Note: as you are leveling up, put ALL talent points into Shadow Talents (except the 2nd point in Improved Fade) until you are level 40 and have Shadowform. Then you can put all the remaining points into Discipline talents as you head to level 60.

Discipline Talents (19 points)
· Unbreakable Will - 5/5 points
· Improved Power Word: Shield - 3/3 points
· Martyrdom - 2/2 points
· Inner focus - 1/1 point
· Meditation - 3/3 points
· Mental Agility - 5/5 points

Holy Talents (0 points)
· None

Shadow Talents (32 points)
· Spirit Tap - 5/5 points
· Blackout - 3/5 points
· Improved Shadow Word: Pain - 2/2 points
· Mind Flay - 1/1 point
· Improved Mind Blast - 5/5 points
· Shadow Reach - 3/3 points
· Improved Fade - 2/2 point
· Vampiric Embrace - 1/1 point
· Shadow Weaving - 5/5 points
· Darkness - 4/5 points
· Shadowform - 1/1 point

***Group Healer Template ***
This is a solid group healing support template. This talent template focuses on mana efficiency of your healing spells, uninterrupted casting and aggro management. You will be painfully slow trying to accomplish anything solo with this template, but you will be a group's best friend! I recommend waiting all the way until level 60 to try this template. You should not consider it at all until you are past level 55 and hitting the high level instances (Scholomance, Stratholme, Blackrock Spire, Dire Maul, Etc.)

Discipline Talents (21 points)
· Unbreakable Will - 5/5 points
· Improved Power Word: Fortitude - 2/2 points
· Silent resolve - 4/5 points
· Meditation- 3/3 points
· Inner Focus - 1/1 point
· Mental agility - 5/5 points
· Divine Spirit - 1/1 point

Holy Talents (30 points)
· Improved Renew - 3/3 points

· Healing Focus - 2/2 points
· Holy Specialization - 5/5 points
· Divine Fury - 5/5 points
· Holy Nova - 1/1 points
· Inspiration - 3/3 points
· Improved Healing- 3/3 points
· Improved Prayer of Healing - 2/2 points

· Spiritual Healing - 5/5 points
· Spirit of Redemption - 1/1 point

Shadow Talents (0 points)
· None

Some people may prefer to take Mental Strength over Mental agility. It has been proven mathmatically that in battles shorter than 2 minutes, mental Strenth is superior. In any battle longer than that, Mental Agility gains an edge (the longer the battle, the wider the gap becomes). I recomend Mental Agility, especially if you go with groups that go at a fast pace, or if you are planning on hitting any of the 20-40 man instances. Mental Strength may be good in the first 5-10 man instances like Strat, Scholo, Dire Maul, UBRS, etc. This can be a tough choice.

***Tri-Spec Templates ***

There are many "Tri-Spec" talent builds out there that grab key talents in each of the 3 talent trees. I would not recommend going this route until you are much more familiar with playing your priest (and your personal play style). They can be very effective, but you have to really know what you are trying to accomplish with your talent plan. The above Shadow/Discipline and Holy/Discipline builds are good cookie-cutter paths to take.

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Key talents in each tree:
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Key Talents:

Shadow – Spirit Tap. This gives your mana regeneration a major boost after each kill. It is very important when playing solo.

Shadow – Improved Shadow Word: Pain. This spell prolongs the duration of your shadow word: pain spell. It adds 2 additional ticks of damage at the same rate, making the spell more efficient. You will use this spell on every enemy.

Shadow – Improved Mind Blast. This shortens the cooldown time for this spell. This is your primary solo killing nuke. This talent effectively halves the cooldown time.

Shadow – Improved Fade. This is a GREAT spell for Shadow Priests who also want to be better group support healers. An extra 10 seconds of fade is a LONG time, a very nice bonus talent. Fade temporarily dumps a lot of hate. You will use it almost every battle when you are supporting groups.

Shadow – Mind Flay. This is another key shadow talent. You only get this spell if you choose this talent. Mind Flay is an extremely mana-efficient channeled damage spell. It has the added benefit of slowing the enemy’s movement speed. It is a great spell to use in groups because the damage happens over a period of time. That causes you to generate hate slower with the target (allowing the tank to hold the #1 slot – aggro). It is instant cast and is a great way to slow runners.

Shadow – Vampiric Embrace. This spell is useful soloing as a shadow priest. It is not that useful in groups (because you will not likely be nuking with Mind Blasts). The talent gives you 20% of the damage you cause with shadow spells back to you as health. You can not cast healing spells in Shadowform, so this is a way to keep your health up while fighting an enemy.

Shadow – Shadow Weaving / Darkness / Shadowform. These talents are the path to Shadowform. This is an altered form that the Shadow Priests enters. It gives you a big boost in self damage mitigation and target damage output. The downside is that you can not cast healing spells while in this form. You have to drop out of Shadowform to cast Holy spells.

Discipline – Silent resolve. In groups, it is very important that in an emergency, when you find yourself casting a lot of heals very suddenly due to adds, someone else getting agro, etc, that you do not get agro yourself, or that if you do, you shed if as soon as possible. This talent makes it much easier for the tank to get agro back, and also for him not to loose it to you in the first place.

Discipline – Improved Power Word: Fortitude. This is one of the primary buffs in the game. It adds a very noticeable amount of hit points to players. Talents spent here improve the buff by up to 30%.

Discipline –Meditation. This talent allows you to continue regenerating some of your mana (15% at max) outside of the 5 second casting rule. During long battles and fast paced instances, this talent can be a great help to keep you from running out of mana in a tight spot.

Discipline – Mental Agility / Inner Focus. These talents reduce your mana costs. You will cast many many Renews and SW: Pain spells. Inner Focus gives you 1 mana-free spell. These talents are great for increasing both Shadow and Holy spell efficiency.

Discipline – Mental Strength. This talent can boost your total mana pool by 10%. At level 60, this can easily be another 600-700 mana. Any questions? :-)

Discipline – Divine Spirit. This talent is a buff. At max lvl, it gives 40 spirit, and can be trained as a group buff at the priest trainer. It costs one Holy Candle as well as mana when cast as a group buff, just like PW:F. It is extremely helpfull for any caster class, including hunters!

Holy – Healing Focus. At max, this talent give you a 70% chance to avoid interruption caused by damage while casting any healing spell. If you are focusing on groups and healing, this talent can be a life saver.

Holy – Improved Renew. You will cast a lot of renews. This combines very well with Mental Agility to create one of the most mana-efficient healing spells in the game. Renews are an important way to keep part members’ health bars up and produces very slow hate with enemies.

Holy – Holy Specialization / Inspiration. These 2 talents combine well. Holy specialization plus base chances plus gear bonuses will cause you to critical heal a noticeable amount of the time. The armor bonus is very nice for the main tank you are supporting. You also get great mana efficiency when you critical your flash heals and prayer of healing spells.

Holy – Divine Fury/Improved healing. Reduces some of your longest casting spells by .5 seconds. Makes Heal and Greater Heal very viable for use in instances. In turn, this can make you much more mana efficient, saving your much less efficient flash heals for emergencies or in uncertain situations.

Holy – Improved Prayer of Healing. This is a nice spell if you are focusing on group support. When you have 2-3 or more people with damage, this is the spell to cast if you have the luxury of time. There are some epic armor sets that give a set bonus to this spell (combined with this talent) that makes it ridiculously mana efficient.

Holy – Spiritual healing. This talent adds to the amount each spell heals for. It is important to note that it adds to the base number of the spell. It does not take into account any gear you have that adds to healing. Therefore if your Greater Heal rank 4 heals for 800 to1000 points, this talent will cause it to heal for 880 to 1100 points. This talent will cause you to cast heal spells less often over time, making you more mana efficient.