Introduction
This guide was written by Heregellas.
Heregellas, or Alisza on his priest, mostly plays disc/holy priest or resto druid during progress. He previously raided in From Scratch, and in Impact as an officer & raid leader before joining Method.
Holy Priest brings a lot of sustain healing throughput and can spot heal quite nicely thanks to Holy Words. Their DPS is pretty good, with easy-to-maintain spells and, of course, the Power Infusion.
They don’t bring any damage reduction, though, and won’t be able to burst heal during regular windows, which their other spec will cover: Discipline.
What has changed
Season 4 Changes
There have been no changes specifically to Holy Priest in Season 4. The majority of changes to the guide for Season 4 come from the expanded gearing choices available with Awakened raids and the new dungeon pool.
Patch 10.2.6 Changes
A lot of change was done in this new patch:
- Leap of Faith no longer interrupts spell casts from the ally it was used on.
- Empyreal Blaze has been redesigned – Holy Word: Chastise causes your next 2 casts of Holy Fire to be instant, cost no mana, and incur no cooldown. Refreshing Holy Fire on a target now extends its duration by 7 seconds.
- Pontifex has been redesigned – Flash Heal, Heal, Prayer of Healing, and Circle of Healing increase the healing done by your next Holy Word spell by 6% stacking up to 5 times. Lasts 30 seconds.
- Lightwell has been redesigned – Creates a Holy Lightwell. Every second the Lightwell will attempt to heal a nearby party or raid member within 40 yards that is lower than 50% health and apply a Renew to them for 6 seconds. Lightwell lasts for 2 minutes or until it heals 15 times. Cooldown reduced by 3 seconds when you cast Holy Word: Serenity or Holy Word: Sanctify.
- All healing done reduced by 7%.
- Holy Fire mana cost reduced to 0.4% of base mana (was 1%).
- Holy Word: Chastise mana cost reduced to 0.6% of base mana (was 2%).
- Resonant Words now causes Holy Words to increase the healing done by your next Flash Heal, Heal, Prayer of Healing, or Circle of Healing by 20%/40%. Lasts 30 seconds.
- Divine Word now increases the effectiveness of your next Holy Word spell by 30% (was 50%).
- Casting Holy Word: Chastise with Divine Word active now increases damage dealt by 20% and refunds 15 seconds from the cooldown of Holy Word: Chastise instead of its previous effect.
- Casting Holy Word: Sanctify with Divine Word active now blesses the target area and heals 5 targets (was 6). Healing done increased by 25%.
- Casting Holy Word: Serenity with Divine Word active no longer increases the critical strike chance of Flash Heal, Heal, and Renew.
- Healing Chorus now increases the healing of Circle of Healing by 5% stacking up to 20 times (was 2% stacking up to 50 times).
- Prayerful Litany now heals for 100% more to the most injured ally it affects (was 30%).
- Harmonious Apparatus has been renamed to Voice of Harmony and its icon has changed.
- Voice of Harmony now causes Holy Nova to reduce the cooldown of Chastise in addition to Holy Fire.
- Gales of Song is now a 1-point talent with the values of the previous 2-point version.
- Orison now has a connection to Pontifex.
- Divine Service now has a connection to Say Your Prayers.
- Empowered Renew and Rapid Recovery have been removed.
- The final 3 rows of the tree have been reorganized.
Patch 10.2.5 Changes
Some tuning was done in a recent hotfix. It won’t affect anything gameplay-wise, just some lovely changes for our dps & hps throughput.
- Holy Word: Sanctify healing increased by 25%.
- Heal healing increased by 25%.
- Flash Heal healing increased by 15%.
- Holy Word: Chastise damage increased by 30%.
- Smite damage increased by 30%.
- Shadow Word: Pain damage increased by 15%.