WoW Classic Priest Leveling Guide

Leveling a Priest in WoW Classic Anniversary or WoW Classic Era from level 1 to 60 is a great experience. A Priest with the right talents and rotation is very smooth and fast to level in Vanilla. Learn all about the right talents and weapons to optimize your leveling adventure in our WoW Classic Priest Leveling Guide.

📂 WoW Classic > Priest

📅 Last updated on March 9, 2025.

WoW Classic Priest Leveling Talents 1 – 39

Use the following build to level your  Priest until you reach at least level 40:

Important: Invest your first 5 talent points into  Wand Specialization. The next 5 talent points should go into  Spirit Tap and 1 point into  Shadow Focus. From there, continue in the Discipline tree. Prioritize  Inner Focus as soon as it becomes available. Continue you in the Holy tree after you have 14 points into Discipline

Why should you pick  Wand Specialization first? With the correct spell rotation, you will never run out of mana while questing. As long as you don’t pull too many mobs,  Spirit Tap is not very valuable before level 18-20. The wand is an incredible weapon as a  Priest until level 40-44. Therefore,  Wand Specialization is your most important talent in this level bracket.

WoW Classic Priest Leveling Talents 40 – 60

At level 40 or 42 you have the option to go into shadow. You also could continue in Discipline for more survivability or Holy for more holy damage and easier healing in dungeons. All builds are very viable for  Priests. For questing and solo grinding the most popular choice is to go into Shadow with a build like this:

For this spec you start with 31 points into shadow and then continue to invest points into Discipline.

If you’re planning to heal dungeons for your Pre-Raid BiS extensively, the following talent build is the Holy alternative. This build becomes very strong after you unlock 5/5  Spiritual Guidance for solo questing and grinding, too. Additionally, you have most of the important talents for efficient healing, which makes your dungeon experience way better. This is the Holy build:

Try to unlock  Spirit Tap,  Spiritual Guidance, and  Inner Focus as fast as possible in that order. The key to high DPS with this build is to have a lot of Spirit on your gear. This Spirit gets doubled by  Spirit Tap after a kill. With this doubled Spirit your spell power is then increased by  Spiritual Guidance by a very high amount. Since holy resistance is rare on enemies, you do a lot of damage as a Holy  Priest while questing.

Use one  Holy Fire and then 2-4  Smite per mob to deal damage while solo.

WoW Classic Priest Wand Progression

While leveling a  Priest the wand is the single most important piece of gear you have. These are the notable wand upgrades for a  Priest sorted by their DPS:

• Level 5:  Lesser Magic Wand.
  Crafted with Enchanting and can be bought in the auction house.
• Level 13:  Greater Magic Wand.
  Crafted by Enchanting and can be bought in the auction house.
• Level 17:  Cookie's Stirring Rod
  Drops in The Deadmines.
• Level 18:  Gravestone Scepter ¹
  Quest reward from Blackfathom Villainy in Blackfathom Deeps.
  Quest reward from Blackfathom Villainy in Blackfathom Deeps.
• Level 41:  Blackbone Wand
  Sold from Wand Merchants in Stormwind City, Ironforge, Orgrimmar, and Undercity.
• Level 52:  Skul's Ghastly Touch ²
  Drops from Skul in Stratholme.

¹  Gravestone Scepter is an insane wand. It causes shadow damage and provides you with a huge power spike. Try to get it as early as possible. You can wear this wand into your level 40s.
² Your wand loses a lot of its power after you respec with level 40 or level 42. Just use the best wand you can find from here on. You don’t need to go out of your way to farm any specific wand anymore until your pre-BiS wand  Skul's Ghastly Touch.

WoW Classic Priest Leveling Rotations

These are your rotations while leveling a  Priest in WoW Classic depending on your character level and build:

• Early levels:
   Smite or  Mind Blast and then only wanding. Pick the spell you’ve learned the latest. Add a  Shadow Word: Pain before wanding, if mobs live long enough to get all damage ticks from  Shadow Word: Pain.
• Shadow:
   Mind Blast >  Shadow Word: Pain >  Mind Flay >  Mind Flay > Wand
• Holy:
   Holy Fire >  Smite >  Smite >  Smite > Wand

Independent from your spec you want to put up  Power Word: Shield before you cast your first offensive spell.

Additional Resources

You can find more resources about the WoW Classic Priest here, including Priest Macros for WoW Classic.