WoW Holy Raiding Basics Guide

This guide is up to date as of patch 4.0.1., and some info may become irrelevant or even false in the future.

Priests are the only class capable of healing that has not one, but two talent trees dedicated to healing. Currently, discipline priests are widely seen as prevention healers while holy priests fill the niche of raid healers. For that, we have a wide array of tools, but the healing spells you’ll most commonly use are:

• Chakra
• Holy Word: Aspire/Sanctuary
• Prayer of Mending
• Circle of Healing
• Renew
• Prayer of Healing
• Flash Heal
• Guardian Spirit
• Binding Heal

Those should have spots on your main action bar and be easily accessible. Less commonly used but good to keep keybound and memorized are:

• Power Word: Shield
• Heal
• Greater Heal
• Divine Hymn
• Holy Nova
• Desperate Prayer

Every of the spells I just mentioned is situational, but with the spam blanket healing nature of Wrath of the Lich encounters, you’ll find that in most situations you’ll benefit from faster heals. The beauty of mastering the priest class is gauging when to use which spell. I’m going to outline some general usage rules.

Spells

The new mechanic in patch 4.0.1 that really is a niche unique to Holy Priests is Chakra. Chakra seems like a complex mechanic at first glance, but once you get the hang of it it’s really easy and fun to use.

Once Chakra is activated (it works much like Inner Focus in that it affects the next compatible spell that you cast and will stay active without duration or triggering a cooldown until you use one of them), you can use it with either Renew, Heal, Prayer of Healing or Smite. Depending on which spell you choose to activate Chakra with, you will get a buff to certain spells while your Chakra state is active. The original Chakra cooldown and duration is 30 secs, but it can be prolonged by talents, so if you make use of that, you don’t have to recast it every 30 secs.

On top of the passive buff, if you take the talent “Revelations” your Holy Word: Chastise will change into a different spell depending on which Chakra state you enable.

When entering “Heal” Chakra state, your Heal will have 10% additional crit chance and casting Heal will refresh the Renew duration provided Renew has been cast on the target. The “Heal” Chakra state will enable Holy Word: Serenity, which is an instant but relatively small heal that also raises your critical strike chance on that target by 25% for 6 secs.

When entering “Renew” Chakra state, your Renew will heal for 10% more and Renew’s global cooldown will be capped at 1 second even without any haste. The “Renew” Chakra state will enable Holy Word: Aspire, which instantly heals the target for a small amount and also puts an 18-second HoT on the target which ticks 6 times, every 3 secs for about ~1000 health each time.

When entering “Prayer of Healing” Chakra state, all of your AoE healing spells will heal for 10% more and your Circle of Healing cooldown is decreased by 2 secs (from 10 secs down to 8). The “Prayer of Healing” Chakra state will enable Holy Word: Sanctuary, which is a targetable AoE heal that heals each person within it for roughly ~500 health every 2 secs for 18 secs (9 ticks). The maximum number of targets this can affect is 10.

Prayer of Mending is an amazing spell that no other class currently has an equivalent to. Once used on a target, it’ll take effect once that target takes damage and after healing it, will bounce to another raid member in range. Prayer of Mending has 5 charges and will bounce until either its charges run out or the current target does not take damage within thirty secs. it’s on a 10-second cooldown and should be used on cooldown on a tank or someone else that will predictably take frequent damage. With average gear, it heals for about 4000 on a non-crit and 6000+ on a crit.

Circle of Healing is a very potent smart AoE healing spell that affects 5 or up to 6 targets if glyphed, with average gear heals each target for about 2500 non-crit and 4000-5000 on crit and has a 6 second cooldown timer. Circle of Healing should be used whenever 3 or maybe more targets in the same general area take damage. Since it’s a smart heal, you’re not able to pick who it’s going to heal, but it’ll pick the 5 (or 6) lowest health raid members within 18 yards of the target. CoH is an instant spell so it’s excellent to use while moving around.

Renew is a filler spell that is most useful on high raid damage fights. When everybody is constantly taking damage, you’ll get a lot of healing out of keeping renew ticking on as many targets as you can while using your high priority spells like Circle of Healing and Prayer of Mending on cooldown. Renew is our only proper healing over time spell that’s made very useful by talents. A basic renew with average gear will heal anywhere from 1200 to 3000 per tick depending on talents and glyphs. It is not as effective as a druid’s Rejuvenation, so make sure to weave Circle of Healing and Prayer of Mending into your rotation.

Flash Heal has become very expensive to cast in patch 4.0.1. As trade-off, it now heals for signficantly more, at least 10000, and the amount is even more increased by the Icecrown Citadel instance buff. Flash Heal is an emergency heal that should be used to save lives, for instance once your tank is low on health or a raid member is close to death. When you find yourself forced to use it repeatedly, make sure to watch your mana closely.

Prayer of Healing is a party-wide AoE healing spell with a 3-second cast time, a 30 yard range and a hefty mana cost. With average gear it heals for about 4000-4500 on non-crit and 6000+ on a crit. This should be used whenever whole parties are taking big chunks of damage, especially if said damage is predictable and you can start casting PoH before the actual damage happens. Be aware that three secs is a very long cast time, so avoid overhealing.

Binding Heal can be used whenever you take damage at the same time as another person. In encounters where the raid takes constant damage you’re better off weaving Renews and your AoE tools, however it is more mana-efficient than Flash Heal when it doesn’t overheal. With average gear it heals for about 5500 on each target on a non-crit and 8000 on a crit.

Power Word: Shield is an amazing tool made awesome by talents for disc priests that loses a lot of value for holy priests, but useful for two reasons: Firstly, if you have taken the talent Body and Soul, it becomes situationally useful (for instance, to give a person running a debuff out of the raid a speed buff) and secondly, it is an instant spell so you can cast it while running. Mind you that disc priests will not be very happy with you if you decide to randomly shield people, since it places a weakened soul debuff on the target that prevents re-application of Power Word: Shield for 15 secs.

Heal is back in the game, but with present game mechanics it will see little to no use in raiding. Wrath content favors fast healing, and Heal is a cheap but weak single target heal with a 2.5 second cast time. People tend to take damage too quickly for Heal to be worthwhile – this might change come Cataclysm.

Greater Heal has certainly seen better days. Currently it’s a fairly slow, weak and inefficient single target heal that will find little to no use outside of 10-man raids and emergency tank heals. With average gear it heals for about 10000 on a non-crit and 14000 on a crit. These numbers may vary depending on talents. At best and at the expense of five talent points it has a 2.5 second cast time.

Divine Hymn is an extremely potent and smart channeled AoE heal on an 8 minute cooldown timer. This is comparable to a druid’s Tranquility spell, except every tick it’ll pick the three nearby lowest-health targets to heal regardless of party. It’ll tick a total of 4 times on up to three people each time and heals for roughly 6000 non-crit and 8000 on a crit.

Holy Nova is cheap to cast, and with the major glyph it has a capped 1 second global cooldown. However, it’s a very weak heal that heals for roughly 3000, and healing is divided by the number of people that are within its 10 yard range. Its only situational use currently is to abuse Holy Mastery game mechanics.

Desperate Prayer is a potent instant self-heal with a 2-minute cooldown that should be used as an emergency heal once you see your own health dipping low quickly, or once you know you’re about to take an inevitable chunk of damage. It heals for about 7000 on a non-crit with average gear and 11000 on a crit.

That covers just about any healing spell you’ll ever need to know about for raiding purposes.

Spec

Next, let’s talk specs. With the talent spec consolidation which was implemented in 4.0.1, there is not much wiggle room. You HAVE to spec 31 points into holy before you can touch other trees. There are a total of 36 points in the holy tree, so you can skip up to 5 of them. I’ll go over the staple talents that you really should have in your spec.

In the first tier we have Improved Renew, Empowered Healing and Divine Fury. Neither Empowered Healing nor Divine Fury might find a huge use in pre-Cataclysm content, but they’re still decent to take in lieu of better options. Improved Renew should be a no-brainer, you definitely want to take it.

In the second tier we have Desperate Prayer, Surge of Light and Inspiration. Desperate Prayer is situational, but if you think you can get used to it and will use it in situations where your life is in danger, it’s worth spending the talent point. Surge of Light now gives you a 6% chance to trigger an instant, free Flash Heal once you use Smite or Heal. However, in raiding content, you’ll very, very rarely if ever find yourself using either spell, and statistically speaking, a Surge will only trigger on every 17th cast, so it’s currently a waste to spec into it. Inspiration is a no-brainer, do take it.

The third tier greets you with Divine Touch, Holy Concentration and Lightwell. Divine Touch and Holy Concentration are staple talents, definitely take those. Lightwell is very mana-efficient healing, however it does require other people to actually use their brain and click it. If you’re up to the task of re-teaching your raid that Lightwells are good, go for it. You will likely need to anyway, as you have to spend 15 talent points to advance to tier 4.

Speaking of tier 4, here you can find Serendipity, Spirit of Redemption and Tome of Light. Tome of Light is a great talent for Chakra mechanics, and since you really have no other options, do pick it up. Spirit of Redemption has lost its spirit to spellpower component, but post-death angels can be situationally useful. Serendipity is a bit of an antiquated mechanic but should see more use in Cataclysm, so for lack of better options and to get used to the Cataclysm healing system, you should pick it up.

Tier 5 awaits with Body and Soul, Chakra, Revelations and Blessed Resilience. Blessed Resilience is now basically a pure PVP talent, don’t bother taking it. Chakra and Revelations are staple talents, pick up both. Body and Soul is situationally useful, for instance on Halion to give a speed boost to those that get debuffed. Worth picking up.

Tier 6 has Test of Faith, State of Mind and Circle of Healing. State of Mind and Circle of Healing are staple talents and you’ll likely put at least two points into Test of Faith just for lack of other options. Test of Faith definitely is viable though, and if you wish to put all three points into it, go for it. This will likely mean you’ve spent 32 points in the Holy tree though, which means you only have 4 points left over for the other trees.

Lastly, we have our final 31-point talent, Guardian Spirit. Although its usage is occasional, it’s an incredibly powerful tool that should not be missing in any holy priest’s toolbox. Sometimes you’ll be assigned to use it in a cooldown chain, other times you’ll be able to use it at your discretion when a tank or another raid member is close to death. Either way, it ends up being useful in many situations. Learn to love and use it!

Now, for the other trees – this is actually where the biggest spec variety awaits you. When you look at the first tier of both the discipline and the shadow trees, you’ll find 4 worthwhile talents to take. Keep in mind that you have at most 5 points to spend, though.

The Discipline tree has Twin Disciplines and Mental Agility, whereas the Shadow tree sports Darkness and Veiled Shadows. Twin Disciplines is a direct 6% healing increase and hence should be a no-brainer. If you use a lot of instant cast spells but suffer from mana issues, Mental Agility might be worthwhile for you. On the other hand, Darkness in the Shadow tree gives you a 3% increase in spell haste which you might want to consider if you’re not close to your desired haste cap; and Veiled Shadows decreases the duration of your Shadowfiend by 2 minutes. Twin Disciplines and Darkness are direct HPS raises, so if you don’t have mana issues you’re best off spending your points here. However, if you do have mana issues, you may instead opt for Twin Disciplines and Mental Agility. If you really cannot sustain your mana throughout a fight, Mental Agility and Veiled Shadows might be something to try out.

Finding a spec that works for YOU and your raid is the most important part past picking up the staple talents.

This also goes for glyphs. With 4.0.1, the glyph system got a huge makeover. We now have three tiers of glyphs – Prime, Major and Minor. Prime Glyphs, according to Blizzard, are meant to be direct performance raises, while Major Glyphs are more situational and Minor Glyphs are for fun and convenience.

There are a total of three useful Prime Holy Priest Glyphs that you should pick up.

• Glyph of Prayer of Healing
• Glyph of Guardian Spirit
• Glyph of Renew

While Glyph of Flash Heal and Glyph of Lightwell are also Prime Glyphs, neither of them bring a performance boost in the currently widely accepted raid style. However, if you’ve managed the miracle of making your raid utilize Lightwell and find it gets a lot of use, you may wish to exchange the PoH glyph for Lightwell. For most priests, this is not recommended.

As far as Major Glyphs goes, you have a little more wiggle room.

• Glyph of Circle of Healing
• Glyph of Dispel Magic
• Glyph of Holy Nova
• Glyph of Mass Dispel
• Glyph of Spirit of Redemption

They are all Major Glyphs you may want to look at and evaluate. Glyph of Circle of Healing should be a staple in any holy priest’s setup. Glyph of Dispel Magic provides a small healing boost, while Glyph of Mass Dispel brings your Mass Dispel cast time to 0.5 secs. To me, these seem to be the most valuable in any given situation, but if you do not make use of either type of Dispel much, you may instead choose to opt for Glyph of Holy Nova or Spirit of Redemption. One lets you pretend you didn’t just die for 6 secs longer, the other caps your Holy Nova at a 1 second global cooldown without any additional haste.

Minor Glyphs will not directly affect your throughput or efficiency, but Glyph of Levitate and Glyph of Fortitude are usually good picks for convenience. Also, Glyph of Shadowfiend is moderately useful if you tend to summon the bugger in the wrong moment and it dies instantly to some sort of annoying AoE.

Gearing, what to aim for

As one of three cloth caster classes, you’ll always face gear competition. It’s all the more important to understand what you want and look for in gear. Lots of stats are good for us, I’ll list them in the order of how I rate their importance.

• Intellect
• Mastery
• Haste
• Spirit
• Crit
• Stamina

Intellect, since 4.0.1, now grants you spellpower and hence replaces spellpower as the easiest and most straightforward throughput stat. The more Intellect, the bigger your heals. On top of that, intellect raises your mana pool and hence affects how much mana you regenerate from replenishment, shadowfiend and hymn of hope; it gives you critical strike rating (around 150 Intellect equal 1% critical strike rate) and slightly raises your mana regen (this function is tied in with spirit). In short, it’s an incredibly beneficial stat.

Mastery is a new mechanic implemented in 4.0.1 in preparation for Cataclysm. Mastery does something different for every class and spec. For holy priests, Mastery causes Echo of Light, which means that any direct healing spell you cast puts a HoT on the target for 6 secs. This HoT heals for a percentage of the original heal and the percentage is based on your mastery rating. The base rate with 0 mastery is an 8% HoT, and with each additional full point of Mastery, the percentage raises by 1.25%. You need 45.9 Mastery for every 1.25% increase. Since no gear features mastery right now, the only way to acquire more is to reforge gear for Mastery. Crit is an obvious stat to reforge for Mastery.

Haste (credit for putting this Haste overview together goes to Maladi from the guild Mediocrity on Blackrock) has changed the most for us in 4.0. Chakra: Renew makes GCD capping for the sake of renew spamming obsolete. However, haste now affects our HoTs and channeled spells by reducing their duration, reducing the time between ticks, and adding additional ticks when the duration gets too low. The formula for calculating the number of additional ticks you will have is (2k-1)/2m (credit to Elimbras in the elitist jerks thread). K is the number of additional ticks, and m is the original number of ticks. If your haste is larger than this number, then you will get k additional ticks. Therefore, for renew, divine hymn, and hymn of hope, the amount of haste needed for one additional tick is 12.5% and 37.5% haste for 6. 32.79 haste rating is equal to 1% haste.

Haste caps: The following haste caps are for achieving a 5 tick renew/DH/HoH, 6 tick renew/DH/HoH, and the GCD cap for 1.5 second cast spells.

Buffs                         5 Ticks           6 Ticks          GCD Cap

0/3 Darkness                    410              1230             1640

1/3 Darkness                    374              1186             1591

2/3 Darkness                    338              1142             1544

3/3 Darkness                    303              1099             1497

0/3 Darkness, 5%                235              1015             1406

1/3 Darkness, 5%                200              973              1359

2/3 Darkness, 5%                166              931              1314

3/3 Darkness, 5%                132              890              1269

Of these haste caps, the second one is definitely the most important for a Chakra: Renew heavy style. If you can reach that level through some combination of haste rating and darkness, then you should probably do it. After that, haste is still the largest increase in overall healing you can get from any of intellect, crit rating, and haste rating if youre not using Chakra: Renew. During Chakra: Renew, haste is still a competitive HPS increase.

Spirit is now a direct mana regen increase and not much else. You should pick up plenty of spirit-based gear to ensure you don’t run out of mana during a fight.

Critical Strike Rating does what it says it does – it gives you increased chance to crit on your spells, whether they’re damage or healing spells. However, as throughput increase it is fairly unreliable, so it’s low on your priority list. If you pick up a piece that has crit rating and haste rating on it (but no spirit), you may want to consider reforging some of the crit chance into either spirit or mastery rating.

As for Stamina… we all need it. Stamina automatically goes up as your gear level raises. Unless your gear level is way below the level of content you’re doing, you’ll pretty much always have enough of it.

Enchants and Gemming

Holy priest enchants are very straightforward. I’ll list what’s generally considered the best choice for each slot.

Head: Arcanum of Blissful Mending, the 26Int/20 Spirit enchant, presented at the Wyrmrest Quartermaster at Revered Reputation would be the best choice. Alternatively you may prefer the Arcanum of Burning Mysteries, which adds 30 spellpower and 20 critical strike rating and is presented at the Wyrmrest Accord Quartermaster at Revered Reputation.

Shoulder: Greater Inscription of the Crag, which adds 21 Intellect and 16 Spirit and is presented at the Sons of Hodir Quartermaster at Exalted Reputation would be the number one choice, or alternatively Greater Inscription of the Storm, same place and rep, which gives 24 Spellpower and 15 Critical Strike rating.

Back: Darkglow Embroidery for a tailor if you need additional regen, it currently evens out to about ~33mp5, Lightweave if you want throughput, it evens out to about ~80spellpower, 23 Haste if you’re not a tailor.

Chest: 10 Stats would be your best choice.

Wrists: 30 Spellpower is the supreme bracer enchant.

Weapon: 63 Spellpower for a One Hander, 81 for a Staff.

Hands: 28 Spellpower is pretty much the only useful caster enchant to gloves.

Legs: Brilliant Spellthread, which is 50 Spellpower and 20 Spirit is your go-to option.

Feet: Tuskarr’s Vitality which adds 15 stamina and a slight run speed increase or alternatively 18 Spirit.

As far as gemming goes, there are different ways to gem your character. You are able to stack just one stat that you’re lacking or that you favor and neglect all others or you can choose to gem for socket pluses.

I personally prefer to gem for socket pluses using Reckless Ametrines and Purified Dreadstones. That way, I stack up on Haste, Intellect and Spirit, the three stats that are most important for my playing style. It’s always a better choice to gem for haste rather than crit. If you’re worried about hitting aforementioned haste cap, you may want to consider gemming haste exclusively.

There are several meta gems that you may find interesting. Widely considered as the best choice for healers is the Insightful Earthsiege Diamond, which gives you 21 Intellect and has a chance to restore 600 mana on spellcast. That effect, assuming you cast a spell about every 2 secs, nets around 75MP5 on average.

Other valid choices would be Beaming Earthsiege Diamond, which gives you 21 critical strike rating and 2% Mana or Ember Skyflare Diamond which gives 25 spellpower and 2% Intellect.

That about covers the basics of successful priesting. Thanks for reading!

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