WoW Forever: best Priest race after the October racial changes

Quick answer

Gnome stays our Alliance pick and Undead our Horde pick. Gnome keeps Eureka! and the Gnome-only Contingency Plan; Undead keeps Dark Sacrifice for mana at level 60.

What changed: Eureka! is now an 8 s buff that also strengthens Power Word: Shield, and Human gained a permanent 2% crit on heals and spells.

What the October 15 racial changes mean for Priest

Values from Blizzard’s October 15 beta notes, checked against the Forever tooltips on Wowhead. Blizzard may still tune the game before launch on November 4.

Gnome — Eureka!

Now an 8 s buff with no charges, 2 min cooldown: non-periodic damaging or healing abilities cost 10% less and deal 10% more. Periodic effects have been excluded since October 1.

Human — Ruthless

+2% critical strike chance with all spells and attacks. Replaces Sword Specialization: no sword required.

Dwarf — Earth Fury

+2% critical strike bonus to damage and healing. Replaces Mace Specialization. It raises the size of crits, not their chance.

Undead — Touch of the Grave

Drains health up to 5% of maximum health: 30% proc chance for casters, 20% for Paladins, Rogues and Warriors, 25 s internal cooldown; no longer scales with Shadow bonuses. Will of the Forsaken cannot be used under Scatter Shot.

Troll — Regeneration, Berserking

Regeneration: health regeneration +20%, and 20% keeps running in combat (was 10%). Berserking is unchanged: +10% casting and attack speed for 10 s, 3 min cooldown.

Alliance races for Priest

Horde races for Priest

By specialization, and what we cannot measure

Shadow: Eureka! excludes periodic damage, but Blizzard states that channeled spells such as Mind Flay are not periodic. Human’s 2% crit applies to every spell; whether it beats Eureka! for Shadow is not measured.

We only list race-specific priest spells we could check in Forever tooltips (Contingency Plan, Dark Sacrifice). The other races’ priest spells are not compared here.