Shadow Priest
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First off, I will not give you levelling locations, everyone has their own preferences, this guide is to show you how to manage your Mana and how to efficiently level the priest with as few downtimes as possible.
Bags:
Your first priority should be to get more bag space. You do not want to be running back every 30 minutes to empty your bags. And you will need the gold!
You can get Herb a bag or two, these wonderful bags can only hold herbs but are bigger than other bags. Personally I seldom have more than 10 stacks of herbs in my bag, and when I do Im usually about to return to a city / inn where I can either put everything in my bank or mail it to a carrier toon. On the other hand if placed in a bank slot a herb bag is advantageous if you are planning on going for Alchemy.
(thanks to Huka for pointing this one out)
Auction House (AH) and Gold:
Auction house is a great way to loose your hard earned cash! Keep in mind that most people will be checking the AH between 18:30 and 20:00. There are also many more people online on a Friday evening than a Monday evening. Knowing this, put your auctions up at about 18:00 for the shortest amount of time (2 hours). It will usually get sold and you dont pay that much on commissions. Yes, the AH takes money for selling your items, the longer an auction is up, the more you pay. If you dont sell an item after having put it up 2-3 times, sell it to the NPC.
Sell anything green in the AH, leave the start bid as it is, put the buyout to about 30% – 50% more than the start price for green items. Blue and purple items have their own price range, if you are unsure what the item is worth ask in your guild or check wow.allakhazam.com or www.thottbot.com. These give a rough indication of the price range. The prices indicated are probably not what the items sell for on your server, but it gives you a range.
Professions:
At level 5 you can learn 2 professions. I would strongly suggest herbalism and skinning. High level herbs and leather sell well on the AH. The added bonus on herbs is that they stack up to 20, ore stacks to 10. You can argue that one can smelt ores to make stacks of 20 bars, and that metals sell very well on the AH, consider that you will be mining 5 seconds for every piece of ore, then you will have to smelt the ore, which takes even more time. Herbs get picked several at a time, the maximum I saw was 4, usually it will be one or two, sometimes three herbs at a time. Do not get herbalism and Mining! You can have only one tracker active at any given time.
DO NOT start a profession that produces something (alchemy, tailoring, etcÐ) until at least level 40! If you start training anything else than a gathering profession you will spend a lot of gold on recipes, gold that you will need for your mount. Only if you have good equipment, enough gold for your mount, start levelling earlier if you want.
Equipment:
Start to check the AH really early for a wand! GET A WAND! DONT THINK JUST DO IT! I made the mistake of levelling without a wand and only casting up to level 13. I never was more frustrated! MOBs delaying my cast times, bringing my health down so that I had to heal, using even more Mana. I needed to rest after every MOB. When I got a wand my levelling sped up by a factor of 6. Therefore, GET A WAND! Why not a staff? You will be getting a 25% damage bonus to wands later on. No staff can match that for DPS. Also, Wands count as Magic damage, which ignores armour. Staves are melee damage where armour gets factored in, therefore lowering your DPS.
As we are on the subject of wands, try to get a Shadow wand once you are close to getting Shadowform. Shadow wands never proc the following talents:
– stun effect of the Blackout talent
– heal effect of Vampiric Embrace talent
– damage bonus from the Darkness talent
(Thanks to MPS_Cowboy for this information)
Where shadow wands are affected is the 15% damage boost from Shadowform.
Wands have one big advantage and one big disadvantage. The advantage is that they cannot be delayed. The disadvantage is that they have a global cooldown on all your abilities.
What stats are better, Intelligence or Spirit? Here the opinions part. While having a large Mana pool is important, so is regeneration. The more mana you have, the more spells you can throw at a MOB, or the more you can heal without resting. The more spirit you have, the faster you regenerate Mana, although the returns on spirit are minimal, anything helps. Although it may cost you some silver, you can always boost your mana regeneration by drinking. Personally I prefer spirit gear, most prefer intelligence gear.
I found this thread in the Blizzard Forums that has some very good information concerning Intelligence / Spirit / MP5 equipment.
At level 44 buy a few stacks of Elixir of the Sages. This wonderful potion gives you +18 Intelligence and Spirit for one hour. Any boost is good! Wink
In short, spend that hard earned gold! Keep enough to buy yourself a mount at level 40 though.
Bandages. Bandages are always good to have. As a priest you have the advantage that most bandages will fill your health to 100%. Use bandages, not spells to fill your health, it may cost you something, but you reduce your downtime due to lack of Mana.
Talents:
Ah yes, talents. At level 10 you will be able to spend your first talent point.
Here is the order in which I suggest to spend talent points:
Shadow:
1. Spirit Tap 5/5 (5 points)
2. Shadow Focus 5/5 (5 points)
3. Mind Flay 1/1 (1 point)
4. Improved Shadow Word Pain 2/2 (2 points)
5. Improved Mind Blast 2/5 (2 points)
6. Shadow Reach 3/3 (3 points)
7. Shadow Weaving 5/5 (5 points)
8. Improved Mind Blast 3/5 (1 point)