PRIEST

How to Play a Priest in World of Warcraft

Steps

1. When leveling, quests can give you a lot of experience, so do a lot of them. Having a melee party member can make things easier. Make sure to buff your party members.
2. Grinding with friends is also useful. If you want to play with friends, go in a group. Some will tell you not to because the exp is shared, but the reality is that quest exp is always worth more than the monster grinding exp. Also, if your friend is helping you level but not in your group, and he lets you get first shot on enemies, you will still be able to loot them, but the exp you get is reduced to an amount equal to to the amount of damage you inflicted before he comes in to help kill it. If you do 10% of the monster's total HP in damage before your friend kills it, you will only receive 10% of the exp as if you had killed it yourself. Remember that if you are in a group with your friend, you will always get a portion of the exp (50% in a group of 2 or 33% in a group of 3, etc) as though you had killed it yourself. And don't forget, with your friend's help you can kill monsters way faster and therefore complete quests faster, and quest exp is never reduced.
3. Level through 'instances'. Another good way of leveling is through instances. Remember that you can not only get great exp this way but good loot and money as well.
4. Instance grinding is a fairly good idea for a Priest, seeing as how generally in PvE environments Priests tend to take a bit longer to level. If you decide to instance grind, it is advisable, but not required, to spec Holy, merely for ease of acquiring a group.

Tips

• For solo PvE leveling or PvP DPS, go Shadow or Discipline, depending on your playing style. For healing, go Discipline or Holy.
• Make sure to buff yourself while not in combat, so you don't waste mana needed for attacks.
• If healing, watch the health of your party members. Their health and mana should be displayed at the left (default) of your screen when you are in a party.(remember you're a priest, healing is typically your job so focus on your party members, pets, etc. and less on DPS)
• Priests can be great for DPS too. Its a good idea to have two sets of gear.(One for healing and another for DPS)
• Remember, if you're Shadow, you still have healing spells, and you CAN use them, just not in Shadowform. Don't be the jerk Shadowpriest who says he can't heal, no one likes that guy.
• A good idea for healing is to grab an addon, such as Xperl Unitframes, which shows your party members' health and mana, as well as all buffs/debuffs on them, in a more visible way than the regular UI does.

Warnings

• Priests can only wear cloth and are not very strong in melee, so try to put some distance between you and the target.
• Never forget about your wand. A high quality wand will allow you to contribute in a group while conserving mana. if you do use a wand, remember that every use puts your abilities offline (global cooldown) for about half a second, and will automatically repeat. The easiest way to stop your wand is to just move a step. This means if your party is depending on you for healing, you will have to anticipate when you will need to heal, and step, wait out the cooldown and then cast.