Spiritual Guidance: The 60-70 Finale

Every Sunday (usually), Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of PlusHeal, a new healing community for all restorative classes. This week Matticus is finishing off the 60 – 70 aspect of Priest leveling!

Welcome to the final stretch. I believe Blizzard has sped up the leveling process in Outland (via a 30% experience reduction, yes?).

Go on then! There's a big giant portal just waiting for you! It's sort of dark looking. I guess that's why they call it the Dark Portal. Step through it!

New spells

Prayer of Mending: This healing spell has fast become a staple in the arsenal of Holy Priests. While it now does generate some threat for the Priest who casts it, the threat should not be a significant factor at all (whereas before, the threat generated from the spell would be applied to the target of the spell).

Shadow Word: Death: Holy Priests don't have a lot of use for offensive spells. This is straight and simple instant case spell that deals direct damage to the target of your choice. It does have a drawback. If Shadow Word: Death doesn't kill the target, you take damage. Shadow Word: Death does work in tandem with Prayer of Mending. If it happens to bounce towards you and you have a free moment, target the mob everyone else is working and SW:D. This will trigger the Prayer of Mending off of you. With clutch timing, SW:D can be used to remove Polymorph if it is cast on you.

Binding Heal: You won't be using Binding Heal much on your own. It's greatest strength lies in group and raiding situations. Are you taking damage? Is another player taking damage? Then target that player and cast Binding Heal. It covers both yourself and your groupie. It's way more time efficient than 2 Flash Heals.

Shadowfiend: Say hello to your little friend! Get accustomed to summoning your pet Shadowfiend regularly! Expect to use it no matter what spec you are. It grants you back mana based on the damage dealt.

Zones of Interest

Don't forget to keep Holy Firing and Smiting. For the Shadow users, do your Shadow... thing.

Hellfire Peninsula is darned massive. Once you step out of the portal, make a left (or a right if you're a green skin sympathizer). One of the guys there will shunt you over to your respective "foothold" towns. On a side note, a good number of professions can be upped from 300 to 375 here. Now go out and start whackin' some boars! You'll make first contact with the various demons under Illidan's command and get a feel for what you're really up against.

Head on over eastward to Zangarmarsh. It's a twilight landscape littered with towering mushrooms. Here you'll be acquainting yourselves with nagas and a few Ogres. The Cenarion Expedition have set up shop here trying fix the area. By now, you should be around the upper end of 61 or 62 (if you did all of this rested, maybe even 63ish).

I had a friend who opted for Nagrand instead of Terrokar Forest. I suggest going into Terrokar first and heading into Shattrath City. It's the capital city out here. For those of you on PvP servers, if you run into faction problems, you can always whistle for backup. Unfortunately, the inverse rings true. The other side could easily deploy their own. But that's world PvP for you. When you get here, you'll be asked to choose between Aldor or Scryer. At this point in the game, it doesn't mean much. If it helps, I chose Aldor since I was a tailor.

Nagrand is a zone that I consider the most majestic out of all the ones out there in Outland. When you step into it for the first time, you get that sense of enormity and "whoaness". Here you get to see the Senior Nesingwary along with quests to kill various beasts in the area. You'll have no problem doing the Ring of Blood quest chains out here. I've noticed whenever I passed through the zone there were always players looking for a healer to do it. Oh and before I forget, resist the urge to kill Corki.

Welcome to Blade's Edge Mountains! You'll find many Ogres in the area. If you glance up, you might happen to see a randomly impaled dragon somewhere. At this point, you should almost be on the verge of hitting 70.

If you don't manage to ding into 70, you have two options left. You can either boot yourself to Netherstorm or trek down to Shadowmoon Valley. Both zones will help you hit 70 relatively quickly.

Now what?

First thing you want to do is pick up the Flying skill. Head down to your faction town in Shadowmoon Valley and pick it up. There isn't much to do now at 70. Start off with the normal 70 dungeons (any order).

• Shadow Labyrinth

• Steamvault

• Shattered Halls

After that, feel free to graduate to Heroic instances. If you're a new Priest with geared guildmates, you might be able to jump in on Karazhan runs for badges and whatever loot that drops. Zul'Aman is also within reach. Kara pickup groups are a dime a dozen.

With Wrath but a mere couple of weeks away, I don't believe it's really worth it. I think new Priests are better off waiting and holding back. Level up some professions. If you're low on gold, start doing some dailies and stockpile some currency.

In hindsight, I should have picked another name besides finale. It won't be the finale in a few weeks, eh? I'll be working hard on that one as much as I can. It won't be a full on leveling and questing guide. But I'll try to at least highlight quest hubs of interest along with the new spells.

On a side note, I just realized Spiritual Guidance hit 40 columns last week. This one is the 41st. Aside from Lichborne (the new Death Knight column), Priests have the lowest number of columns. Go figure.

Want to find more great tips for carrying out your Priestly duties? Spiritual Guidance has you covered with all there is to know!And don't forget to check the WoW Insider Directory for more priestly info!