This's a guide from an experienced Priest, kinda informative :)
This guide is designed for Priests, and lists as much objective information about the class as well as my own personal experiences and play style. I have some things I need to mention right off the bat.
1. I've played two priests. First was during Undead Push, and he was used to test Resists, which ended up not functioning. My second priest was in TriHorde Push, and his focus was Spirit with side Intellect and Stamina. My third and current Priest I just started. You can /w Card if you see me on and have questions.
2. I'm a hardcore player, which means there will be an inherent bias reflected in my experiences and suggestions.
3. I love warriors... I have four of them, so I will mention Warriors often because they are a Priest’s best friend.
4. I don't have access to markup codes (bold, underline, bullets, etc), so bear with the way I have things formatted.
5. Visit the Official Priest Basics guide on the beta website and take a look at that too.
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Introduction
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What are Priests? They are masters of healing, crowd control, and are good secondary tanks! In short they are the best class so everyone should play one! More seriously though, they are one of the more complex and dynamic classes to play and master.
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<Outline>
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1. The first part of this guide will list every Priest skill available up to Level 30. The trainers have up to to Level 40, but since we can't level that high yet I will leave it at that.
2. The second part will list an example of a common Priest and some examples of equipment. This part I’m still working on.
3. The third part will describe leveling, a Priest's role with other classes. I’ll also mention a bit about Dueling and Twinking in the last section.
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1. <Priest Skills - Description>
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Listed by Rank
x range = maximum casting distance in Yards
xM = mana cost
xs cast = time in seconds to cast
CLvl x = Level at which you can learn this spell
xc/xs = copper or silver cost to learn
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<Holy Magic>
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Dispel Magic - removes 1 harmful spell from a friend or 1 beneficial spell from an enemy, Instant Cast, 30 range
1. 75M, CLvl 18, 25s
Heal - restores lost health, 40 range
1. +305 to 351 heal, 200M, 3.5s cast, CLvl 16, 18s
2. +494 to 564 heal, 305M, 4.0s cast, CLvl 22, 40s
3. +755 to 857 heal, 440M, 4.0s cast, CLvl 28, 70s
Holy Smite - deals holy damage, 30 range
1. 16 to 20 dmg, 25M, 1.5s cast
2. 27 to 31 dmg, 35M, 2.0s cast, CLvl 8, 50c
3. 64 to 74 dmg, 75M, 2.0s cast, CLvl 16, 18s
4. 112 to 128 dmg, 120M, 2.0s cast, CLvl 24, 50s
Holy Word: Fortitude - increases the Stamina of a friendly target for 30 minutes, Instant Cast, 30 range
1. +2 Stam, 65M
2. +4 Stam, 165M, CLvl 12, 10s
3. +8 Stam, 430M, CLvl 24, 50s
Holy Word: Shield - target absorbs damage up to 1 minute, Instant Cast, 40 range
- spells cannot be interrupted while shield holds
1. 45 dmg absorbed, 35M, CLvl 6, 2s
2. 83 dmg absorbed, 60M, CLvl 12, 10s
3. 141 dmg absorbed, 95M, CLvl 18, 25s
4. 215 dmg absorbed, 135M, CLvl 24, 50s
5. 305 dmg absorbed, 180M, CLvl 30, 80s
Inner Fire - Increases caster's physical damage and armor for 3 minutes, Instant Cast, Self targeted
1. +2 dmg, +60 armor, 20M, CLvl 12, 10s
2. +4 dmg, +100 armor, 45M, CLvl 20, 30s
3. +6 dmg, +140 armor, 75M, CLvl 30, 80s
Lesser Heal - restores lost health, 40 range
1. +45 to 55 heal, 40M, 1.5s cast
2. +72 to 86 heal, 60M, 2.0s cast, CLvl 4, 80c
3. 172 to 202 heal, 120M, 2.5s cast, CLvl 10, 7.5s
Nullify Disease - grants target disease immunity for 15 seconds and cures any existing diseases, Instant Cast, 30 range
1. 60M, CLvl 14, 13s
Prayer of Healing - heals the entire party, 4s cast
1. 221 to 235 heal, 330M, CLvl 30, 80s
Renew - Heals over 15 seconds, 2.0s cast, 40 range
1. 50 health, 30M, CLvl 8, 50c
2. 90 health, 50M, CLvl 14, 13s
3. 150 health, 80M, CLvl 20, 30s
4. 225 health, 115M, CLvl 26, 60s
Resurrection - revives dead player back with 15% base health and mana
1. 150M, 10s cast, 40 range, CLvl 10, 7.5s
Holy Protection - Increases targets Holy Resist for 30 minutes, Instant Cast, 30 range
1. 30 resist, 500M, CLvl 30
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<Shadow Spells>
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Brainwash - Removes threat from all enemies of the target, 1.5s cast, 30 range
1. Medium amount, 50M, CLvl 20, 30s
Mana Burn - Takes a targets mana and deals 1/2 of it as inflicted damage, 3s cast, 30 range
1. Drains 225 to 241 mana, 110M, CLvl 26, 60s
Mind Blast - Direct Shadow Damage, Instant Cast, generates a large amount of hate, 8s cool down, 30 range
1. 38 to 42 dmg, 45M, CLvl 10, 7.5s
2. 74 to 80 dmg, 75M, CLvl 16, 18s
3. 117 to 125 dmg, 105M, CLvl 22, 40s
4. 174 to 186 dmg, 145M, CLvl 28, 70s
Mind Control - gives you control of a humanoid, but its attack speed is lowered by 20%, lasts 1 minute
- target gets a chance to break free every 5 seconds, 3s cast, 20 range
1. Target must be Level 30 or under, 350M, CLvl 30, 80s
Mind Vision - Lets you see through the targets eyes for 1 minute, Instant Cast, 1 min cooldown, 100 range
1. 65M, CLvl 22, 40s
Pacify - reduces the range at which a monster will attack you, 2s cast, 15s duration, 40 range
1. Lowers by 10 range, 50M, only affects monsters level 39 or lower, CLvl 20, 30s
Psychic Scream - AOE fear, monsters flee for 8 seconds, Instant Cast, 30s cooldown
1. 2 targets flee, 100M, CLvl 14, 13s
2. 3 targets flee, 140M, CLvl 28, 70s
Shadow Protection - Increases targets Shadow Resist for 30 minutes, Instant Cast, 30 range
1. 30 resist, 500M, CLvl 30
Shadow Word: Pain - damage over 18s, Instant Cast, 30 range
1. 30 dmg, 25M, CLvl 4, 80c
2. 72 dmg, 50M, CLvl 10, 7.5s
3. 138 dmg, 95M, CLvl 18, 25s
4. 246 dmg, 160M, CLvl 26, 60s
Sleep - Only one target may be slept at a time, any hostile action will waken the target, 1.5s cast, 30 range
1. Lasts up to 15s, 60M, CLvl 6, 2s
2. Lasts up to 30s, 80M, CLvl 20, 30s
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Comments
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1. Sleep does not necessarily have the full 15 or 30 second duration. Every few seconds, the target will have a chance to “break” free depending on its resistance (determined currently only by its and your level difference) and on your Shadow Attack Rating. To ensure low chances of resistance, you should keep your shadow ratings as high as it can go.
2. Holy Word: Shield takes into account Armor prior to absorbing damage, so the higher your Armor, the more effective the Shield. Try to keep track of how many hits you can absorb before recasting.
3. Regeneration is a good supplementary heal that doesn’t generate a lot of hate instantly unlike the direct Heals. If your teammate is taking damage, a good combo is to cast Regen followed by Shield, allowing them to heal while the Shield is up.
4. The stronger the heal, the larger the hate generated. I suggest making your second strongest heal as your primary heal spell.
5. If the mob is attacking you or a weak teammate instead of your tank, use Brainwash.
6. Sleep is your best crowd control spell. Sleep Adds whenever necessary and never hesitate to keep your cursor on it to immediately re-Sleep again.
7. Mind Blast or SW: Pain targets that attempt to flee from battle.
8. Make sure to keep Inner Fire on at all times.
9. Mind Blast generates a very large amount of agro, so you can use it to pull a mob onto yourself. This is useful if you want to tank.
10. Once you get Mana Burn, go kill casters! This makes them very easy to deal with because of their low life and inability to retaliate against you.
11. Skills get costly at higher levels, so make sure to save up money. If you have any wealthy friends, ask to borrow some if you don’t have enough.
12. Try to keep track of when you need to go visit the Trainer. You only learn new spells on even levels.
13. Spells that have casting times will be delayed if you are attacked, so try to keep Shield up as often as possible.
14. When you complete a spell, your weapon delay will determine the next time you Swing your weapon. If you time correctly, you can Swing and cast a spell simultaneously, eliminating extra idle time.
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2. <Priest Builds and Gear>
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The Priest uses three of the five primary attributes: Stamina, Intellect, and Spirit. Here lists what your main Talents do.
Stamina - Increases your health by 14.
Intellect - Increases your mana by 20.
Spirit - Increases your mana regeneration by 7.5 mana per minute, or 0.125 mana per second.
Mental Acuity - Increases mana by 20 for Rank 1 and 2, 30 Mana for Rank 3 and 4.
Meditation - Increases mana regeneration by 6 mana per minute for Rank 1 and 2, and 12 for Rank 3.
In a few words, a Priest's life can be expressed by the amount of mana you have and by how fast you can regenerate your consumed mana. Inner Fire and Holy World: Shield act as an extension of your health bar, allowing you to continue to absorb damage until you essentially run out of mana. Also, mana pool and regeneration speed also affect how many spells you can cast during battle and how much downtime you can expect to have.
These attributes are raised by leveling and by equipping items that improve your attribute values. The items you choose to wear determines your "focus" as you will find that items can double and even triple your base attributes alone. The best way to decide which attributes you need more of is by playing.
My favorite build involves a focus on Spirit and everything else into mana. The other type of extreme involves a focus on Intellect, and everything else into regeneration. You'll find that that until you hit the level cap, you will probably have a mixed focus of regeneration and mana. A less common build revolves around health and Stamina, but because the amount of health per Stamina is relatively low, I do not suggest a focus in this attribute.
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Example Build
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Human Priest, Base 20 in every stat, with Focus on Regeneration. I'll include as much as I can remember and will polish everything over time. I'm leaving out Talent Point costs for now and will document these as I continue to level a new Priest I'm making this Alliance Push, so this part of the guide will be somewhat incomplete (may have slight inaccuracies) but descriptive nonetheless.
Indomitable Spirit - train up to Rank 13 by CLvl 30 - 1 point per rank up to Rank 9, 2 points afterwards. This yields +15 Spirit total.
Meditation - train up to Rank 3 by CLvl 30 - up to +24 mana per minute.
Mighty Intellect - if possible, train up to Rank 13 by CLvl 30 - 1 point per rank up to Rank 9, 2 points afterwards. This yields +15 Intellect.
Mental Acuity - if enough points left over, train up to Rank 3 by CLvl 30 - Up to +70 mana.
For the purpose of not being all the same, I'll list here other Talents that you may want to consider while leveling up - in no particular order,
1. Physical Prowess - Increases your health by 20 for Rank 1 and 2, then 30 for Rank 3 and 4.
2. Lightning Reflexes, Evade, Toughness - Increases your defense rating by 1, defense rating by 3, and armor rating by 15 for Rank 1 of each.
3. Holy Specialization - Increases Holy Damage by 1 and the effect of Holy healing by 2 at Rank 1.
4. Shadow Specialization - Increases Shadow Damage by 1.
5. Holy Affinity - Increase your Holy Attack Rating by 4 and decreases your Shadow Resistance by 2 at Rank 1.
6. Shadow Affinity - Increases your Shadow AR by 4, decreases Holy Resist by 2 at Rank 1.
7. Beast Slayer - Increases your physical and spell damage to beasts by 3 at Ranks 1, 2, 3, and by 4 at Rank 4.
8. Undead Slayer - same as Beast Slayer, but works against Undead.
9. Weapon Specialization - increases your damage done by either Mace or Staff by 1 at Ranks 1, 2, and 3, and by 2 at Rank 4.
I found that these listed Talents don't offer enough to the Priest to warrant learning them instead of Attributes, but feel free to try them out.
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Mana Management
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Balancing between a point of Intellect and a point of Spirit: It’s really hard to do and essentially comes down to which Attribute you find more necessary. 20 mana isn’t enough to make you cast more spells, and 7.5 mana per minute certainly won’t either.
This is the most complicated part about playing a Priest. Knowing very well how much mana you have to work with and how fast you regenerate it allows you to cast spells efficiently w/o having to sit after every battle. This comes mainly from experience, so as you are fighting pay attention to the amount of mana you consume during that fight. If you consume mana too quickly, try to increase your mana pool or space your spells out more. If you’ve drained your mana and need to drink for more than 40 seconds, try to increase your mana regeneration. If you fight long battles, having high regeneration rate is probably more useful than having a large mana pool.
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Equipment
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Armors Equipable: Cloth
Weapons Equipable: 1 Handed Maces, 2 Handed Staves, and 1 Handed Daggers (Trainable)
Since Priests can only wear cloth items, you may find yourself limited on the number of armors you can equip. Tailors can craft some very nice cloth items for all level ranges. There is a crafting database on WarCry.
Some examples of the most common dropped items include items with the prefix "Weave" - namely, Flameweave ~lvl 16, Frostweave ~lvl 20, Darkweave ~lvl 25, and Brightweave ~lvl 30.
I wish I could list every piece of these sets, but unfortunately I don't have access to my Troll Priest right now. Here are some examples:
1. Flameweave Robe: +6 Intellect
2. Flameweave Gloves: +3 Intellect
3. Frostweave Mantle: +2 Intellect, +2 Spirit
4. Darkweave Mantle: +3 Spirit
5. Darkweave Cowl: +5 Intellect, +6 Spirit
6. Brightweave Robe: +10 Spirit, +10 Health
7. Darkweave Cuffs: +2 Intellect, +2 Spirit
8. Frostweave Trousers: +7 Spirit
9. Flameweave Trousers: +5 Spirit, +3 Stamina
Since mana isn’t infinite, you’ll find that by swinging your Staff you can increase the amount of damage you do in between castings. Most Staves have a high damage base, but have a long swing delay time. You will probably want a Staff with nice Attribute bonuses over anything else, such as +Spirit and +Mana. Early on in your career however, you’ll simply find staves without attributes. Some example of dropped Staves with Attributes:
1. Acrobatic: +5 Stamina, but 18 dps.
2. Twisted Chanters: +5 Intellect, +32 Mana
3. Odo Ley: +5 Spirit, +3 Stamina (forgot this one).
Priests can also equip 1 Handed Maces and an Item in their offhand. 1 Handed Maces are very readily available by smiths, but offhand items with Attributes are relatively rare. Simply stick with whichever combo gives you the most damage or most Attributes.
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3. <Leveling and Partying>
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Priests are a support class, meaning that they function much better in a group than alone. If you play a priest, learn to group often. While you do have the ability to solo, you’ll be consuming large amounts of mana each kill, resulting in the need to rest often. However, if you are supported by a Warrior tank killing becomes much less tedious.
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Soloing
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Skills Typically Used:
1. Mind Blast
2. Holy Word: Shield
3. Shadow Word: Pain
4. Inner Fire
5. Sleep
This type of style reflects a Priest’s ability to Duel, since it involves a 1 on 1. Start off by casting your highest rank Shield and Inner Fire. Open with a Nuke of your choice such as, Mind Blast, then proceed to cast SW: Pain to maximize the DoT’s efficiency. Afterwards you can proceed to cast a Holy Smite if you want. Once the mob engages in Melee Combat, it is just up to how long you can continue swinging before they take out your Shield, which are typically a few hits. When the Shield drops, simply recast it and resume swinging. If the target it humanoid, it will attempt to flee when it’s Health drops too low. You can chase it down, or hit with a finishing Mind Blast. Once you’re done looting, simply continue or drink to restore lost mana.
This method will kill any mob of equal level easily, but if it has more life than you expected, a common Dueling tactic is to Sleep the target, then sit and drink to restore lost mana. If you have to do this for a mob, it is probably not worth the effort (drinks are expensive too). If you encounter an Add, you will need to sleep it quickly and resume finishing off your mob.
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Duos
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Priest & Warrior - My favorite combo; if Warrior is confident in his damage output, he can stay in Battle Stance while using Demoralizing Shout, Thunderclap, and Strike. A Warrior’s ability to wear Mail and use two of these wonderful debuffs turns a HW: Shield into an extremely powerful spell. Should the mob do more damage than the Warrior can handle, switch to Defensive Stance and use Taunt and Shield Block while the Priest engages in Healing or Shielding.
Priest & Paladin - Probably the most durable combo because of the Paladin’s Aura and Seals as well as his ability to wear Mail and Heal. This one is pretty much self explanatory. Brainwash whenever you need the target to stop attacking you.
Priest & Rogue - Since Rogues deal so much damage, you’ll find encounters to be fairly short. However, Rogues do not have a lot health and are limited to Leather Armors, so you may find yourself consuming a lot of mana Shielding or Healing.
Priest & Mage - Since the mage is also limited to cloth armor, you’ll be relying on Solo strats because of your ability to use Inner Fire. In other words, you’ll be a tanking Priest. Opening with Mind Blast will ensure that the target stays on you, but since you are double nuking, chances are it will die before it can engage in Melee combat.
Priest & Warlock - You can either choose to let the pet tank, or be the tank yourself. Choosing to tank yourself is probably more reliable.
Priest & Priest - Same as soloing really, except you have roughly double the mana and damage output.
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Grouping in General
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I’ve been in horrible groups before (where the warrior tank would yell at everyone)… so I STRONGLY suggest joining a guild and finding friends to play with often. Friends List, AIM, MSN, use whatever you need to communicate with people and such. Since you already know your roles ahead of time, it translates to more effective XPing.
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Dueling
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Dueling with a Priest can get pretty silly. I recommend making rules to ensure some sort of balance, but as of now it is way out of wack. A Priest can Shield, Fear, Nuke, Swing, Dot, then Sleep target and sit and Drink. This method will kill a Paladin and Warrior like nothing. Rogues can Sap (Sleep) you, which of course means they can sit and Eat themselves. Mages are cake because of their low life, meaning you can Sleep and Mana Burn to your heart’s content. Warlocks are a bit more dangerous however, because they can Fear you as well. A lot of balancing issues are needed, but this was to just give you an idea of what a Priest can do right now and why they are considered the most imbalanced Duelers.
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Twinking
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Priests are also the Kings of Twinking, specifically melee classes, and even more specifically, Warriors. A Level 30 unpartied Spirit Priest can make lowbies absolutely invulnerable. If you don’t want to be spoiled by this, skip this section now!
One method is to simply cast Holy World: Shield of the appropriate Rank on the target repeatedly so long as you can continually regenerate mana (helps to maximize your Spirit here). More practical is to Tank for the Twink. Simply cast a Mind Blast to hold agro and continue to deal roughly 40% of the targets life (using a Custom UI mod will help here) while allowing the twink to deal the remaining 60%.
Using this method on my decently equipped lvl 18 Warrior, he was able to gain roughly 12.5k XP per 30 minutes in Wailing Caverns. After he was high enough to Solo on his own, I simply let him higher level mobs while having the Priest use the former method (chain-Shielding). This net roughly 25k XP per 30 minutes, requiring a little over 3 hours to hit 30 from 28.
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<Have Fun>
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So there you have it, as much as I could churn out in one sitting. I only had one person look over this, so it isn’t very polished. If you have any questions on things I wrote or things I have left out, let me know.
I really enjoy the Priest class, so should you decide to play one I hope you enjoy it as well.