Priest talents

While all priests learn the basic skills, many specialize in a particular area. All of these spiritually gifted casters start from the same basic mold: the disciplined priest accustomed to combat survival, the devout healer, and the dark-minded shadow priest.

The result is a unique and finely-honed professional. They are capable of everything expected of a priest, but outstanding in their chosen area; they may bring utility and survivability to others, powerful healing to raids/groups, or respectable amounts of high shadow damage for dps.

At level 10 the priest is able to choose a specialization. Choosing a specialization immediately grants powerful bonuses and unique abilities, dramatically changing the style of play and opening up new possibilities for the priest. Each of the three priest specializations - Discipline, Holy and Shadow - also unlocks a corresponding tree of talents in which the priest can choose to spend their talent points, enhancing existing abilities, improving stats and even granting new abilities. However once a specialization has been chosen, 31 points must be spent in the primary tree before the others will be unlocked, further ensuring the distinctive play style and abilities characteristic of each type of priest.

Talent points become available at level 10, and one point is granted every other level onward, to a maximum of 41. These can be used immediately, without a visit to the trainer, or kept indefinitely until a good talent strategy has been worked out. This allows the priest to pick areas of their trade that they do often, or enjoy, and become even more proficient at them.

At level 30, players can learn Dual Talent Specialization, allowing them to switch between two sets of talents, specializations, glyphs and action bars. This allows priests to explore the different play styles offered by each of the specializations without losing their current choices or spending too much gold respeccing.

Talents should be thought of as bonuses and upgrades to abilities and stats, rather than being required for any given priest role, and good equipment and skillful use of the standard abilities is usually more important.

To learn further about priest talents, builds and glyphs, see
 * Priest talent analysis for a very in-depth analysis of each talent.
 * Priest glyphs and the main glyph page for information and listings of the glyphs available to priests.
 * Priest builds for some standard builds and suggestions for talents and glyphs.

Discipline
Uses magic to shield allies from taking damage as well as heal their wounds.

Holy
A versatile healer who can reverse damage on individuals or groups and even heal from beyond the grave.

Choosing the Holy tree grants the ability Holy Word: Chastise, an instant cast attack that deals a moderate amount of damage and stuns the target for 3 seconds. This can be critical in PvP, allowing the priest time to escape, heal or retaliate, and serving as a handy nuke and interrupt. Holy Word: Chastise's 30 second cooldown can be reduced to 21 seconds with the talent Tome of Light. Spiritual Healing increases all healing by 15%, helping to make Holy priests such powerful healers, while Meditation allows 50% of your mana regeneration from Spirit to continue while in combat, helping to make up for the lack of mana regeneration abilities available for Holy priests, although they will still struggle with going oom far more often than Discipline or Shadow priests. Absolution allows Holy (and Discipline) priests to use Dispel Magic on friendly targets, adding a powerful utility to their arsenal, while the Holy priest Mastery Echo of Light, available at level 80, adds a heal over time effect to all direct heals.

Holy priests are flexible healers that can provide powerful healing on single targets, with greatly improved direct heals such as Flash Heal and Greater Heal, and enhanced HoTs with Renew. Circle of Healing allows Holy priests to instantly 'smart-heal' a group of players, while Guardian Spirit can save a single target from certain death. The Holy ability Chakra allows the priest to choose between substantial buffs to direct healing, area of effect healing, or even damage dealing, with Revelations granting the priest a powerful instant cast single-target healing or area-of-effect HoT ability while in the corresponding Chakra state. Holy priests also gain access to unique abilities such as Spirit of Redemption and Lightwell, expanding their healing capabilities even further. The Holy talent tree primarily focuses on improving the potency and effectiveness of healing spells, as well adding some powerful abilities to the priest's arsenal.

Shadow
Uses sinister Shadow magic, especially damage-over-time spells, to eradicate enemies.

The Shadow Priest is the priest's damage-dealing talent build. Mind Flay becomes the staple damage-dealing spell, with Improved Shadow Word: Pain and Improved Mind Blast significantly augmenting damage between Mind Flay cycles. Vampiric Embrace and Vampiric Touch bring immense utility to a group, as they heal and regenerate mana whilst the Priest deals damage, and Devouring Plague gives the priest additional self-healing. Mind Spike and Mind Blast can also be used for immense burst damage.

Shadow Priests also bring the utility of being able to Silence, Psychic Horror and inflict Paralysis on their enemies, as well as an Improved Psychic Scream. The damage reduction from Shadowform and Dispersion makes a shadow priest a resilient foe.

Shadow priests need not worry about going oom, since talents to reduce the Shadowfiend cooldown, Masochism, Dispersion and Dark Archangel (charged by Mind Flay) will provide an almost endless supply of mana.