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.
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.
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 (AoE Archon)
The raid build with the Archon Hero Talent set-up will mostly revolve around Halo, it now does increased healing and increases the healing your allies receive for 10 seconds after getting healed by Halo. So you want to start off with Halo as people start taking damage, maximizing the healing within this window. If there’s ever a spot to pool Holy Words for, it’s within your Halo window.
Next, it is important to keep Prayer of Mending on cooldown. You have 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.
In the raid you’ll play around Lightweaver a lot, you’ll want to mainly build stacks with Surge of Light Flash Heals, as hard casting can drain your mana quickly. Then you want to spend those stacks on Heal to efficiently spot heal your raid.
Now, regarding raid cooldowns, you’ll need to pair some of them; Halo, being a flexible 1 minute-cooldown, can easily be used in conjunction with other cds like Holy Word: Salvation, an Apotheosis proc, or during your Divine Hymn. The healing amp it provides will snowball a lot (+10% healing from Resonant Energy, +10% healing from Perfected Form during Apo/Salva).
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).
Since you’ll be playing the 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 your Holy Words on cooldown and use Apotheosis frequently to save mana and reset the cooldowns of your Holy words.
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, you want to make use of Divine Star as much as possible, on top of 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.