Can a Skyborne be a Priest in Forever?

Nothing says so. Blizzard's recap lists the Skyborne classes as Warrior, Hunter, Rogue and Druid for all, plus Mage for the Alliance-aligned and Shaman for the Horde-aligned. Priest is not on the list.

Do Priests still get racial spells?

In Classic each race's Priest learns two spells no other race gets, such as Fear Ward for Dwarves and Devouring Plague for the Forsaken. Whether Forever keeps, changes or shares them is on our beta checklist.

Can a Priest level as Shadow?

Yes, and most do: Shadow Word: Pain, Mind Blast and Mind Flay, with Spirit Tap keeping mana up between fights. Healing is for groups; the open world is Shadow.

Priest in World of Warcraft: Forever

The short answer

The Priest is Classic’s healer first: cloth, mana, and more ways to keep someone alive than any other class, from Power Word: Shield to Greater Heal to Prayer of Healing. Shadow turns the same character into a ranged damage dealer with a dark aura. Everything below describes the class as Classic shipped it, which Forever builds on; Blizzard has promised “reasons to value what each class brings” Confirmed Blizzard and has published no Priest-specific detail. The beta opens September 17, and this page changes as we play.

Roles: Healer, Damage
Style: Ranged
Races: 6 · 1 new in Forever

Who can play it

Alliance
- Human
- Dwarf
- Night Elf
- Gnome new one of the six new combinations in Blizzard’s Deep Dive recap. Blizzard — Deep Dive panel recap
Horde
- Undead
- Troll

Classic's pairings per Wowhead — Classic races database and Warcraft Wiki — Playable race , checked 2026-09-13; Blizzard has not restated them for Forever and has not published the full list of additions. Pairings marked new are the ones Blizzard or its trailer has shown. Filter all nine classes in the class picker .

How it plays

The full healing kit. Flash Heal for speed, Greater Heal for size, Renew over time, Power Word: Shield before the hit, Prayer of Healing for the party. Raids want several Priests and hand them the tanks.
Fortitude on everyone. Power Word: Fortitude is the stamina buff every group asks for at the start and after every death.
Shadow is a real spec. Shadow Word: Pain, Mind Blast, Mind Flay and, from the talent, Shadowform. Shadow Priests level fast and deal respectable damage, and their Shadow Weaving debuff helps Warlocks.
Two racial spells. Each race’s Priest learns two spells of its own at the trainer: Fear Ward for Dwarves, Devouring Plague for the Forsaken, Starshards for Night Elves, Hex of Weakness for Trolls, and the rest.
Cloth and a wand. The lowest armor in the game, and a wand that does most of the killing at low levels without spending mana.

Leveling

Shadow, from the moment the talents allow it: dot, blast, wand, and let Spirit Tap refill mana on every kill. A Priest who levels as Holy is safe and slow; a Shadow Priest is fast and still heals every dungeon on the way, because the healing spells never go away.

What Forever changes

Gnome Priests are one of the six new race and class combinations. Divine Spirit becomes baseline for the class rather than a talent, and bonus healing on gear now also grants a third as much bonus damage.

Confirmed Blizzard — Deep Dive panel recap

Blizzard’s Deep Dive recap names six new race and class combinations: Gnome Priest, Human Hunter, Dwarf Shaman, Orc Mage, Troll Warlock and Undead Paladin, “with more planned for future updates.”

Confirmed Blizzard — Deep Dive panel recap
Talent trees keep Classic’s structure: the same number of rows, milestone talents at 11, 21 and 31 points, and a new 16-point milestone. Some talents are unchanged from patch 1.12, some adjusted, and key class buffs (Divine Spirit, Blessing of Kings, Improved Mark of the Wild) are now baseline. Each race gets two active and two passive racial abilities, reworked to be stronger and more distinct.

Confirmed Blizzard — Deep Dive panel recap
Combat keeps Classic’s pace: an ordinary creature takes a solo player “roughly 10–15 seconds to defeat,” crowd control still matters in dungeons, and damage dealers still respect threat. Spell, melee and ranged hit chance are combined into one stat, as are the three crit chances. Paladins are the first class detailed; “more class and race details are planned through future videos and articles.”

Confirmed Blizzard — Deep Dive panel recap
Blizzard: class identity “remains central,” with “new abilities, new race and class combinations, and updates designed to preserve the feel of the original game.” The updates “focus on talents and abilities you notice, meaningful trade-offs, and reasons to value what each class brings.”

Confirmed Blizzard — What’s Next panel recap
The Battle.net Shop describes “updated class design” and “an expanded list of race and class options, including Dwarf Shaman and Forsaken Paladin.”

Confirmed Battle.net Shop — product page

What we will check in the beta

The racial Priest spells: kept, changed, or shared across races.
Any new abilities or talent changes in Discipline, Holy and Shadow, against the Classic baseline.
Whether Shadowform and the Shadow Priest’s place in groups are unchanged.
Whether a Skyborne Priest exists at all: nothing says so today.
How the healing kit holds up in the first of the nine new dungeons.