WoW newbie looking for advice

[Klaus]

This is probably something that you've already figured out, but a typical grind cycle for lightweight mobs might be:
Mind Blast>Mind Flay>Shadow Word:Pain>Wand

It's been forever since I was in the mid-30's on the priest, but I find that reversing the two in the middle works a bit better:

Mind Blast->SWP->Flay->wand

You either backpedal or turn around and run away while casting pain and waiting for the GCD afterwards. This lets you get more ticks of the dot in before the mob dies, and they therefore die a bit faster. Start from max range with the blast. If the mob is a bit tougher, you can add another blast after the flay (as soon as the CD is up).

I do a lot of farming these days with VT->SWP->VE->Flay->wand. The VE keeps the health level up without having to worry about it very often. If you go full shadow, you can get VT at lvl 50, and then the +spell damage really starts to make efficiency pick up. The more damage you do, the more mana you get back, making every spell you cast cheaper (for example, the top rank of flay costs me 210 mana, and with my gear does about 1600 damage - this refunds 80 of the 210 mana, so I get 1600 damage for 130 mana - hard to beat).