Holy Priest Raid Healer Build
Odealo's Pocket Guide
Updated for Patch 8.2.0
You can find all our Pocket Guides for other World of Warcraft classes right here: Best WoW Builds
Spec Overview
Holy Priest is one of the best healers for Raids and PvE in WoW. Holy Priests truly shine in reactive healing with a bunch of powerful cooldowns and very good AoE and single-target healing spells. Priest is a very classic healing spec with a wide variety of direct healing and healing over time spells. The following build should be a good base for players that are just about to start raiding, and will give you a basic insight into the Holy spec, its skills and healing "rotation".
 Pros |
 Cons |
| Great for both single-target and AoE healing |
Bad mobility, with most skills requiring to stand still |
| Amazing flexibility with various direct healing and healing over time spells |
Lacks instant cast skills |
| Team utility cooldowns for both health and mana restoration |
Low defenses |
| Performs well in all scenarios including Raids and Dungeons |
No battle res |
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Statistics Priority
- Intellect - primary attribute for all healer and spell caster specializations. It increases your spell power and hence your healing capabilities
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- Mastery - Priest's
 Mastery: Echo of Light adds healing over time to all your direct healing spells. The Mastery secondary attribute increases the effectiveness of this HoT mechanic, which can also stack on the same target with each consecutive heal
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- Critical Strike - which is as important as Mastery attribute. It increases your chance to double the effect of your healing, which also affects the healing over time from Echo of Light
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- Versatility - increases all your healing done, and reduces damage taken
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- Haste - increases your cast speed and reduces all global cooldowns. Higher Haste can also increase the number of ticks and healing of
 Renew
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The Best Talent Choices
Level 15: Recommended choice - Enlightenment |
| Enlightenment is the best talent choice for this tier. It increases your mana regeneration rate which is essential for Raiding, and useful in pretty much every other scenario including Dungeons and leveling. |
 Trail of Light is also a viable option for Dungeons. It increases your healing done by  Heal and  Flash Heal spells. The last possible option,  Enduring Renewal shouldn't be considered. Its effect is usually wasted and results in overhealing |
Level 30: Recommended choice - Angelic Feather |
| Angelic Feather - amazing utility/mobility skill which can be used to plant up to three feathers in targeted locations. The first ally that walks through it will have greatly increased movement speed for a short duration |
 Angel's Mercy reduces the cooldown of Desperate Prayer based on the amount of damage you have taken recently. It's a decent defensive Talent which can be considered in some encounters.  Perseverance is also defensive Talent which adds a skill that reduces your damage taken by 10% when you heal yourself with Renew. |
Level 45: Recommended choice - Cosmic Ripple |
Cosmic Ripple - greatly helps with healing five injured allies when your  Holy Word: Sanctify or  Holy Word: Serenity expire. This is the best Talent for this tier and provides the most healing in Raids |
 Guardian Angel is the recommended choice for Mythic+ Dungeons where more focused healing is required, allowing you to cast  Guardian Spirit more frequently.  Afterlife is less likely to be useful than the other two Talents in this tier and should not be considered a viable option |
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Level 60: Recommended choice - any of the three |
All the Talents in this tier provide different crowd control effects. They are situational and you should pick one that is the most suited for your team composition or specific encounter. Psychic Voice reduces the cooldown of  Psychic Scream - which is a great utility spell that causes nearby enemies to flee and disorients them for 8 seconds. Censure grants a very powerful stun by enhancing  Holy Word: Chastise and Shining Force is an instant cast spell which knockbacks all enemies near your target and slows them down by 70% |
Level 75: Recommended choice - Circle of Healing |
| Circle of Healing is a solid AoE heal, which is the best option for this Tier and healing in Raids. It's also one of the few instant casts in Holy Priest's arsenal |
 Surge of Light is a decent pick for dungeons and lower tier content. It lets you save some mana by occasionally making your Flash Heal cost no mana.  Binding Heal can be also considered a viable pick for Raids and Dungeons as it heals three allies simultaneously and reduces the cooldowns of Holy Word: Serenity and Holy Word: Sanctify. |
Level 90: Recommended choice - Halo |
| Halo - which grants a great Raid healing utility. It creates a ring of holy energy that spreads up to 30 yards and heals all enemies inside it. |
 Benediction makes your  Prayer of Mending to have a 30% chance to place Renew on your target. And while it provides decent additional healing, it requires to recast Prayer of Mending which is not the most reliable Holy Priest healing spell.  Divine Star is a decent instant cast spell that heals your allies in a path in front of you twice in short succession by creating a ball of holy energy that travels back and forth from your location. |
Level 100: Recommended choice - Holy Word: Salvation |
| Holy Word: Salvation - is the best pick for this tier. It's a very powerful raiding AoE heal which replenishes the life of all your allies in 40 yards and applies Renew and two stacks of Prayer of Mending to each. Holy Word: Salvation has a cooldown of 12 minutes but it's decreased by 30 seconds every time you use Holy Word: Serenity or Holy Word: Sanctify |
 Light of the Naaru reduces the cooldowns of your Word spells when you cast the relevant spells. It's an easy and straightforward way to increase your overall healing.  Apotheosis, on the other hand, is a very powerful cooldown. It greatly reduces the cooldowns of your Holy Words and their mana cost for 20 seconds. It's also a viable choice for this tier. |
The Basic Rotation
Healers, in general, have no set rotations. Most of the spells are used in reaction to occurrences during different encounters and are situational. Which spells you use depend on the damage your team takes and how you should respond to it. In order for you to become a good healer we have decided to list up all the spells that are the disposal of a Holy Priest, and in which situations you should use them.
| Healing spells |
- Heal is a slow and very powerful single-target healing spell. It's best to time it well when you know your tank is going to be hit hard and you need to get him back up quickly. Triggers
 Holy Words which reduces the cooldown of Holy Word: Serenity
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- Flash Heal quicker version of Heal which is best used in emergency situations. It also triggers Holy Words
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- Renew weak direct heal with small healing over time effect. It also reduces the cooldown of Holy Word: Sanctify
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- Holy Word: Sanctify strong AoE heal which works best when healing stacked groups of players
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- Holy Word: Serenity very strong direct heal. It should be used on allies on very low health
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- Prayer of Healing expensive multi-target heal that restores the life of your target and four additional nearby allies
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- Prayer of Mending unusual healing spell which heals your target when it received damage and then bouncing off to another ally. It can jump up to five times
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- Divine Hymn - large radius AoE cooldown that heals all team members in 40 yards radius. It also increases all healing done to affected allies by 10% for 8 seconds
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- Holy Word: Salvation extremely powerful AoE heal which replenishes the life of all your allies. It's perfect for encounters where the entire Raid is damaged badly and need to recover Life very fast
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| Utility spells |
- Holy Word: Chastise a powerful stun if you have taken the Censure Talent. Also deals moderately high damage to the target
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- Symbol of Hope a very powerful utility cooldown which greatly increases mana regeneration rate of all healers in your party
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- Fade - which removes all threat for 10 seconds. Extremely useful when you get targeted during encounters
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- Guardian Spirit - which increases the healing received by your target and when it takes lethal damage it's healed to 40% instead and ending the effect
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- Mass Dispel - extremely useful utility spell which removes all debuffs from up to 5 players with the radius
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- Spirit of Redemption - a Passive skill which allows you to continue healing for short duration even after death. Spell cast during the effect cost no mana
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Tips and Tricks for Improving your Gameplay
- Always use your
 Power Word: Fortitude when entering a Raid or Dungeon. It's a buff that works on every team member and increases their Stamina by 10% for one hour
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- Casting Renew frequently is usually the main cause for mana-related issues. Mana management as Holy Priest is extremely important, and using more efficient spells like Circle of Healing or Halo is advised
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- A good habit that may help you with mana management is making sure that your mana is draining at the same pace as the Bosses' life
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- Timing your Heal shortly before your tank is getting a bit hit from Boss is a good idea. It then gets followed up by Holy Word: Serenity which should quickly heal your tank to nearly full life in an instant
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END NOTE
This is the basic version of our Pocket Guide for Raid Healer as the Holy Priest specialization. Please leave your suggestions in the comments section below. While we appreciate all the feedback, keep in mind that this guide is intended as a pocket version that covers up only the most important aspects of healing in Raids as Holy Priest spec and is intended to be an introduction for beginning players.
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