5/5 Shadow Weaving

Remember I talked about a talent that raised shadow damage taken? Well, this is it. This doesn’t only affect your spells, it also affects your wand damage if you have a shadow damage wand, as well as shadow damage from other players, like another shadow priest or a warlock. Awesome talent.

lvl 37 – 1/3 Focused Mind
lvl 38 – 2/3 Focused Mind
lvl 39 – 3/3 Focused Mind

Lowers mana usage for your two most used spells, Mind Flay and Mind Blast. And Mind Control.

Respec at lvl 40

Ok, this is the time for your first respec. If this is the first time, it’ll cost you 1 gold piece to have your local priest trainer reset your talent points.

Allocate your shiny new points like this:

5/5 Spirit Tap
2/2 Improved Shadow Word: Pain
5/5 Shadow Focus
2/5 Improved Mind Blast
1/1 Mind Flay
2/2 Shadow Reach
5/5 Shadow Weaving
1/1 Vampiric Embrace
3/3 Focused Mind
4/5 Darkness
1/1 Shadowform

New spells for you now are:

Vampiric Embrace that returns health to you and your party based on how much shadow damage you deal to the mob you cast it on. Again 15% may not sound so high but it adds up. And if you’re in a group, you’ll heal others as well.

Darkness increases your shadow damage by 2% pr talent point. How can you not love that?

And finally: Shadowform! This is a huge reason for becoming a shadow priest. 15% increased shadow damage and 15% reduced physical damage taken. Remember though, that while in shadowform, you can’t cast holy spells. I.e. no heals!

Ok, let’s move on with our talents.

lvl 41 – 5/5 Darkness

See above.

lvl 42 – 1/5 Wand Specialization (Disc)
lvl 43 – 2/5 Wand Specialization
lvl 44 – 3/5 Wand Specialization
lvl 45 – 4/5 Wand Specialization
lvl 46 – 5/5 Wand Specialization

Again, see above.

lvl 47 – 1/2 Improved Psychic Scream
lvl 48 – 2/2 Improved Psychic Scream

Reduced cooldown on the Psychic Scream spell. This is good on its own, but more importantly, it’s a pre-talent for:

lvl 49 – 1/1 Silence

Spellstopper. Up against a mob that heals? Silence. A mob that sheeps? Silence. Turn on the enemy cast bar in your interface options window so you see when they’re casting.

lvl 50 – 1/5 Misery
lvl 51 – 2/5 Misery
lvl 52 – 3/5 Misery
lvl 53 – 4/5 Misery
lvl 54 – 5/5 Misery

Misery makes your target take 5% more spell damage. Any spell damage. Holy, shadow, fire, arcane, anything. From anyone. Is that cool or what?

lvl 55 – 1/1 Vampiric Touch

Your second DOT and returns mana the same way that Vampiric Embrace returns life. Uncanny.

lvl 56 – 1/3 Improved Power Word: Shield (Disc)
lvl 57 – 2/3 Improved Power Word: Shield
lvl 58 – 3/3 Improved Power Word: Shield

You’re a clothie. With limited life. You love your shield. You’ll love your shield even more when it can take 15% more. Especially in Outland.

lvl 59 – 1/2 Improved Power Word: Fortitude (Disc)
lvl 60 – 2/2 Improved Power Word: Fortitude

More life is always good.

lvl 61 – 1/3 Shadow Affinity
lvl 62 – 2/3 Shadow Affinity
lvl 63 – 3/3 Shadow Affinity

You’ll be doing more instances now. Shadow priests are aggro magnets. We have strong offensive spells as well as highly aggroing debuffs in VE and VT. A threat reducing talent is a necessary evil, less you want to constantly hold back on your damage, thus not reaching your potential.

lvl 64 – 1/2 Improved Vampiric Embrace
lvl 65 – 2/2 Improved Vampiric Embrace

Returning 10% more life from VE.

Now, if you want to go holy for endgame, somewhere around here would probably be a good place to make the switch, as you will find it increasingly difficult to mainheal instances from here on out. Your main obstacle will be mana conservation and the speed of your heals if you keep going shadow. However, if you just want to stick to leveling and grinding as fast as possible to 70, keep on going.

lvl 66 – 1/1 Inner Focus (Disc)

Inner Focus gives you a free cast with a high crit chance. Use this on your mindblast spell. A good macro to switch out your Mind Blast button / hotkey with would be as follows:

/castrandom Mind Blast, Inner Focus

This will pop Inner Focus when it's up, otherwise it will just cast Mind Blast as usual.

lvl 67 – 1/3 Meditation (Disc)
lvl 68 – 2/3 Meditation
lvl 69 – 3/3 Meditation

Meditation gives you 15% manaregen while in combat. This is a huge timesaver when you go into instances, and solo too, as you’ll find that most of the damage gear you’ll find in Outland really is lacking in spirit. You need whatever regen you can get.

Last point is yours to put wherever you want, but I’d recommend either Absolution, Martyrdom or Shadow Power. In that order.

1 point Absolution: Reduces the mana cost of your Dispel Magic, Cure Disease, Abolish Disease and Mass Dispel spells by 5%.

1 point Martyrdom: Gives you a 50% chance to gain the Focused Casting effect that lasts for 6 sec after being the victim of a melee or ranged critical strike. The Focused Casting effect prevents you from losing casting time when taking damage and increases resistance to Interrupt effects by 10%.

1 point Shadow Power: Increases the critical strike chance of your Mind Blast and Shadow Word: Death spells by 3%.

You’re ready for the end-game instances!

Now, some of you may ask; What about Blackout?

Well, this guide is just that. A guide. If you feel you’ll do better with blackout, by all means, go right ahead. I’ll just leave it with that I’ve specced in and out of different specs for a long time now and I’ve always, ALWAYS, hated it. It tends to proc at all the wrong places and screw up my sequence.

Now, for those of you who would like to try out a build with Blackout, Malentra at the incgamers forum was kind enough to post a suggested talentspec with that particular talent included:

Additionally, pre-Vampiric Embrace, you're going to want to avoid all the damage you can and the combination of Improved Psychic Scream and Blackout is a good way to avoid damage in my opinion. I found minimizing damage taken through these talents was more productive than healing myself after a fight or shielding myself before one. This is because your mind flays are not being interrupted, which means more dps, which means less dtps (damage taken per second).

Personally, I don’t really agree with the above, as before you get Shadowform it’s very easy to pop a renew on yourself every once in a while, so taking a little bit of damage doesn’t really matter that much. I do however recognize the very different opinions on this, so wanted to post another one on that particular subject.

Note on Spirit Tap and Silence by Big Guns:

I also do not agree with focusing on spirit as a shadow priest. I used to but I was swayed to focus on intellect some time along the leveling path and never looked back. I think stacking spirit makes more sense for the disc/holy priest as there are more talents that take advantage of high spirit. It just isnt necessary for a shadow priest whilst leveling or at end game. Likewise silence is optional IMHO and is virtually useless at endgame: bosses are immune. I'd also like to understand the reasoning behind not getting improved VE. I am not saying it is a "must have" but I am curious to know the rationale behind it.

While I will agree on the note about Silence and Spirit Tap being totally optional at end game, I have to totally disagree on Spirit Tap not being important for a leveling Shadow Priest. Spirit Tap and a high level Spirit stat will keep your manabar filled at all times while leveling. Even at lvl 70 when grinding it is very useful, though not as useful as earlier due to itemization on high level items and less spirit available.

Likewise with Silence, yes it’s true that bosses are immune to Silence (at end game, I’m actually not capable of remembering earlier instances on this particular topic) it is absolutely fantastic in PvP. In other words, if you are going to run the occasional battleground or arena, keep this spell. If PvE raid encounters is your be all, end all thing, don’t bother. However, this is a leveling guide and Silence is very effective up through the levels.

And what about Unbreakable Will?

Now, there’s a tougher question. It’s an awesome talent, and you may want to spec into that instead of Imp. Wand when you get to 70. I know I have a few times, and I’ll likely do it again. Trouble is that we only get so many points and there are so many neat talents.

Stats

When you’re levelling there’s pretty much one stat you need to think about for the first 40 levels. Spirit. Go for the gear with the most spirit. Period. If you have two items, one with 20 spirit and one with 10 spirit and 20 intellect, pick the one with 20 spirit.

When you reach lvl 40ish, start looking for +damage items as well, any item with +damage and spirit is excellent.

]Note on stats by Malentra:

Once you get Vampiric Touch, start stressing Shadow damage over Spirit on your gear. ...of Shadow Wrath gear, or anything with a decent amount of +Shadow Damage or +Spell Damage on it will be useful. Rare Items with +damage, +stamina, +intellect, and +spirit are your ideal things to pick up from instances.

Items

There are a few items that are especially worth looking for on your way to level 70.

One of these is the Gravestone Scepter gotten from a quest in Blackfathom Deeps. You can obtain this quest at level 18. That wand will last you to level 40, when you should be switching it out for an Umbral Wand, preferably “of Shadow Wrath”, “of Spirit” or “of the Whale”. In that order. If you can, get someone to run you through the quest for the Scepter. You’ll not regret it.

Spidersilk Boots and Amy’s Blanket are two nice low level items that you may get at a reasonable price, Gloves of Old, Robe of the Magi, Furen’s Boots and Dalewind Trousers are not to be missed out on, along with the Dreamweave Set which is tailored.

For weaponry Staff of the Friar, Gnarled Ash Staff and not least Soulkeeper (the king of levelling shadow priest staves) are good choices.

All the above (except the Gravestone Scepter) are Bind on Equip items, meaning you can get them at the Auction House or in the trade channel. There are tons of other good items to be had from bosses up through the instances, so I recommend you run a few instances every 4-5 levels to gear up a bit. Don't necessarily diss the green items either, some - like the lvl 40ish Shadoweave set - is quite nice.

When you reach Outland you really don’t have to worry about gear any more. Not until you get to lvl 70. The quests and instances taking you through to 70 take well care of you itemwise.

Casting and attacking

For the first few levels, i.e. up to 20, you’ll get great help from smite. You won’t have your Mind Flay yet to pull you over between Mind Blast cooldowns, so you need to rely on something else. Smite.

Shield if necessary -> Mind Blast -> SW:P -> Smite -> Smite -> MB …. etc. As soon as your mob has less than 35-40% hp left, start wanding.

After you get Mind Flay it will be like this:

Shield if necessary -> Mind Blast -> SW:P -> Mind Flay -> MF -> MB …. etc. As soon as your mob has less than 35-40% hp left, start wanding.

Every 4-5 mobs you will probably toss on a Vampiric Embrace to regain the health you lost when you get that far.

After you get Vampiric Touch, this should be your way:

Shield if necessary -> VT -> SW:P -> Mind Blast -> Mind Flay -> MF -> MB …. etc. As soon as your mob has less than 35-40% hp left, start wanding. VT and SW:P to be reapplied when it’s worn off.

The main reason why I tell you to start wanding when your target is at 35-40% is the so-called FSR (Five Second Rule). This means that you'll not start regenerating mana from spirit untill 5 seconds after your last spellcast. Wanding is not a spellcast, hence you'll start regenerating sooner and get full effect of your Spirit Tap buff from when you get the killing blow on a mob.

But I'm running out of mana!

If you don't spend your time on mobs your level or higher you should pretty much be able to grind constantly. The odd drink every 10-15 mobs is to be expected if you have absolutely no runtime between mobs, but as much as 5-7 seconds between one mobs death and the next cast start should net you the mana you need.

Don't use shield unless you absolutely need it, that can be a real manakiller. Use a bandage instead of a heal after the 8th mob. All those little things will get you into a routine. And of course strafe away, use the gcd for what it's worth.

Be sure to grab every piece of "of Spirit" or "of the Whale" stuff you can find and go all out. I would also stack up on a few (20-30) mana pots to down on the run if you can't seem to keep up. A pot every once in a while could get you over that tiny hill you're struggling to pass in terms of killtime.

Start your wanding early enough to keep out of the FSR as soon as your Spirit Tap procs.

Another fair point on DPS added to the discussion by Malentra:

One thing you can do to max dps and minimize dtps further is the following:

As you are facing the mob you are about to pull, turn as much to the side as possible while still maintaining line of sight on it. Mind Blast first as the guide says, but as you finish the cast, start strafing away from the mob and cast SW:P. Don't stop moving until the global cooldown is done. If you do this right, you can typically get two full uninterrupted mind flays in. Mind Blast and wand when they reach you *or* if they still have a lot of HP, fear + mind flay, which actually works pretty well as Mind Flay keeps the mob close to you as MF + SW:P tick them down.

Final key notes to leveling a Shadow Priest

Most of these suggested by Malentra, as I originally didn’t have a section for this.

If you’re grinding or doing solo quests, try to keep going at mobs 1-3 levels below you. This will gain you the highest experience pr hour. You may feel all powerful and wanting to do those yellow and orange mobs, but even though they are fully doable for you, it’s a waste of time.

* Always start a pull from max range.
* Always determine if its safe to fear, just in case.
* If the mob has a lot of hp, pre-shield before pull.
* Always keep Inner Fire up if you're going to be hit by physical attacks.
* Start pulls with a cast time spell (Mind Blast or Vampiric Touch) and strafe away from the mob when casting instant cast spells like Vampiric Embrace and Shadow Word: Pain. (see cast sequences above)
* Mind Flay when the mob is not hitting you (running towards you, stunned or feared) or you are shielded, wand if the mob is meleeing you.
* Try to be out of the 5 second rule when the mob dies. This is usually obtained by wanding for the last 30-40% of the mobs health.
* For quests, bring lots of water, so you can kill as quickly as possible. As a priest you can buff mages with Power Word: Fortitude and in return get some free water from them.
* Remember you have racials, so use them in tough situations. e.g. Devouring Plague for killing tough mobs, Desperate Prayer when in trouble (Remember that this is a holy spell so cannot be cast in Shadowform), etc.
* All the instances (at appropriate level) are attuned for off-spec healing and tanking so long as the players use their abilities properly. Even if you are shadow, if you pay attention and have decent healing gear (read: stam, int, spirit is enough, +healing isn't necessary until mid level 50s and higher), you can heal just fine. I suggest healing a few instances on your way to 70, as the experience is important, regardless of whether you will be shadow at 70. I want to stress this point. Even if you are soloing your way up, try to pick a few instances, both for the loot which will help you level and for the experience.
* Skill up Cooking and First Aid as you go along. Yes, you’re a priest and can heal yourself, yadda yadda yadda, you’ll save tons of mana by popping a bandage every once in a while instead of going in and out of form to heal. This is particularly important as you get to the higher levels with less regen on your gear (from spirit). Once you get to Outland there’s tons of great cooking recipes that give excellent buffs for you, +spell damage, mana pr 5 seconds, spirit/stamina and such. Don’t miss out on them just because you were too lazy to level your cooking.

The above points are both a recap of what’s been stated some places earlier, and some points not mentioned.

And there we are. Good luck on your joyous journey to 70!