The priest class is known for its many healing abilities. This includes instant-cast spells that heal over time, slow-casting spells that offer higher overall healing per second, and area of effect spells that will affect an entire party. Priests, unlike other classes, get two special spells based on their character race.

In addition to their role as healers, Priests are also known to be amazing damage dealers in both PvP environments and PvE environments when they specialize in the Shadow Tree. Priests that focus on damage rather than healing tend to focus primarily on shadow damage although they do have some holy damage spells as well, but these spells are mana inefficient and Shadow Priests have more mana efficient alternatives such as “Mind Flay” and “Mind Blast” as well as a few Damage over Time spells “Shadow Word: Pain” “Shadow World: Death”. The Night Elf racial spell causes arcane damage instead of either shadow or holy damage. Shadow Priests may change into a Shadowform, which increases shadow damage dealt as well as decreases physical damage taken, but makes them unable to cast spells from the Holy tree, meaning their healing is limited to Vampiric Embrace while in Shadow Form. Shadow Priests can also place a variety debuffs on enemy players and targets that regenerate health via “Vampiric Embrace” and mana via Vampiric Touch for the entire party by a certain percentage of shadow damage that is being dealt to them by the player. This effect is also a Shadow Priests greatest disadvantage as they tend to generate threat very easily pulling “aggro” off the tank unless specialized properly and are aware of their threat generation.

Priests have several spells which affect the mind or otherwise control their opponents. They can Shackle Undead, preventing a single undead enemy from taking any action for a period of time or until damaged. Priests can cause several enemies around them to run away in fear. They can even control the actions of a single humanoid opponent (both NPC and Player Character) for a period of time, or look through the eyes of either an ally or an opponent, primarily useful to scout. In addition, priests can temporarily make themselves appear less threatening to NPC opponents by using the spell “Fade”, which makes them less prone to attack for a short period.

All priests have the ability to buff allies by increasing their stamina with “Fortification” and their resistance to shadow damage with “Shadow Protection” and can also apply a protective shield to themselves and allies to negate damage “Holy Shield”. Discipline specialized priests can also increase the spirit of allies.