Playstyle & Rotation
Holy Priest is a straightforward healer, with no ramp mechanic, and basically only reactive healing, making the spec relatively easy to pick up. Holy priest, even more than other healing classes, has less strict button sequences. It excels at spot healing and raid AoE healing and is generally a good filler class to have within your comp. Arguably also the most stackable healer out of all of the classes. When playing Holy Priest it is important to focus on keeping your Holy Words on cooldown. If you want to get the most out of your holy words, you shouldn’t sit on any stacks, unless a big damage event is coming up and you are planning to use them for that.
Spot healing is an important strength of the class and should not be overlooked, especially for progress. Holy priest has a lot of tools to consistently single target heal and to save people at the last second in a crucial, otherwise potentially fatal moment.
In terms of defensives, thanks to Translucent Image, your Fade will act as a very short-cooldown defensive that will provide you with a little more tankiness.
In general Priest falls behind other healers when it comes to defensive cooldowns, but passives like; Protective Light is a very strong addition to the toolkit since it will give you the same reduction without any cooldown. Since it’s tied to Flash Heal, Binding Heals will work in this situation, allowing you to cast it on any player in the raid while still giving you the damage reduction buff.
On top of that, you obviously still have your Desperate Prayer available, increasing your maximum health for 10 seconds (20 seconds with “Desperate Measures” which is a talent in the Hero Talents Oracle).
For damage, try to keep casting Holy Fire on cooldown during any encounter, on top of maintaining Shadow Word: Pain. The requirement is not very high maintenance in terms of mana or GCD commitment and the DPS gain will be noticeable. Weave-in some Smites when you have downtimes after that for another minimal dps gain.
Playstyle In Raids
The best raid build is currently with the Hero talents Oracle. It revolves around casting Prayer of Mending on cd and using your Premonition of Insight stacks on Prayer of Mending as well.
With the new tier set bonus, you gain 2 Premonition of Insight stacks from Premonition of Piety and Premonition of Solace, which gives you an extra 4 Prayer of Mending cast throughout your cycle of Premonitions. The 2 stacks of Premonition of Insight, which is 2 free cast of Prayer of Mending due to Fatebender that increases the power of Premonition by 40%, which lowers Prayer of Mendings cooldown perfectly for a full reset with each Premonition of Insight usage. With the talent “Empowered Renew” you want to use Renew on cooldown as it not only leaves a stronger HoT on your target but also reduces the cooldown of Holy Word: Sanctify.
When the encounter starts you will start with 2 stacks of Premonition, Premonition of Insight and Premonition of Piety, this is a really strong combo, and all stacks from Premonition of Insight should be used on Prayer of Mending. Ideally you do not want to sit on Premonition stacks unless there is some big damage coming. Prayer of Mending is always good to have spread around on your raid regardless. In addition each cast of Prayer of Mending leaves a Power Word: Shield to your initial target, which is a nice little bonus.
Each Premonition cast also gives you a stack of “Waste no Time” which is a talent in the Oracle Hero Talent tree, and it will give you an instant cast of Prayer of Healing or Heal, I recommend using these procs for Prayer of Healing as it will instantly spread your Mastery: Echo of Light to 5 targets per cast.
Prayer of Mending also has a lot of synergies available, like Benediction (which gives you a chance to leave a Renew), Prayers of the Virtuous & Say Your Prayers (will increase the number of jumps), all of this allows you to benefit from Answered Prayers, providing you with Apotheosis for 8 seconds after your Prayer of Mending heals 50 times. It is recommended to track these stacks.
Holy Priest is not as reliant on their raid cooldowns as other healing specs might be, but they are quite strong in their own right. Divine Hymn with the talent “Gales of Song” makes it very strong and of course the buff it leaves on allies makes it a very potent combo with other healer cooldowns that are more explosive. You can also combo Divine Hymn with your own Apotheosis, but that depends on how your raid group handles cooldowns.
Outside of your active healing set-up, let’s talk a bit about Divine Image, and see how it works:
- When you cast a Holy Word spell, you’ll spawn a Naaru for 9 seconds.
- If a Naaru is already active, you’ll instead gain another stack, improving the Naaru’s effectiveness.
- Each stack has its own 9 seconds duration tied to it.
The Naaru will cast different spells, tied to yours, that will generally match the effects of your own casts, but with a reduced power:
- Prayer of Healing will trigger Dazzling Lights
- Flash Heal will trigger Healing Light
- Holy Nova will trigger Light Eruption
- Smite / Shadow Word: Pain will trigger Searing Light
- Renew will trigger Tranquil Light
- Holy Word: Sanctify will trigger Blessed Light
This talent doesn’t require you to play around it, and will provide a good passive increase to your throughput.
A last utility CD to talk about is Symbol of Hope. Symbol lowers the cooldown of all defensives for everyone in your raid. It also gives you and your raid party 10% mana back over 4 seconds.
Playstyle in Keys (Oracle)
Playing Holy Priest in M+ will mostly revolve around single target healing, to spot heal the correct players quickly. While keeping Prayer of Mending on CD (this is especially important as Assured Safety in the Oracle Hero Talents will grant the target a Power Word: Shield).
You can play Oracle Hero Talents, taking advantage of the different premonitions is important. They cycle through three different effects when cast and have different bonuses on them.
- Premonition of Insight: Reduces the cooldown of your next 3 spell casts by 7 seconds.
- Premonition of Piety: Increases your healing done by 20% and causes 70% of overhealing on players to be redistributed to up to 4 nearby allies for 15 seconds.
- Premonition of Solace: Your next single target healing spell grants your target a shield that absorbs 0 damage and reduces their damage taken by 15% for 15 seconds.
Premonition of Solace also invokes Clairvoyance which grants Insight, Piety and Solace at 100% effectiveness.
You’ll want to cast Premonition of Insight on cooldown with Prayer of Mending for Healing and Holy Fire for damage. Then Premonition of Piety you’ll want to use for periods of AoE and/or burst damage in keys. To maximize the overhealing redirect you’ll want to use Guardian Spirit on yourself and cast Flash Heal, Heal and Holy Word: Serenity on yourself. If one of your party members requires immediate assistance, you’ll want to cast directly on them. Keep in mind, that your tank or one of your dps players might need “Guardian Spirit” to survive a mechanic or big hit, so make sure you are in the clear, before using “Guardian Spirit” this way.
Keep your Holy Words on cooldown and use Apotheosis frequently to save mana and reset the cooldowns of your Holy words. Apotheosis can only be used as a damage cooldown combined with the talents “Empyreal Blaze” and “Burning Vehemence”. One thing to keep in mind though; the higher your key level is, the higher chance there is that you need to use Apotheosis in crucial healing moments.
Since you’ll be running Lightweaver, it is important to build stacks by using Flash Heals and then spending them on buffed Heals. If you talent into Power Word: Life, you’ll want to be using that to save allies from near death. Holy is a very single target focused healer in Mythic+ so the best way to improve at the spec is to improve your target selection.
In terms of DPS, the main part of it comes from Empyreal Blaze, allowing you to unleash 2 instant Holy Fires after a Holy Word: Chastise. The duration will get extended so you can use them even in Single Target without any loss. You will want to refresh your Shadow Word: Pain, or keep DoTing new targets during downtime and/or on the move.
If you’re running higher keys, don’t forget to use Power Word: Shield when Prayer of Mending is on cooldown, even though it’s not a staple of the spec as it is for Discipline. This is your only form of absorb on other people and can sometimes be the play on some big targeted mechanic if your Guardian Spirit is planned for something else or is on cooldown.
Symbol of Hope will be a strong tool to recover your party defensive cooldowns.
Cooldown Usage
Holy has a couple of very strong cooldowns available to them and here we’ll go a bit more in-depth to talk about how to use them effectively.
Guardian Spirit
Guardian Spirit is the class major external, it does not give damage reduction like most other healer externals, but it works as a cheat death for the receiver of the spell. On top of that it also increases all healing received by 60% which is a crazy big number. On a tank taking a lot of damage and without any of their own cooldowns available, you can keep them alive quite easily with focused single target healing. Or to use on a dps player or yourself, that might have gotten a nasty dot or is about to get hit by a lot of damage without any defensives ready, the cheat death can really save a pull. Keep in mind that, for our own safety we need to run the talent “Restitution”, which means we unfortunately cannot run the talent “Guardian Angel”, which would have made Guardian Spirit even more potent.
Divine Hymn
Divine Hymn is the class major healing cooldown, and got buffed in 11.2 to be stronger in 5 man content such as Mythic+. This helps Holy Priest a lot as our aoe healing was lacking behind other healing specs a lot. It is a 3 minute cooldown, so use it wisely. In raiding, you can play the talent “Seraphic Crescendo” that lowers to cooldown by 1 minute, but I recommend using the talent “Gales of Song” on most encounters.
Apotheosis
Apotheosis is our strongest cooldown. It allows us to spam our holy words, and with the talent “Divinity” it increases healing by 10% during Apotheosis. It is important to use filler spells to lower Holy Word: Sanctify and Holy Word: Serenity as fast as possible in Apotheosis, but remember to choose which you lower depended on the situation. Serenity effectively works as a Lay on Hands almost in Apotheosis, which means it will top your targets health bar almost no matter their current health. On bosses like “Swampface” in Operation: Floodgate, I recommend lowering Holy Word: Serenity and not Holy Word: Sanctify, even though everyone takes damage, Holy Word: Serenity will work better with Apotheosis active. In raiding, a good balance between lowering both Holy Word. Sanctify and Holy Word: Serenity is recommended. As we play the talent “Lasting Words” in raids, Holy Word: Sanctify will apply Renew to allies it heals..
Symbol of Hope
Symbol of Hope is a very underrated cooldown as it does not do any healing, but I would dare to say it was one of the stronger ones in the game. A full channel will reduce every ally’s chosen major defensive ability by 30 seconds, which is incredible strong in both Mythic+ and raiding content.