Shadow Priest questionFollow

In answer to your first question - You should be able to heal just fine in instances all the way up to 70 as a shadow priest actually. The instances geared specifically for 70s will be a little tougher though. As for instancing while leveling, if you show up to an instance and you're not in shadowform, your group will never know your spec, honestly. The nice thing is, if you learn to heal as shadow and then decide at 70 you want to be a healer instead, it's about 100000 times easier than if you did it the other way around due to all those neat healing talents.

Your second question - You're not going to level as fast as a mage/lock. There's just no way around that. But don't worry about the leveling speed of priest, we're fast in our own right as long as you pick the shadow route. My ESP is telling me that someone will post after me saying you can level as holy...and you can. It's just not nearly as fast...don't be fooled.

yeah don't worry about healing in instances as a shadow man. i am lvl 42 and i do just fine. but also you may want to grab healing gear when you see it or see it cheap on the ah. just for those times. i have my main gear for me and soloing and whatnot. but i got some gear that helps with healing for when i am grouped up. that way it is a bit easier.

as as for lvling it is no biggie. i have fun lvling and it is still pretty smooth. i have a brother that has a 70 mage so he ran me through alot to catch me up to his warrior so that we can play together. but now it is still pretty smooth. with me playing prolly about 2-3 hours a day i get a lvl at least once every 2 days. sometimes 1 a day. al depends on what you are doing.

True, don't go out of your way for healing gear, but do keep an extra set of gear in case you are called upon to heal. You won't really need too much different stuff since the main stats at lower levels are int and spirit.

Once you hit 58 and enter the Outlands you will come across much better gear that has stats and +damage or +healing. This is when it becomes especially important to keep a separate set of gear as the instances also get harder. All I did was keep random drops that were an improvement to my healing gear and roll on BOPs in dungeons that were an improvement if no one else needed. Optimal is you as DPS and pally as healer so you can get most of the cloth healing gear and still roll on the DPS gear you really want. Doing it this way I actually got my hallowed set before oblivion (it just kept dropping!)

Get spirit tap for your first 5 talent points and try and keep a decent amount of spirit and you will solo just fine with the rare mana break after a while or if you pull multiple mobs.

Shadow priest is also much cooler looking than a mage or warlock and a lot more beloved by healers and mana DPSers alike. I'd say about 80% of the groups I'm in I get a "<3 Shadow Priests" whisper from someone. That rarely, if ever, happened when I was holy.

So, yes, priests are fun.