WoW Forever Priest Guide

Priests in WoW: Forever are still cloth-wearing healers and Shadow casters, but the class gets several tools that used to be locked behind race or expansion. Fear Ward and Devouring Plague are available to every Priest, Shadow Word: Death is baseline, and each tree gains a signature spell from later expansions, reworked for the Forever pace. This page summarizes Blizzard’s official class deep dive.

Plan your build: the WoW Forever Priest talent calculator uses the full talent trees from the game client’s own data, with every rank, row requirement and tooltip.

Gnome Priests are new in Forever and get their own pair of racial Priest spells.

Baseline changes every Priest gets

• Fear Ward and Devouring Plague are learned by all Priests at level 20, regardless of race.
• Divine Spirit is baseline at level 30 instead of a Discipline talent.
• Shadow Word: Death joins the class at level 32: instant Shadow damage on a 15-second cooldown, but if the target survives you take damage equal to 10% of your maximum health.
• Prayer of Healing now heals the target’s party (and their pets) instead of only your own party.
• Renew from several Priests can now sit on the same target.
• Fade reduces twice as much threat.

Racial Priest spells

Each race’s Priest has two unique spells. Blizzard re-evaluated all of them and added a set for Gnomes:

Race	Spells in Forever
Gnome (new)	Confounding Flash (level 10): confuses up to 5 nearby enemies for 3 seconds, broken by damage. Contingency Plan (level 20): a 30-second ward that shields and heals an ally if they drop below 35% health.
Dwarf	Desperate Prayer (unchanged). Chastise (level 20): damages and roots a Humanoid for 2 seconds.
Human	Divine Grace (level 10): instantly heals an ally below 50% health and removes Weakened Soul; cannot target yourself. Feedback (unchanged).
Night Elf	Starshards: much more damage, now on a 30-second cooldown. Elune’s Grace: melee and ranged attacks are 50% less likely to hit you for 15 seconds or 3 misses.
Troll	Hex of Weakness and Shadowguard (both unchanged).
Undead	Touch of Weakness (unchanged). Dark Sacrifice (level 20): trade your own health for mana over time, scaling with Spirit.

Note that Fear Ward, once a Dwarf-only spell, is now for everyone, which is why Dwarves receive Chastise instead.

Talent structure

Talents start at level 10 with gold medal talents at 11, 16 (new), 21 and 31 points. Respec at a class trainer in a major city; Dual Specialization unlocks at level 40.

Discipline

• Penance (new 21-point gold medal): a 2-second channel on a 12-second cooldown that either damages an enemy or heals an ally every second.
• Soul Warding (new 16-point gold medal): lowers the cooldown and cost of Power Word: Shield.
• Renewed Hope (new): more crit on your direct heals against targets with Weakened Soul, and those heals shorten Weakened Soul.
• Divine Aegis: critical heals leave a 12-second absorb shield that does not stack.
• Holy Precision: up to 18% hit with Holy spells, so healers do not need hit gear.
• Power in Light and Twin Disciplines (new, row 1) add damage options for Smite, Penance and instant spells.
• Mental Agility moves earlier and costs 3 points; Meditation gives much more mana from Spirit; Mental Strength now increases Intellect.
• Removed or merged: Unbreakable Will (into Silent Resolve), Improved Power Word: Fortitude and Divine Spirit (now baseline), Force of Will.

Holy

• Binding Heal (new 16-point gold medal): heals you and your target at once with no cooldown, tuned to be as good as Flash Heal even when you are not hurt.
• Prayer of Mending (new 31-point gold medal, requires Spirit of Redemption): a heal that triggers when the target is damaged and then jumps to nearby party or raid members, up to 5 heals.
• Litany of Light (new): refunds part of a heal’s cost if it is a different spell from your previous heal, rewarding variety.
• Twilight Focus (formerly Healing Focus) now protects all casts from pushback.
• Inspiration triggers from any non-periodic critical heal; Spiritual Healing needs only 3 points.
• Searing Light is redesigned around Holy damage and free Holy Novas.
• Removed: Improved Prayer of Healing and Lightwell.

Shadow

• Shadowform is reworked: you can cast every non-healing spell while in it, Shadow spells cost 50% less mana and their critical strike bonus is doubled, though the flat damage bonus is lower.
• Vampiric Embrace becomes the 16-point gold medal, lasting 30 seconds on a 1-minute cooldown.
• Shadow Weaving now only boosts your own damage, not other players’.
• Improved Mind Flay (new): more damage and range for Mind Flay, with a weaker slow.
• Devouring Contagion (new): cheaper Devouring Plague, and it jumps to a nearby enemy when the target dies.
• Early Demise (new): more Shadow Word: Death crit on targets below 20% health.
• Silence no longer requires Improved Psychic Scream. Removed: Improved Vampiric Embrace.

Strengths and weaknesses, according to Blizzard

Blizzard calls the Priest the most versatile healer in the game, because it can use both direct heals and heals over time and is the only class with absorb shields. Discipline leans further into Power Word: Shield. The trade-off is fragility: Priests wear cloth and have few ways to escape, so they rely on tanks and crowd control from allies. Shadow deals strong damage over time but has less utility in that role than a Warlock.

What is not confirmed yet

• Spell numbers, which Blizzard said could change through beta.
• Exact per-level damage and healing numbers in some talent tooltips; these scale with your character, so our Priest talent calculator shows them as formulas or dashes.
• Healing gear and best-in-slot lists, which depend on items that go live with launch and with raids on December 9.

Related guides

• Priest talent calculator
• All WoW Forever classes
• Race and class combinations
• Class picker tool
• Dungeons in WoW Forever