Priests In-Depth: Racial Abilities
Priests are unique among WoW classes in that they have specific skills determined not by talent spec, but by racial choice. And while talent points can always be re-allocated, you're stuck with your racial choice for the life of the character, so it's worth doing your homework before deciding which way to go with your priest. While the weaker racial skills are slated to be improved in 1.10, some choices are still going to be better than others.
Each race gets two specific skills, the first at level 10 and the second at level 20. Specifics after the jump.
Dwarf
Desperate Prayer: Instant-cast self-heal with no mana cost. On a 30 minute cooldown. Nice emergency heal for soloing or grouping.
Fear Ward: Prevents the target from being feared. On a 30 second cooldown. This may well be the best racial of them all, if you're interested in PVE content. Fear ward can make a number of raid encounters much easier to deal with.
Human
Desperate Prayer: Instant-cast self-heal with no mana cost. On a 30 minute cooldown. Nice emergency heal for soloing or grouping.
Feedback: Currently causes the priest's melee attacks to do additional shadow damage and drain mana from the target. After 1.10, it will cause spells cast against the priest to burn mana from and do shadow damage to attackers.
Night Elf
Starshards: A 6-second channeled spell that does arcane damage. The damage and mana efficiency are being improved for this spell in 1.10.
Elune's Grace: Currently reduces ranged damage taken by the target. Patch 1.10 will increase the ranged damage reduction and improve the target's chance to dodge.
Undead
Touch of Weakness: Adds shadow damage to the caster's next melee attack as well as reducing damage caused by the target for 2 minutes. (The damage reduction is identical to Hex of Weakness at all ranks.)
Devouring Plague: A damage over time spell that does shadow damage to the target, and returns it as health to the caster.
Troll
Hex of Weakness: Reduces the damage caused by your target for 2 minutes. Patch 1.10 will add a -20% healing modifier to the spell (which will not stack with mortal strike).
Shadowguard: A spell with three charges that does shadow damage to attackers (damage done will use up a charge). Patch 1.10 will make this an instant cast.
