If you are looking for my leveling guide, you may find that it has moved - please update your bookmarks!

I consolidated all of the level ranges into one monstrous post, complete with bookmark links within the page so make it easier to navigate.

I have also finally added Level 40-50 to the guide.

This is just one more piece of my on-going attempt to better organize the various guides I have on this blog, in order to make them easier to access and read. I realize they are very long, and I do that intentionally in order to be as inclusive as possible. Hopefully the bookmarks and table of contents will make it easier for users to get past all the TLDR stuff and get to the details they seek.

In the future, for those of you using the leveling guide, I do intend to add sections on how to heal instances at various levels, since I realize many of you are interested in that. Whenever I make any large changes or updates to any of my guides, I will make a new post about it.

If you find that any links on any of these guides do not work properly, PLEASE leave a comment informing me so that I can fix it.

Happy weekend!

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I have a friend who started playing on my server at my request, though she'd been playing elsewhere a long time. She has been leveling toons now on my server for about a year - none are at max level. Seriously, this girl just loves to level toons.

But what I find interesting, is that she seems to have some sort of personal system to it. For instance, I'm pretty sure she won't even bother unless she has a blue bar - which has led her to create several alts to level while another builds up blue bar.

Another aspect of her leveling system, is that she just loves getting runs through dungeons. I'm not actually sure how often she does dungeons WITHOUT a high level running her through. This always makes me feel awkward, because I don't want to tell her no (since she has been my friend since high school), but I actually don't like running ANYONE through low level dungeons.

The Dungeon Run

In one run I gave her through stockades, she actually had a group of four people when I joined the party. All were of relevant level, and the reactions when my level 80 priest joined the group were all across the board. It became apparent to me that this group had no idea my friend would be bringing in a level 80. This did not matter to most of the low levels, with the exception of one.

I was accustomed to running my friend through these dungeons, so I just barelled through everything. Near the end of our run, the low level priest in the group announced politely that he was dropping group, since he was obviously not needed. My friend lawled at him, asking why he was complaining - he was getting a free run! I, however, completely understood, and I sent him a tell afterwards with an apology, telling him I didn't realize that the rest of the group did not know I would be joining them.

My Own Personal Standards

I really do believe a lot of people would not understand why this scenario upset the pugged low level priest - but I do. Here's the thing - a lot of us actually play the game because we find it fun. We enjoy the process, the difficulties, the wipes, the learning. We don't WANT someone higher level to come through and make everything easy for us. The priest in question had likely been very excited about getting a chance to heal possibly his very first dungeon. It wasn't about the in-game XP for him as much as the player experience.

On my alts, I don't run dungeons for XP. I run them to try out my skills at my class and role. I run them to see a new dungeon, to experience it for myself. I don't WANT someone to churn through it all for me - I want to do it the "right" way.

In similar fashion, I hate running low levels through dungeons. It's a chore for me, it's boring, unfun, and since it was never something I wanted when I was a low level, I feel no "debt to the community" to do it for others. I actually enjoy professions, quests, and achievements a lot more than dungeons and raids anyway.

This used to annoy the hell out of my fiance when we were leveling together. All of our other friends were higher level, and eager for us to catch up back in the BC days. They often offered to help out by running us through dungeons, or quests, or things like that. As much as I knew they were just trying to be helpful, I didn't want the help - I wanted to do it properly, with other players at my level. My fiance didn't agree, and our two clothie toons ended up going their separate ways as soon as we hit the outlands.

When WotLK came out, and all of our guildies were leveling, many of them wanted to level via dungeon, and I was so not interested. I wanted to do all the quests! I'm one of those people who actually reads them.

When I level a new toon, I try out new zones that I bypassed on my previous toons whenever possible. This was another reason I wanted to start a Horde character - I had no experience with most of the Hordie lore and quests, and really wanted to get at least a taste of them before Cataclysm hits.

Has Cataclysm changed your view of the old world? Are you taking any steps to get in any old-world old-school goodness before it all gets esploded?

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Finwe pointed out that if you are leveling a new Priest as an alt, and you have a level 80 main, you should pick up some Heirloom items if you have the Emblems to spare. If you are not familiar with the relatively new Heirloom Item system, here's the skinny. These items bind on account, meaning you can mail them from your main to your alt, as long as both toons are on the same server. The stats for the item change depending on the level of the toon carrying the item, and are usually approximately the same as a Rare item of the toon's level. You can enchant these items, but the enchant cannot have any level restrictions, or you will not gain any benefit from them.

Here is a listing of all the available BoA/Heirloom items via WoWhead. There are lots of good PvP items as well - these must be purchased from Knight Dameron (Alliance only) or Stone Guard Mukar (Horde only) when your faction controls Wintergrasp, and are purchased with Stone Keeper's Shards. Here are my selections of good items for a leveling priest - or any cloth-wearing, non-PvP caster.

• Tattered Dreadmist Robe - (Chest) Cost: 40 Emblems of Heroism (remember you can change Emblems of Conquest to Valor, and then to Heroism) or 60 Champion's Seal. These robes give a 10% bonus to XP gained from killing mobs. Enchant with Greater Stats or Major Mana.
  
• Tattered Dreadmist Mantle - (Shoulders) Cost: 40 Emblems of Heroism or 60 Champion's Seal. This shoulder piece gives a 10% bonus to XP gained from killing mobs. This does stack with the robes, for a 20% bonus.
• Devout Aurastone Hammer - (1-hand Mace) Cost: 50 Emblems of Heroism or 75 Champion's Seal. One handed mace, you can change the off hand item to match by picking nice items up in the AH as you level. Enchant with: Spellpower, Healing Power (both of these recipes are difficult to find because they drop in Molten Core) or Mighty Intellect or Mighty Spirit (still tricky to find, but slightly more common, requires rep with Thorium Brotherhood and a trip to Blackrock Depths for the Enchanter to purchase the recipe).
  
• Dignified Headmaster's Charge - (Staff) Cost: 65 Emblems of Heroism or 95 Champion's Seal. Good choice if you don't feel like bothering with off-hand items, and want to just stick with a staff. Enchant with Major Spirit or Major Intellect, and if you can't find these, Lesser Spirit or Lesser Intellect.
  
• Discerning Eye of the Beast - (Trinket) Cost: 50 Emblems of Heroism or 75 Champion's Seal. Awesome trinket - especially since you usually don'e get your first trinket until somewhere in the level 30-40 range.
• Swift Hand of Justice - (Trinket) Cost: 50 Emblems of Heroism or 75 Champion's Seal. Another good trinket. After all, you get to have two. If you have to make a choice between them for your priest though, I recommend the previous one.

Items purchased with Emblems of Heroism can be purchased from a couple of places:

• Brammold Deepmine in Dalaran.
• Enchanter Erodin in Dalaran (HORDE ONLY)
• Enchanter Isian in Dalaran (ALLIANCE ONLY)

Please note that if you need to convert your Emblems of Conquest to Valor and then to Heroism in order to purchase these items, I do not think you can do this at Brammold Deepmine - you will need to go to your factions' seller, and convert them via the other vendors nearby - it's a pain in the butt process too.

If you are purchasing Heirloom items with Champion's Seals, you can purchase them from Dame Evniki Kapsalis at the Argent Tournament, located at 69,23 inside the Argent Crusade's tent. Please note: You cannot purchase these items from the Dame until you are an Argent Crusader, meaning you have earned either the Exalted Argent Champion of the Alliance or Exalted Argent Champion of the Horde achievements.

I have updated the my lolsmite guide to include a list of available Priest-friendly items with hit rating for each level range. Since neither of the Priest healing specs, Discipline or Holy, have any talents for hit rating, it is important that you pick up some hit items while you level, or you will soon find it very annoying how often you miss mobs and waste your mana. Luckily, Blizz added quite a few low level items in recent patches that include hit rating. Most guides or references for hit rating will focus on how much you need at level 80 for raiding or doing instances. The hit rating NUMBER you need changes every level, while the percentage stays the same - don't get confused :). But since you won't be fighting boss mobs at low levels, you don't need to worry about "hit cap" until you get to 80.

The exact amount of rating you need will increase every time you level, but if you hover over the "Hit Rating" listing on your character sheet, it will show you the percentage. This chart from wowwiki shows the percentage of hit rating you need in order to ensure that you never miss when you are casting a damaging spell on a target. Remember that heals always land, you do not need any hit rating for healing spells.

Level Difference	PvE	PvP
- 4	100%	100%
- 3	99%	99%
- 2	98%	98%
- 1	97%	97%
0	96%	96%
+ 1	95%	95%
+ 2	94%	94%
+ 3	83%	87%
+ 4	72%	80%
+ 5	61%	73%

For leveling, subtract the percentage under the PvE column from 100% to figure out how much hit percentage you need to never miss a mob of that level.

For instance, at level 30, I need 4% hit rating to ensure I never miss when attacking any mob level 32 or lower - however, i will still have an 11% chance to miss a level 33 mob. In order to never miss a mob of your same level, the hit rating percent you will always need is 4%.

Remember that if you are a Draenei, or you are grouped with a Draenei, you receive an extra 1% spell hit.

(ETA: This is why I don't theorycraft. Fixed my failmath. Thanks Anonymous mathchecker!)

Yesterday I was working on a kill quest for my little undead priest I'm leveling, and ran into another priest of the same level. We grouped up in order to kill the mobs. I later inspected him, and cheered because the differences between us rather proved my lolsmite point. At level 20, I was doing a helluva lot more damage than the shadow specced priest next to me. I also had a lot more mana, and way fewer mana problems.

A lot of experienced priests will tell you that up until level 40 and Shadowform, Holy spec does a lot more damage, and I completely agree after comparing my damage to a level 20 shadow-specced priest. Now that I have Holy Fire, which often crits in my case (yay Holy Specialization!), I'm really whacking through the foes. I hit 20, and had nowhere near enough gold to pick up a mount, and was feeling all sadface. There were a lot of things I needed to buy and craft, and I was just broke. And then, as I was farming spiders for ridiculously expensive Spider's Silk, Sentry Cloak randomly dropped.

*HALLELUJAH*

I managed to sell it for 99g within 3 minutes of it being on the AH. The enabled me to purchase Glyph of Smite (I am going to need to take a second look at this glyph and server differences and make adjustments to my guide. Unless it's an alt, most people canNOT afford 30g for Glyph of Smite at level 20), a few Spider's Silk so that I could make Spidersilk Drape, some items for crafting, and my mount and training, leaving me with about 20g after all was said and done (Spider's Silk is incredibly expensive, a PitA to farm, and Spidersilk Drape requires SIX of them).

Tomorrow expect a way TLDR post with more QQ about the change to tradeable BoP items. I've made a few posts on the forums, looked around a bit, and there was a relevant post on WoWInsider today. But it just felt too heavy for a Tuesday Maintenance day. We want fun stories. I owe the boys over at Save or Die Radio another newbie gaming post, but until I have some idea regarding the feedback from my initial post, I don't feel comfortable writing a new one. There were no comments on my first post, and the next episode hasn't been released yet, probably partially due to Adam and Jack being at PAX.

I'm also currently practicing what my therapist warns me is called "avoidance". Sick puppy has not gotten any better, and is not going to get any better unfortunately, so I think people know what that means. I'm going to go think happy thoughts now about bubbles and butterflies so that I don't start crying again.

Before you really get into leveling your new priest, there are a few tips I can give you to make the (fairly painful) process easier. Some of these things you may already know, particularly if you've played a caster class before. But if you've stuck mostly to melee, it will help you a lot to understand some basics about mana and mana regeneration. A lot of the tips here will help all casters, not just priests!

• Spirit vs. Mp5 - Mp5 is pretty tough to get at very low levels. If you are low enough level to not have Meditation, however, pay attention to the difference. While both stats directly affect your mana regeneration, spirit only affects your mana regeneration when not casting. Mana per five seconds (Mp5) increases your mana regeneration both while casting AND while not casting. This is why at low levels Mp5 is much preferred, and much more difficult to get.
  
• "While Casting" and "Out of Five Second Rule" (OO5SR) - "While casting", your mana regeneration stops, unless you have a specific talent, ability, buff, or Mp5. However, the definition of "While Casting" is not actually while you are literally casting a spell. "While Casting" begins as soon as your cast ends, and lasts for five seconds. So if you cast Smite, or even instant spells like Power Word: Fortitude, your mana regeneration halts for five seconds. If you cast one spell right after another, you will stay within that 5 second rule, and not regenerate any mana. That's why it's best to bunch your spells together, so that you can take advantage of as much time Outside of the Five Second Rule (OO5SR) as possible.
• Until you pick up the talents Meditation or Spiritual Guidance, your stat priority is Intellect -> Spirit -> Stamina -> Spellpower. Intellect is especially important at low levels because Priests never seem to have enough mana to get through a fight - let alone heal themselves to survive! They need all the mana they can get. You aren't going to stop casting long enough to regenerate your mana while in combat unless you use your wand a lot.
• Get a wand! I cannot stress this enough. Enchanters make a pretty decent wand that you can start using at level 5, and since they make them to level up, they are usually fairly cheap. Save up your coppers and silvers in those first few levels, and as soon as you hit level 5, run to the nearest auction house and buy one. You will save yourself a lot of mana, and a lot of deaths by making use of a wand for about the last quarter or third of a mob's health.
• Stock up on health and mana potions. Whenever you can get them cheap on the AH, buy a ton of them. Now that they stack in lots of 20, it doesn't use much bag space - but you will be thankful for them, trust me. Use them liberally to make the leveling process much less painful. People always think Priests have it easy because we can heal ourselves - but at low levels, we just don't have the mana.
• Stock up on Scrolls of Intellect - Scribes make these, and they drop all over the place, so you can usually get them pretty cheap. If you find a good deal, stock up. If you can't get scrolls, beg mages for their Intellect buff - I always buff Mages with Stamina, in hopes that they will return the favor.
• Always buy at least one full stack of the highest level drink you can use - if not two stacks! Unless you run around with a Mage, you will go through those drinks very quickly. You don't really need to buy food, since you can heal yourself between battles, and then drink up to recover mana.
  
• Take the time to level up your fishing, if for no other reason than to stock up on Sagefish to make Smoked Sagefish and Sagefish Delight. This is one of the few sources of Mp5 at lower levels.
• Hit Rating - We don't have a lot of mana in the first place, so if you can find a couple of sources for hit rating, this will help you avoid misses when you are DPSing. Don't worry about hit cap numbers - just try to get some hit if you can. Blizz recently introduced a few more items with hit rating at lower levels, but it's still scarce. Your best bet is to pick up Elixir of Minor Accuracy, Spidersilk Drape, Bronze Mace, or Simple Pearl Ring when, where, and if you can, as these are all crafted items. Check wowhead for Lavishly Jeweled Ring, Diving Crystal, and Robe of the Dragon Slayer, which are rarer or quest items.
  
• Spirit Tap - once you're high enough level to have picked up Spirit Tap, you may notice that after you finish combat, both your health and mana regenerate faster. Spirit also boosts your health regeneration, as long as you are not in combat - so you should find that after speccing into ST, you have a lot less downtime between fights.
  

Professions for Leveling Priest

Some professions are more helpful for leveling your priest than others. I know a lot of people pick up professions simply for $$$ but I actually like mine to be useful. At low levels, Priests need all the buffs they can get - especially Intellect. I recommend picking up a profession that will somehow provide you with relevant buffs.

• Alchemy & Herbalism - Lifeblood from Herbalism is a life and mana saver. Level it up with health and mana potions, and when you are able to make Elixir of Wisdom, always use it.
  
• Enchanting - Enchanting is not always easy to level, but coupled with a profession like Tailoring, you will have plenty of things to disenchant for mats, as well as the cheap green items you'll pick up along the way, and quest rewards that are otherwise useless. You can make very nice wands at low skill levels, and even enchants like Minor Mana make a big difference at low levels. Not to mention Wizard and Mana oils!
• Tailoring - You can couple this with Enchanting and it works very well, since Tailoring is the only armor crafting profession that requires no gathering profession for materials. Instead of using cloth for first aid (and since you can rarely use bandages while in combat, and you can heal yourself while out, who needs it?) use it to craft your own nice armor - and BAGS! If you don't want to take Enchanting with this, Skinning is good because you often need some leather with tailoring. If instead you want a profession from which to make more money, any of the other gathering professions work well.
• Inscription & Herbalism - Make your own glyphs, your own off-hand items, and scrolls. Scrolls of Intellect are very very handy, particularly at low levels. As mentioned before, Herbalism is also nice for Lifeblood.

I'm leveling up a new priest specifically to figure out what helps most with the leveling process. As I find new tips, I'll add them here. If you have any tips, please comment and let me know so that I can add them!

Ever since I started writing my Lolsmite priest leveling guide, I had been thinking about leveling up a new priest just for fun, and to give my leveling guide a try myself.

Having never leveled an undead horde toon very far, I thought I would give it a try. There are lots of different pieces of lore that I will never get to experience if I don’t try out the horde, and I keep thinking about the Wrathgate quest chain, as well as Lady Sylvanas.

Wow. I knew, and remembered, that leveling a priest is hard, but I don’t think I recollected just HOW hard it is.

Everyone seems to think their favorite class is the hardest to level. I do relatively well leveling a priest, because let’s face it, I have a high level priest, I understand most of the mechanics of … well Priesting. But I can’t deny that even with all that, I still believe Priests are the most difficult class to level, with the possible exception of mages. My fiancé leveled a mage, and he always says “well at least Priests can heal themselves!” but this isn’t exactly true – you never have enough mana at very early levels to even heal yourself during combat.

I will say that doing it all over again has given me a lot more food for thought regarding my leveling guide, so I’m going to add another post today with some tips for the very early Priest levels (0-20).  For those of you who are following the Lolsmite guide, I’m doing it with you, so I’ll make adjustments as needed, in case I remembered things wrong, or gain a little more insight!

Ah yes, the bane of holy dps. Priests who try to go the holy dps route get labeled repeatedly as lolsmite, and kicked from any raid, so it seems. Blizzard cares very little about improving or legitimizing holy priests as a dps option, yet taunts us with a glyph like Glyph of Smite. Inspired by this glyph, I went on an in depth search to try and figure out if there was any reason at all to test out the holy dps route for priests, since it seems like it would be fun, and give you the ability to heal well and dps. There is a very interesting discussion on the ElitistJerks forum, but you’ll need to skip past the first 8 pages or so since most of the info there is incredibly out of date.

The concensus is that there is no viability for a lolsmite priest in a raid. There are plenty of reasons that are cited, such as low dps compared to other dps clothies, and lack of raid utility. So is there no point in holy dps at all?

I think there is. It’s not in the raiding aspect, but in leveling. I leveled Holy for a very good reason – I still wanted to be a very strong healer for instances. Granted, in a lot of the low level instances, even being shadow specced you could probably heal just fine. But the best way to be good at your class when you hit 80 is to play around with different specs, and learn your spells along the way.

You can dual spec at level 40, but until you get to that point, you can still do some really nice damage for leveling purposes as holy, in addition to being able to heal instances well. Once you hit 80, if you want to switch to healing for raids, you’ll need to change your spec a bit in order to be a strong healer. Holy dps works best for soloing content, and the higher level you get after level 40, the weaker it becomes when compared to the Shadow alternative. Before 40, however, it is quite possible that you will do more damage as a Holy specced priest than Shadow.

I have divided this guide into ranges of ten levels. I am currently leveling another holy priest in accordance with this guide so that I can pick up on any differences, or add suggestions. Therefore this guide will level as my priest levels. Also, I may come back and change things here and there (particularly the spec) if I find it needs it.

Various Posts Regarding Leveling:

• The Basics, Tips, & Professions
  
• Heirloom Items
• Hit Rating Explanation

Shortcuts to Level Ranges

• Levels 10-19
• Levels 20-29
• Levels 30-39
• Levels 40-49
• Levels 50-59
• Levels 60-69
• Levels 70-80

LoLSmite leveling spec at 80

Because some talents are useless until you reach certain levels and gain certain spells or abilities, I may have a respec planned somewhere after level 50, so keep that in mind.

Levels 10-19
Talents | Glyphs | Stats | Hit Rating Items

This is when you first start earning talent points. At level 10 you finally get Mind Blast, which will add to your dps abilities, which up until this point consisted mainly of Smite and Shadow Word: Pain.

Talents

It would be a good idea to put your first three talent points into Spirit Tap over in the Shadow tree, because this will give you less downtime in between kills due to more mana regen. Holy DPS will run through your mana quickly, so anything that helps boost your mana regen at this point is a good thing. Put your next five points in Holy Specialization in the Holy tree to up your crit chance on your holy spells - this will be especially helpful later. Next, move on down to Divine Fury, and start throwing your next 5 points in there. By level 20, you'll only have 2 points in there, but this is an awesome talent for those who want to mix healing and dps. Shorter casting time for Smite, for Heal (which you really only use until you get Greater Heal at level 40) and Greater Heal, and for Holy Fire (though that won't come into play until level 20).

So, from level 10 – 20:
3x Spirit Tap → 5x Holy Specialization → 2x Divine Fury

Glyphs

At level 15 you can get your first major glyph and your first minor glyph.

For Major Glyphs, here are your options at level 15:

• Glyph of Renew (stupid)
• Glyph of Smite
• Glyph of Inner Fire
  
• Glyph of Power Word: Shield
• Glyph of Fade (stupid)
• Glyph of Psychic Scream (stupid)
• Glyph of Shadow Word: Pain

So, nixing the stupid glyphs, we’ve got the glyphs of Smite, Shield, Inner Fire, and SW: Pain. You don’t get Holy Fire until level 20, and Mind Flay requires you to spec completely into the shadow tree in order to get that spell at level 20. Well done Blizz! Yay for waste!

I would recommend picking up Glyph of Power Word: Shield of Glyph of Inner Fire at level 15, and then switching it out for Glyph of Smite at level 20. If you don’t want to waste the money (though honestly, these glyphs sell for super cheap), just pick up Glyph of Smite.

For your minor glyphs, it’s all a matter of personal preference. At level 15, there are only 2 available, Glyph of Fading, and Glyph of Fortitude. Fade isn’t going to help you much while soloing, but if you’re paired up with someone, or instance a lot, it’s probably your best choice.

Stats

In the very early levels, Intellect is probably the most important stat for you to stack, with spirit coming in second, especially once you spec into spirit tap. Both are easy to get, and Intellect will help you last longer in combat, because your mana pool will be larger. Spirit will help you regen faster. Spellpower, crit, Mp5 and hit are all good, but difficult to get.

Hit Rating

Once you hit level 15, start stocking up on Elixir of Minor Accuracy - crafted by Alchemists at skill 135, standard train. Mats required: 1x Fire Oil (made from 2x Firefin Snapper), 1x Bruiseweed, 1x Empty Vial. Other items available in level range 1-19:

• Bronze Mace - Requires level 17. Crafted by Blacksmiths with skill 110, standard train. Mats Required: 6x Bronze Bar, 4x Weak Flux, 1x Medium Leather
  
• Lavishly Jeweled Ring - Requires level 17, drops from Gilnid in The Deadmines.
  
• Simple Pearl Ring - Requires level 17. Crafted by Jewelcrafters with skill 60, standard train. Mats Required: 1x Small Lustrous Pearl, 1x Bronze Setting (made from 2x Bronze Bar), 2x Copper Bar.
  
• Spidersilk Drape - Requires level 19. Crafted by Tailors with skill 125, standard train. Mats Required: 3x Bolt of Silk Cloth, 6x Spider's Silk, 2x Fine Thread
  
• Band of Elven Grace - Quest Item, ALLIANCE ONLY - "Reception from Tyrande", Stonetalon Mtns.
  
• Divining Crystal - Quest Item, HORDE ONLY - "Deactivate An'owyn", Ghostlands.
  
• Robe of the Dragon Slayer - Quest Item, ALLIANCE ONLY - "Razormaw", Bloodmyst Isle.
  

Levels 20-29

Talents | Spells | Stats | Hit Rating Items

As a reminder, here was the level 80 spec I was using for this guide, but as I will soon explain, there are several tweaks you can make, so your spec may not end up looking exactly like mine.

Talents

Go ahead and finish putting all five points in Divine Fury. This will bring you up to level 22, at which point you have a couple of different options.

If you are healing a lot, you may want to throw your next few talents into Improved Renew, and then 3 points into Inspiration. The alternative, if you are soloing more and would prefer to reduce some of the damage you take, is to simply put the next 5 points into Spell Warding, and then pick up Desperate Prayer for 1 extra talent point.

Once you’re at level 28, start putting points into Searing Light.

There is a lot of flexibility at this stage of the talent points, because none of them are really that good. Fool around with the points as you see fit, but the most important ones are Divine Fury and Searing Light, and you need to put in enough points to get to the next tier. Our eventual goal is Surge of Light with as few points as possible.

In brief, if you are healing more:
5x Divine Fury → 3x Improved Renew → 3x Inspiration → 2x Searing Light

In brief, if you are soloing/pvping more:
5x Divine Fury → 5x Spell Warding → 2x Searing Light → 1x Desperate Prayer

This will bring you to level 30.

Spells

At level 20, you pick up several cool new spells.

• Flash Heal - this comes in as something of a replacement for Lesser Heal.
• Holy Fire – woohoo, finally! Now you can justify Glyph of Smite ☺
• Holy Nova – Your first AoE Heal and AoE Damage, all in one.
• Devouring Plague - Another DoT to go with Shadow Word: Pain, and it gives you some health back as well.
• Mind Soothe – Situationally useful, but you probably won’t use it much.
• Fear Ward – Nice utility buff if you know you are fighting something that fears.
• Shackle Undead – Nice CC utility buff.

At level 24, you also pick up Mana Burn, which is a great spell for PvP, and occasionally useful for PvE.

A lot of your damage, at this point, will come from DoTs. You have a couple of different rotations available for you, but now that you’ve picked up Glyph of Smite, the fundamental damage rotation is Holy Fire → Smite. Be sure to cast Holy Fire again whenever the DoT on it wears off, so that your Smite will do 20% more damage. You can also throw Shadow Word: Pain and Devouring Plague on mobs if it won’t be too much of a waste. Always remember to Bubble up so that your casts don’t get interrupted.

If you’ve got the mana pool to sustain it, Holy Nova is a pretty good AoE damage spell. It doesn’t do a lot of damage itself, but it is an instant cast, and thus spammable, and heals you while doing damage. It is expensive mana wise though, so keep an eye on your mana pool if you’re spamming it. It becomes a lot more useful later, but it is your only AoE damage at this point anyway.

Stats

At this low of a level, you pretty much take what you can get. Mp5 and Spirit will both work for you for mana regen, Spellpower is always good, and Intellect is great to increase the size of your mana pool and critical strike rating.

Hit Rating Items

The only new item that I can find available for the 20-29 range is Amulet of Truesight, which requires level 29. It is crafted by Jewelcrafters with a minimum skill of 200, appears to be standard train, and requires 8x Truesilver Bars.

Many of the good items that provide bonus hit rating in the previous level range require level 19, and several new items become available at 30, so don't stress. And don't forget Elixir of Minor Accuracy...