Hello friends hope you are all enjoying your time in Azeroth.
I’m playing a priest for the first time. I’ve heard people mention before that an efficient method of levelling for a priest is to just grind out dungeons, rather than the regular run around and quest.
Would appreciate some people’s thoughts on questing with the occasional dungeon vs just straight dungeon grinding.
My understanding is that Priests mostly just wand things to death and take advantage of Spirit Tap to minimize downtime.
Get 5/5 Spirit Tap and 5/5 Wand Specialization.
Go murder every living thing you see and never need to stop to eat or drink. Collect XP and laugh.
And yeah dungeons are nice too I guess.
Keep up inner fire, pull with your hard hitter (smite, mind blast, righteous fire/holy fire) maybe cast it a second time, SW:Pain, renew, wand. First five points in Spirit Tap, second five in wand damage. Don’t shield the warrior unless it’s about to die, or else it doesn’t get rage. You don’t have to cap everyone’s hp. You can better “spam” a lower rank heal. Nuke heals also nuke your mana. Plenty to drink for times when you don’t get the final hit to trigger spirit tap. Spr/Stam on most of your gear, but trickle in int to help with mana. Don’t fear in the dungeon. Use spirit scrolls and keep mana/healing pots on you.
… I guess that’s a little help lol.
Thank you for the detailed response. However, i’m looking for opinions on questing vs just dungeon levelling.
Haha, sorry. I leveled many priests in Classic through WotLK. I always enjoyed mixing it up. It’s always worked best for me to grind a level every 2-3 levels. Then, go back and clean up my quest log. Then, I hit the dungeons 1-3 times if I need something out of them. It really depends on how well my dungeon group is doing and whether I’m tired of looking at the dungeon. However, once you get in the early 40s, dungeon grinding can be a huge help.
So, I vote for a balance of grind-quest-dungeon. You may prefer to weigh that differently though 
Questing vs. dungeon grinding is subjective. If you have a good dps buddy you can burn through quests. Getting a competent group together to instance grind can take a lot of time, unless you have a decent guild.
Better to just take your time and enjoy the grind.
If you have a good group, dungeon leveling can be faster, depending on the group comp and the dungeon itself. Stockades and Scarlet Monastery for example are extremely efficient XP/hour if your group is good. However, in certain level ranges there are a great many high-quality leveling zones that you can easily power through at an even faster rate than dungeons, such as the mid-30’s with STV and a good portion of Thousand Needles.
My advice would be to quest for as long as possible so you avoid the ‘hour putting together the group and 30 minutes to get there’ fiascos, but form groups for dungeons that you have quests for or need gear from. Priests certainly dont have any trouble getting into dungeons.
TL;DR It depends on what level you are and what dungeon you’re doing and what the rest of your group looks like.
Thanks so much everyone for the input! This community is so kind. 
Both. Questing is good xp and so are dungeons. Questing makes it less of a grind though.
Get a good wand… spec shadow into spirit tap and keep going with shadow talents. It will quickly get better.
Priest is fun. I’ve played it at 60 in vanilla and at 110 in retail. Leveling isn’t as bad as people make it sound.
SPeed wise grinding while completing quests is fast. Not only doing the quests but killing everything in the path. However, dungeons are a nice break to the monotony of grinding, plus you get some good gear that makes you more powerful thus speeding up your grinding and questing etc.
Back to back dungeoning is hard to pull off pre-LFD unless you have a very committed group (or guild) with a lot of time on their hands. Spirit Tap + Wand Spec is the way to go. Efficiency is better than high DPS any day of the week. Your Mage friends will give you water and you won’t even take it because it’s a waste of inventory space.
A little of each, quest, grind, dungeons. I run all the quests which are level appropriate and / or have a good reward at the end of the chain. I grind a few mobs along the way as I travel, or will grind on a group for something specific, like cloth. I do dungeons to break the monotony, but they can be a mixed bag. Sometimes you get a great group with an experienced tank and good DPS. Sometimes, like the other night, you get a good tank, two mages competing for the cloth drop you want at the end, one of whom goes AFK on the sly part way in so he gets the XP without doing the work. The other had DPS so terrible it was both below the tank and myself who was also healing. Add in a hunter who can’t control his pet and brings back adds to the group and you will wish your hearthstone was on CD 
Long term planning, you might want the reputation from several factions, and this is easiest to get through quests. Having to go back and run all those low level quests as a level 60 is a special kind of hell.
I prefer to mainly quest and do dungeons when I get the quests for that dungeons. In my opinion running SM or any other dungeon all day is boring. I don’t have any problem killing things solo.
Play the game how you like.
I think priests are some where in the middle of the pack when it comes to questing. More efficient than warriors, paladins and rogues, but less than hunters, warlocks, and druids (generally speaking of course. There will always be exceptions).
I think you’ll be able to quest as a priest very well. So if you’re wanting to do that over endless grinding in dungeons, you should. I couldn’t tell you what is the faster way to level though. I’ve heard mixed answers on that
Mindblast dot mindflay wand. It can be nicer to dungeon grind but I wouldnt do it purely. You are missing out on rep gains, learning azeroth… and some really fun quests. Dungeoning however to keep your level on par or slightly above the questing zone is favorable.