- For the tauren heritage armor quest, see [50-70] Spirit Guide.
Spirit Guides are factional Spirit Healers in battlegrounds and PvP zones who resurrect players who have fallen in battle. Spirit Guides can only be seen by players of the appropriate faction.
Unlike normal Spirit Healers, Spirit Guides resurrect players with full health and mana and no penalty every 30 seconds. In addition, they resurrect pets or minions of the fallen player (if they had one when they died). Resurrected players are also granted the 'Preparation' buff, reducing the power cost of spells and abilities to zero for a few seconds.
In battlegrounds where graveyards can be captured, capturing a graveyard will cause that graveyard's Spirit Guide to despawn, and a Spirit Guide appropriate to the new controlling faction to appear. Any ghosts waiting at the graveyard to be resurrected when it is captured will be teleported to the nearest Spirit Guide for their faction. However, this process takes a moment and can occasionally cause players to miss the resurrection wave.
Spirit Guides resurrect all nearby players of the appropriate faction on a regular cycle. Players are automatically included in the resurrection wave upon appearing at the graveyard, and the time until resurrection is displayed in a dialog box that appears upon joining the wave. Players can cancel their inclusion in the resurrection wave by clicking 'Cancel' in the dialog box, or simply moving out of range of the Spirit Guide. Players can re-join the resurrection wave by speaking to the Spirit Guide, using the 'Return to Graveyard' UI element that appears while dead, or waiting near the Spirit Guide for the start of the next wave, at which point all nearby players are automatically re-included. Players who do not release from their corpses will not be resurrected.
Alliance Spirit Guides appear in the form of humans, while Horde Spirit Guides appear in the form of tauren. Spirit Guides may be male or female.