Priest PvP guide

An important thing to note when going up against all classes (with a couple of exceptions) is to fear immediately. With the common use of PvP fear trinkets, making your opponent use their cooldown on the trinket ASAP is vital. For information specific to Shadow Priests, see the Shadow Priest PvP Guide.

Part of this page seems to be based on largely out of date information as it does not factor in PvP/Arena gear.

The first exception to immediately using fear is when you are fighting against a Warrior in Berserker Rage. The second exception is specific to Arathi Basin, where it can sometimes be wiser to save your fear for interrupting enemies who are trying to capture a flag.

Please note that there are many other circumstances where popping Psychic Scream is impractical. A partial list includes:

1. Nether-Protection (Warlocks) (talent based but many PvP-speced locks may have them) [edit: no longer makes them immune]

2. Cloak of Shadows (Rogues) (removes all harmful spell effects and grants 90% resistance to all spells for 5 seconds)

3. Bubble (Paladins) (please note this does not include Blessing of Protection as it does not give full immunity)

4. Beast Within, Beastial Wrath Hunters/Pets (Beast Mastery specced hunters only, when either turns red they are immune to Fear / Mind Control. Shield instead of fearing)

5. Bladestorming warrior. Bladestorm is without a doubt the most effective talent of Arms tree, they use it a lot.

6. Fear Warded players.

Rogue
From the Rogue PvP guide page:
 * If you catch a Priest without his shields up, the fight is already yours. Stunlock him and kill him.

For Rogue duels, the secret is simply staying alive. Keep in mind that Rogues are capable of dealing ridiculous amounts of burst damage immediately after leaving Stealth. Consequently, keep a Power Word: Shield (PW:S) on yourself to absorb some initial damage. Try to cast it early so that you can beat the cool down should you have to heal immediately after a stun, which is likely to happen soon after the Rogue's opening moves. Do not forget to make sure Inner Fire is on at all times to reduce damage your shield receives and your damage once your shield wears off. Once you are able to use Psychic Scream, the duel should be yours to win. Keep Shadow Word: Pain (SW:P)on the Rogue and he will be unable to Vanish and return to Stealth without using his Cloak of Shadows. Keep your back away from the Rogue if possible and use Renew on yourself. If you have Mind Flay, using it on Rogues can make it harder to maneuver around you and get to your back.

In the case of Undead Rogues with Will of the Forsaken or Rogues with Faction Insignia, or both, they may return to you immediately after you use Psychic Scream. Be sure to cast SW:P quickly after using Psychic Scream to prevent the Rogue from vanishing and stunlocking you to death. Against a rogue with Cloak of Shadows this is still a good idea since it forces the rogue to use this ability, but once they've used it, the DoT is gone, it can't be reapplied (till after the 5 second duration), and the rogue can re-stealth at will. Sometimes when they do escape your fear it is possible to heal and shield yourself long enough to use it a second time.

It should also be noted that two other conditions exist that may extend your life in such a duel or faction PvP situation; the first being if your priest is Discipline specced. And the second being if your character is Horde.

Discipline priests by far have the best survivability of all priest specializations, and with talents in Improved Power Word: Shield, Reflective Shield and Focused Will, you have a much better chance of surviving (and the case of a poorly geared, or unskilled rogue defeating him). Improved Power Word: Shield and Reflective Shield both synergize well with a priest in healer gear as Power Word: Shield benefits from 40% of your spellpower. Thus as a disc priest attempt to always have your bubble up as this will not only efficiently mitigate a rogue's damage but at the same time the reflective damage (with 3 points in Improved Power Word: Shield) with a DoT or 2 will likely kill the rogue. Pain Suppression will greatly extend the duration of your Power Word: Shield, but to most efficiently use it pop the shield first and then Pain Suppression as a lucky crit will more likely be eaten by a shield than a reduction. The Glyph of Pain Suppression allows this to be cast while stunned, which is ideal when a rogue has you otherwise incapacitated.

At level 66, Rogues gain Cloak of Shadows(CoS), an ability similar in appearance to Shadowform which removes all harmful spell effects on the Rogue and grants them 90% immunity to all spells for 5 seconds. Do not try to attack or fear the Rogue as long as it is on. However, note that your Shadowfiend can still do damage even when the rogue uses CoS. Simply try to heal through and hope you will be able to fear him afterward.

When you fight a rogue, hope that you have a team member who happens to be kind enough to help you instead of trying to get the most kills. A Subtlety rogue will probably Shadowstep when you try to cast a spell on him. For those of you who have played death knights, this is similar to the ghoul's leap ability, only a lot faster. You'll soon hate this frustrating message "Target needs to be in front of you", or "Target not in line of sight", when he was a split second ago. A lot of rogues do this just to annoy people, and it works.

Step by step how to win as a shadow.

1. Always keep your power word shield up. 2. He will probably sap you, often more than once, Do not trinket the sap! It will just waster your trinket and the Rogue will still be able to open on you with a Cheap Shot stun. 3. The Rogue will open with either a Cheap Shot or Garotte. If he opens with Cheap Shot, do not trinket this. If you do, the rogue will simply Kidney Shot you, leaving you stunned and helpless as he eats through your health bar. Wait out the Cheap Shot for the Rogue to Kidney Shot. trinket the Kidney Shot and quick pop a fear, dot him with shadow word pain and devouring plague as you gain distance. Pop your shadow fiend, and start mind flaying. (Keep moving!) If he opens with Garrote, you will be unable to cast any spells for 3 seconds. Note, if you have PW:S up, you will not take damage from the bleed effect of Garotte, but you will still be silenced for 3 seconds. Move away, use a Healthstone or potion if necessary and reapply your PW:S as soon as you can and use Psychic Scream. 4. As soon as he is out of the fear with will probably use CoS to remove your DOTs and Vanish. Use the opportunity to refresh your shield! 5. Now he tries to start over, he will be on about 16-20k health, with no CoS, let him him hit on your shield a bit, make him feel confident, and when you feel like its going to pop (the shield) you use dispersion, and be quick on the "remove buffs" simply right click your dispersion spell, it's almost like a second trinket. 6. Dot him quick with SW:Pain and Devouring Plague, he won't be ready if you were quick with removing the dispersion. 7. Disarm him with Psychic Horror, put up ALL your dots, and renew your shield. 8. Fear after the disarm, start Mind Flaying. 9. He's dead.

I strongly suggest you don't do this in the arena if the rogue has a healer with him, as this will waste all your cooldowns, and its not sure you will kill him if he's got a healer. If you have a healer on your side, it wouldn't matter if he got the first few hits. If you have a DPS, he should attempt to peel the rogue. If you're facing any combo of Rogue/DPS then do as described in 1-9

Warrior
Use Psychic Scream as much as possible in a dueling environment, although it is rare you will keep a warrior feared for long it can be used to buy you a few seconds or force an early intercept. Keep Shadow Word: Pain on the Warrior and Renew on yourself, with a constant renew and using Prayer of Mending and Powerword: shield you should be doing enough healing to counter a warriors damage. You should be able to beat any equal-leveled Warrior unless your opponent is noticeably better geared.

A Warrior is most likely to use Berserker Rage to make your Psychic Scream useless. Do not waste the cool down if you can, just try healing (hopefully you've got Healing Focus) while it's on and keep Shadow Word: Pain on him. The ability to keep a mental count down of spell durations is helpful with a Warrior's Berserker Rage. As soon as you think it's gone, Psychic Scream and use Mind Blast, depending on how much time you've got and if Mind Blast is cooling down. Pay attention to which stance the Warrior is in, Battle Stance is common for an initial Charge, but when they switch to Berserker Stance (noticeable by the large Dwarf head) he will have Berserker Rage which breaks all Fear and Incapacitate effects and shares the same cool down as Psychic Scream.

An experienced Warrior will try to strafe around you in order to avoid your spells. Avoid relying on Smite/Mind Blast unless they are at a distance. Throw a Vampiric Embrace on them, followed by a SW:P (and Vampiric Touch then Mind Flay if you're shadow specced). Keep your shield up and a win is almost guaranteed.

Keeping Power Word: Shield on you also prevents the Warrior from gaining the rage he needs to hurt you.

Faking heals: Commonly, to heal oneself during a Warrior fight, a Priest would attempt to use Flash Heal. Warriors in Berserker Stance have a skill called "Pummel" which interrupts this spell and locks out heals for 4 seconds. If you think the Warrior is going to use it, a good method to attempt to bypass this effect would be to begin casting Flash Heal, hit Escape to cancel the Flash Heal quickly, wait for the Pummel sound, and then cast it on you. "Faking" heals is common strategy in dueling. Keep in mind that faking twice costs 3 seconds in global cooldown, whereas the Pummel itself is a 4 second Silence with a 10 second cooldown, so it is worth it to take the Pummel rather than to fake and fail 3 times.

Over enthusiastic warriors, will wait for the first sign of a cast and pummel it, using faking heals this works quite well, but did you know if you get a speedy version of that (casts on first sign of you casting regardless of spell) you can trick him? if you think your enemy is one, cast hearthstone and watch him pummel it, voila, free hits without pummel at your for 10seconds, just be careful you don't actually hearthstone!

Another trick if hearthstone is on cooldown is to dot the warrior with Shadowword: Pain and cast Mind Control. If the warrior Pummels it you are free to heal or do holy damage, if he doesn't Pummel it you are able to move him a small distance away while your renew heals you and your DoT damages him. It also gives a bit of free time for the Weakened Soul effect to end so you can reshield.

Priest
"He who is fastest with the Mana-Burn and he who has the most resilience will be proclaimed the victor"

Equal-leveled Priest duels can often be very close if Priests are of similar spec. However, your choice of talents will factor greatly into the equation should you be in the higher levels. The obvious favorite will be the fully Shadow specced Priest, with an arsenal of talents like Silence and Shadowform. However, Discipline specced Priests do stand a chance, especially with the inclusion of talents like Improved Mana Burn.

Often Priests will spend their time Mana Burning each other (otherwise you'll be pounding on him while he simply heals through it), with some mix of Psychic Scream and Power Word: Shielding going on (keeping in mind Power Word: Shield absorbs the damage from Mana Burn, but your Mana is still drained). Mana Burn is a long casting spell and a well timed Psychic Scream can be invaluable, giving you extended opportunities for a "free" window to cast. Another good idea would be to use a Warrior/Rogue's tactics and strafe around your opponent, disrupting things such as smite, mind blast, and mana burn. Mana Burn in conjunction with the priest talent Power Infusion will prove exceptionally dangerous in PvP situations as a priests with points in Improved Mana Burn will be able to pop a mana burn almost as soon as the GCD is up. If you note golden bald head buff DISPEL IT ASAP.

If the Priests attempt to use fear on one another, the Priest with the best ability to resist or overcome fear should win. Methods for countering fear include Faction Insignia (available to all Priests), Will of the Forsaken (Undead Priests), Fear Ward (available to all Priests), and Every Man for Himself (Humans only). If your Psychic Scream is effective and your opponent's isn't, you should easily gain the upper hand.

Remember to Dispel liberally to get rid of Power Word: Fortitude, Renew and Power Word: Shield, along with any and all Magical debuffs the Priest may hit you with. However should you find yourself out of Mana or Silenced, things can turn rather sour. This is where it is a good idea to use the terrain you're fighting on to your advantage. While silenced break LoS either by running behind something or strafing around your opponent.

With a discipline or holy spec, you should be able to heal with rank 1 spells just from your mana regen. To counter another priest doing this in a healer vs. healer fight, use rank 1 or rank 3 Mana Burn to make sure they cannot cast any heal. [edit: all spell ranks have the same mana cost now, so downranking is useless]. It's generally at this point that the fight turns to wanding each other, but don't forget to constantly watch your opponent's mana, and if you can spare it use a Shadow Word: Pain.

Warlock
Besides the Shaman, this is perhaps the hardest duel you'll find. Equally geared Holy Priests don't stand much of a chance since the Felhunter is most likely to counter your heals. However, Shadow Priests do pose a certain threat to the Warlock.

Felhunter, Demonology: Try to use Psychic Scream on them both early and have your Insignia of the Alliance/Horde ready. Make sure you Power Word: Shield AFTER the Felhunter devours your buffs so it will last long enough for you to absorb some damage; some people like to give themselves all available buffs so the Felhunter Devours some of the more useless ones (if you're lucky). Before the real damage, the Warlock will probably DoT and Fear you. Use Fear Ward right after the first Devour Magic. If you can time your Silence and Dispel (to get rid of his Shadow Ward or the DoTs he put on you), it's basically about burst damage and keeping yourself healed.

Felguard, Demonology: There is no easy way of doing this. Equally geared shadow Priests and Warlocks have 50% chance of defeating each other according to pure luck and gear. The Felguard will do extremely heavy damage if ignored so try to fear it ASAP. If you get a chance, get close to the Warlock and fear them both. Having shield and Inner Fire up is essential for you will receive heavy damage. Cast it early and be ready to cast it again after a good timed Silence. Discipline Priests with Reflective Shield and Improved Power Word: Shield will find this the easiest of warlocks to beat as the shield will reflect not only damage from dots but for the duration of a long match the felguard as well.

Succubus, Destruction: The commonly used tactic would be to Seduce you and then Soul Fire. Since Seduce (which some people forget can be removed by Will of the Forsaken, although it might be a good idea to save it for a Fear) is a short range spell, try to avoid it and open the duel yourself with a DoT, Vampiric Embrace and Mind Blast. Save Silence for after the Fear because that's usually when Death Coil will be the spell of choice and that's when it gets ugly. A good trick for all priests is to setup a focus target and set your focus to the Succubus, this way when it begins to cast Seduce you will be able to cast a Shadow Word:Death and break it much in the same way you would break a Polymorph

Be aware of the new 2.0.1 Affliction spell Unstable Affliction when using Dispel on yourself or others. The damage you take after dispelling scales with the Warlock's +damage equipment, and is also capable of a critical strike.


 * If you have the proper Shadow gear, you might consider putting a single DoT on the Succubus and let the damage kill it while you take care of the Warlock.(Of course, Shadow word:pain is not gonna kill a succubus, even with their low health...)
 * Remember that if the warlock is simply using an Imp one Shadow Word: Death will be enough to kill it, removing both the Blood Pact and the extra damage.


 * 1) Be aware, if a  warlock is specific enough to spend 3 talent points on Nether Protection, a shadow priest is almost for sure to lose the battle, even though its efficiency has been cut by half.

Mage
As soon as the duel starts the most important thing to do is to put Shadow Word: Pain on the mage, Power Word: Shielding yourself before the duel starts is a good idea. Continue with a Psychic Scream and then Mind Blast, by now you should spam Flash Heal on yourself and Renew. Make sure to keep Shadow Word: Pain on the mage and a Power Word: Shield on yourself at all times. The mage can Counterspell you, which means that you will not be able to heal for 8 seconds. Heal early in order to survive. Also note that mages with 17 points in the Arcane tree (a very common feature for PvP mages) are likely to have the talent Improved Counterspell which will silence you for 4 seconds even if the actual counter spell failed to destroy one of your trees.

Discipline Priests: Protect yourself with Power Word: Shield. After that, use Shadow Word: Pain on them as soon as possible as they are going to polymorph you, atlhough you can SW: D to break it, however a smart mage will fake poly, take SW: D, then recast poly. Use this time to close distance on the mage so you can trinket then fear. Spam dispel magic on the mage until you receive "nothing to dispel." This will reduce a fair amount of their mana pool and any other magic buffs they may have on. Against frost specs do not bother self dispelling as this only waste your time and mana. Typically the mage's mana bar is too large to mana burn, however it can be useful to absorb a counterspell which mages are fond of doing due to their perception of manaburn. Re-cast Power Word: Shield and Shadow Word: Pain, mana burn some more until they are close to 5% mana. Once they are here, if they are still alive from your reflective shield, DoTs and mana burns, do some Direct Damage (Mind Blast, Holy Fire or Smite, Mind Blast). Do not bother to Mana Burn below 5% as their spell casting will reduce them anyway and you don't want to waste mana on a non full effect, although it can give you an extra advantage. Some useful info/things to watch out for:

-If they get close, fear them. if they are fire specced they're probably trying to use Dragon's Breath on you (which is nasty). Don't bother to fear them unless they get close to you, as you want to keep your fear free. Keep it handy in case they blink in on you.

-Keep them Dotted at all times. the last thing you want is for them to sheep you and evocate.

-Make sure your Power Word: Shield is up at the start of the fight, and as much as possible during. You don't want to get hit with a Pyroblast without it.

-Throwing a holy fire in at the start of your DD should be fine, but only at the start when they are going to be getting low on mana. Remember, they have mana gems and Holy Fire takes forever to cast. [Edit: Holy fire, with the holytree talent Divine fury gives Holy fire a 1,5 casting time.]

-Use a well timed Shadow Word Death to break Polymorph effects

-A mage will often interrupt your mana burn giving you free time to heal, make sure you use the time to get to full health, remember mages can do very high burst damage and with a well placed silence can burst down a priest without a problem.

Here is a useful video for disc spec priests which during the first part shows how to duel a frost mage.

All level 70 mages get a very doubled edged sword by the name of Spell Steal. While priest without Silent Resolve are likely to have most if not all of their precious buffs (note it can steal bubbles as well) stolen over a short time frame, this can be used to your advantage if done right. All specs of mages are relatively short on mana with pools rarely exceeding 9k. The overactive mage will attempt to spellsteal every buff you have, at this point simply toss up Abolish Disease or Rank 1 renew.

Oh and remember to dispell all of their buffs(since they have only magic buffs) and every magic effect they put on you.

Druid
In general you want to act as already described on this page, in correspondence to which form the Druid is taking.

The Druid has to change back to humanoid form to heal, so it is very important to Psychic Scream or Silence him the moment he leaves Cat, Bear, Dire Bear or Moonkin Form.

The Druid can dish out some damage without spending any Mana (and are immune to Mana effecting spells such as Mana Burn) so saving Mana is very important. Spells such as Holy Fire are very useful here simply because of their small price of Mana.

Easiest way to beat druids. Let them use all heals except healing touch. (if they use healing touch they are stupid anyways but you should silence it) If they cast any other healing spell start spamming dispel. Even if they get a small heal (Ie: regrowth) they will consume A LOT of mana and its not worth it if you think about it. Note, however that Lifebloom instantly heals the druid when it is dispelled, and is a very mana-efficient heal, however the amount healed is small. Chain dispelling rank-1 lifeblooms will only help the druid, but dispelling stacked lifeblooms or lifebloom + another HoT is worth the cost of the dispel.

Resto druids are most likely the easiest to beat, however you won't find very many druids who will duel as a tree. If they do, it is important to constantly cast Mana Burn and Dispel Magic, as all of their heals can be dispelled. Druids cannot regenerate mana as easily as priests, except when using Innervate, which can be dispelled (and should). Once they are out of mana, it is very easy to kill them.

Decked out mages can't beat resto druids because of their continuous HoT heals. An ungeared priest can easily destroy resto druids as long as they are fast enough with dispels.

Hunter
I have found hunters to be one of the easiest classes to kill. They have no way to heal themselves apart from easily interrupted bandaging so be sure to keep SW:Pain up at all times. When facing a hunter solo, pop on PW:S on yourself and then SW:Pain on the hunter. Don't worry about their pet. Focus on the hunter. I then try to rush in towards the hunter and fear him along with his pet.

The basic strategy here is: keep PW:S up at all times. Fear the pet when it gets close to you, keep SW:Pain on the hunter, and nuke the crap out of him from close range (if you can) or from a distance (if you are slowed, don't waste time trying to get close to him). Hunters do have the ability to do a massive amount of ranged damage but do not have many hit points, so a Priest's ability to shield will win the fight any day. Try to take down the hunter as soon as possible because viper sting will drain your mana very fast. This is one of those situations when First aid comes in handy as it can produce medicaments to treat poisons, otherwise undispellable by priests (and most of the classes).

An uber geared hunter with the ability to crit on almost every shot does pose a problem for Priests, especially that their pets can also hit with melee, so having some talents in Inner Fire and preferably Glyph of Inner Fire is a wise decision.

Beast Mastery hunters are by far the most dangerous of the 3 specs as they can become immune to fear and with points in Cobra Reflexes and using Rapid Fire can quickly score multiple 3k white crits with good gear. In battles with these hunters your best bet will be to use your terrain and hope that he's slow to react to Line Of Sight errors.

Since the Burning Crusade, Hunters have a new anti-caster ability in Silencing Shot, a 3-second Silence on a 20-second cooldown. Incapacitate or Fear them if possible when you need to heal, and keep in mind that they can't Silence you if you aren't in line of sight.

Be very wary of freeze traps. Don't follow the hunter if he/she backs straight up. Instead try backing up yourself. Chances are that if non of your spell can reach him, none of his can reach you (and he's still DoT-ed). He/she will hope that you follow their backwards movement in order to drag you through the freeze trap. Once you are frozen, a well placed aimed shot is all they need. If you are shielded, the aimed shot will undoubtedly take down your shield in one hit. They will most likely then use silence shot and send their pet on you to prevent you from casting while they get ready for a second aimed shot. If you are unsheilded and you are critted by an aim shot, based on your gear and the hunter's gear, the crit will surely knock a large chunk of your health down. Think of it as being backstabbed by a rogue while unsheilded. If they back up when they see you, don't follow. But if they just stop and try to take you out with brute force, shield, DOT, fear the pet (and hunter if you can), then throw mind blast and whatever else at them. The goal is to do as much damage as possible before fear wears off and to make sure there are DOTs on them. In many cases, when fighting someone of the opposite faction, and they KO you, they neglect to notice that they have DOTs and will surely die soon if they don't heal.

You can actually use freezing traps to your advantage; you will generally notice they lean down to place one, be wary of the spot. If you don't walk directly into it they try to stay around that area to get you to walk into it. Refresh PW:S, SW:P, and renew, then walk towards them, try to Fear them first if you can. While they wait for the 10 seconds of it to wear off while they're backing down, your spells are cooling off, you're healing yourself, and you're dealing damage.

Paladin
In general, A Holy Priest vs. a Paladin will for the most part be an endurance battle. The Priest will probably have a hard time beating a paladin because the paladin can keep up sustained DPS, while the Priests mana pool will eventually become empty.

A Shadow Priest can bring down a Paladin quite easily with some good burst DPS. Keep in mind that a Retribution-specced Paladin can bring the Shadow Priest down just as easily with better burst DPS. Also keep in mind the paladin can refill health with Lay on Hands (once per 20 minutes, unless they have talents which reduce it (Improved Lay on Hands), but its still a long time) and use Divine Shield to scrap all of your debuffs and DoTs, not to mention the invulnerability, use that time to heal/bandage if you have to, but watch out for consecration, as they can still cast it to disrupt you, or even whack you with his two-hander (Paladins still can attack in Divine Shield, albeit at half their normal speed, and Protection Paladins at their normal speed). You can only kill a paladin once he has used up both the Divine Shield and Lay on Hands abilities. So force him into using them, trying to avoid letting them use their normal heals, while conserving some mana for the end of the fight. Start the duel in Shadowform. Retribution Paladins in duels use mostly 2h swords with slow speed, use this to differentiate them from others. Jumping around in circles when you can will help to avoid melee strikes. Cast Vampiric Embrace, SW:Pain and Devouring Plague to get back some health. When they stun you with Hammer of Justice, expect to eat some damage. Right after this you should fear him right away, and or put up PW:Shield (don't waste the mana on Devouring Plague if there's chance the Paladin could use Divine Shield, or cleanse). If you start to get really low on health don't hesitate to remove Shadowform and cast a large heal on yourself and do a portion of the duel while not in Shadowform. Only go back into Shadowform if your current mana allows and you're at near full health. During fear you can either mana burn (though it may break the fear), nuke or mind flay. If you want to conserve mana then you can shoot with a wand. In that situation (paladin is full of DoTs and debuff and getting low on health) they may panic and use Divine Shield, heal up or even use lay on hands. So at this point you are basically as if you started out new, but with only one half the mana. Redo debuff, Vampiric Embrace, DoT, touch/hex of weakness while trying to avoid getting in melee range, or being in front of the paladin. Shoot wand, melee, redo DoT, etc. You will probably need to save some mana to finish him off. It is a good idea to use Dispel as he may not even notice when he loses a blessing in the fervor of the fight. You can also dispel yourself out of a judgement though the mana lost compared to the gain on low levels is very low.

Another strategy you can use, which works very well if you are a holy, disc, or any combination of both. Shadow Priests might not have to do this if their burst DPS is high enough, but it's still a good strategy. Sometimes you will have to force the Paladin into using his long cooldown spells (Divine Shield, Lay on Hands, etc). However, if the paladin has no mana to do so in the first place, this isn't a problem [EDIT: Lay on hands now uses 0 mana]. Once you get a hold of the situation, do a quick shield + fear immediately followed by a series of mana burns until the paladin has 0 mana. Then quickly do a couple dispels to get rid of any buffs the paladin may have. A paladin with no mana or buffs is like a disarmed Warrior with no rage. Now you can do DoTs and a couple mind blasts. Mana regeneration is inevitable, so you will have to do a couple more mana burns. Try to keep the paladin at 0 mana. The paladin can cast Lay on Hands even with 1 mana, so this is almost unstoppable. Just continue using mana burn, DoTs, and fear (with the occasional mind blast and PW:Shield), and the Paladin won't stand a chance.

Also, Holy Fire is a very useful ability in this fight. Paladins are most likely to use shadow aura so they'll never see it coming. It's also a VERY cheap spell so you could use it after mana burning him to 0 and still have some spare mana to heal. Oh and keep an eye out for the paladin's attacks: If he casts blessing of wisdom on himself, it'll be a lot harder to mana burn him. Always remember to dispel EVERY judgment he does on you.

If you're lvl 70 or above a very helpful trick would be to cast Inner Focus and then Mass Dispel when the paladin uses his bubbles. This should be followed by Silence since most paladins use their invulnerability time to heal.

Shaman
A good shaman is hard to kill by a Priest, albeit far from impossible. The most important thing to know is that a shaman without mana is a dead shaman. Shamans have low mana pools, horrible efficiency, and may only regenerate mana using Mana Spring Totem (a very slow mana regeneration totem) or Mana Tide Totem (a quick mana regeneration totem that requires 31 points in Restoration).

Therefore, Mana Burn becomes an incredibly potent spell. But it needs to be used carefully.

Shaman have 2 sources of DPS. Shocks and auto-attack, which can proc Windfury. A smart shaman will not spam shocks, so their damage is somewhat lowered, but since all their utility is in their shocks, this means that casting might not be the easiest thing.

Purge is the third offensive ability they have, and it is generally used judiciously. A shaman will purge the PW:S almost immediately upon it being cast, as well as renew. Purge is fairly expensive (140 mana). This means that sometimes, the shaman is forced to spend 500 mana, to remove even a rank 1 renew. Use this to your advantage.

If a shaman starts to cast a lightning spell (his hands glow white-blue, instead of green), that's the best time to cast a shield on you. It will most likely absorb the spell, and it will be followed by a purge, and you just wasted 7-800 of his mana (with a bit more of yours, but that's important, you have more). One more spell to look out for is Lava Burst this will crit if the shaman has put a Flame Shock on you and can hit for 8 to 10k fire damage, as soon as you see him casting it quickly put a shield up or silence him, if your a disc priest your reflective shield should crit the shaman back for about 3.5 to 4k damage which is a alot if stacked with DoTs, Holy Fire and Smite.

Fear should be negated by their tremor totem, but luckily, the latter rarely works. It's based on a system of pulses, which go every 3-5 seconds. However, it might take quite a few pulses for it to work, while your SW:Pain and mana burn deplete both life and mana. Tremor totems are cheap, and the shaman will drop them a lot, which is good, because that means no earthbind or +STR totems are being dropped.

Totems also have a short range, so running out is a good idea. If he/she plants totems, grounding or otherwise, you should not waste time attacking them. Just get out of the range of them; this is much more effective than wasting attacking or healing time. This is not applicable in a duel due to the range limit but should be utilized in every other situation. You need to get away from their tremor totem in order to fear them.

Shadow Priests have Silence, which is a great tool against any shaman. Silencing a heal, and applying a couple more mana burns, and then casting a fear, and you should be able to down the shaman very quickly.

There are many healing-based shamans out there with very little DPS but with the healing abilities of a professional Restoration specced druid. Do NOT underestimate them! If they start casting a heal (green hands) with a grounding totem down, don't try to destroy it nor use Silence on the shaman regardless. Use Psychic Scream for the Grounding Totem will be useless. Don't worry about tremor totems. The important thing is that you stopped him from healing... for now. If you are too far away for Psychic Scream, run into Silence range while hitting SW:P. The totem can only absorb one spell every 10 seconds, and the global cooldown should be finished before their heal is, if they used their big one. Even if they chose to use two Lesser Healing Waves instead of one big one, interrupting the second heal will still help.

Death Knight
Death Knights can be a fairly easy class to take depending on your spec and that of the Death Knight (DK). It is also mandatory that you remain calm while fighting one, as making mistakes will give them the match. Having a cool head with quick reactions should give even the best DK a headache.

When dueling a DK, he may first use Death Grip to bring you within melee range (An early cast of Death Grip is often a sign of an inexperienced DK, however, as they now must wait on the cooldown to use it again as the Priest kites). Using Psychic Horror will give you a first advantage in this case. Most DK’s who fight priests know that we automatically use a fear as soon as we are within melee range, so they counter by popping Anti-Magic Shell the moment they get close to you. You’ll have to wait for that to expire. You may also find the DK using Chains of Ice constantly. This can be easily countered by swiftly casting Dispel Magic on yourself, or of course the PvP trinket (if you have one), but of course this is better saved for other surprises such as the Unholy DK Ghoul Pet ability Gnaw (stun) or a Frost DK's Hungering Cold. A Death Knight cannot get rid of any of your magical effects so it is important to ensure that Abolish Disease is always up and Power Word: Shield is refreshed as necessary as this will greatly reduce the amount of damage you will take. Renew can also be used as the Death Knight will not be able to get rid of it.

For Disc priests, Psychic Scream and try to get distance between you and him. Throw on your SW:Pain and your Devouring Plague along with Mind Blast, Smite, or Penance to keep damage on them.

The hardest fight for you will most likely vary for you between frost and unholy. Against frost, wait until the DK uses Hungering Cold before you use your trinket and keep Abolish disease on to reduce damage from their Howling Blast. Prepare to be slowed by an undispellable 50% all the time, as it comes with every application of Frost Fever. You may find Unholy to be one of the more difficult fights, due to their ghoul being a good chunk of their dps. Use Shackle Undead on their pet and avoid coming too close to the spot where the ghoul is. You should use Abolish Disease before you even make contact with the DK, as unholy seems to do the most damage through their diseases, although the damage is still negligible compared to melee damage, so don't cast it when being beaten up. From that point, fighting them will be similar to all other DKs.

An often-taken PvP ability for DKs is the Frost talent Lichborne, which breaks fear and makes the DK immune to it for 10 seconds. They become undead at this point, but they can still be Horrored (not technically considered a Fear), and Shackled. Shackling him will force him to take it off or suffer the consequences.

Recognizing what spec a DK has is an important part of your combat experience, as you can easily be fooled thinking a DK is unholy by his pet ghoul, thus trinketing out of his stun, and be struck with Hungering Cold because the DK was frost-unholy.