- A holy priest is often great at keeping the whole raid alive, especially in AoE situations.
Introduction
A holy priest is a strong AoE healing class because of its wide range of multi target healing abilities. This post on the holy priest as meant as a presentation of the healing class before venturing into a more comparative section on all the healing classes later on in the series.
Holy spells
Priests have a lot of abilities related to healing and as a holy priest you will get a few more from talents. Some of these you will be using quite a lot more frequently than others. I have included a selection of spells that you are mostly likely to find yourself using if you are healing as a holy priest. (The spells linked to are the rank you’d use at level 80.)
Prayer of Healing – An AoE heal which will heal a specific party. This spell is particularly useful if several people in one particular party is taking damage and are stood spread around the room.
Circle of Healing – A smart heal which will heal 5 people (or 6 if you have the glyph). The targeted player and the 4 people with lowest health stood nearby this player will be healed with this spell. As opposed to Prayer of Healing this spell is great for healing across parties.
Renew – A reasonable hot which can be used to top up the health of DPS or keep it ticking during AoE or debuff damage for example. It is one of the most favoured spells for a holy priest, especially when talented for Empowered Renew.
Flash Heal – This is often a holy priest’s most used single target direct heal ability. It is a strong and fast heal which is good for when random players in the raid are taking damage for whatever reason. If help is required on the tanks then this is the heal many holy priests would prioritise.
Prayer of Mending – It is a useful spell that heals when the person who currently has it gets hit. It does a lot of healing in constant AoE situations in particular and can also jump nicely between raid members who are taking damage. This is a heal that is very powerful and doesn’t require a whole of of work. Nice!
Binding Heal – This heal will heal whoever you target and yourself at the same time. (It is a bit like the paladin’s beacon of healing where you would be the one beaconed.) The only good time to use this spell is if you and another player are taking damage simultaneously and you are not wasting time healing one person when you could be healing two.
Guardian Spirit – A great ability for keeping the tank (or any other player) alive when they are taking massive amounts of damage. It will both increase the healing done to its target as well as preventing it from dying once during the 10 seconds it is active for.
Power Word: Shield - Ok, so this is a generic priest spell, and it’s more used by disc priests, but it is still a useful spell for a holy priest especially in regards to their own survivability. It absorbs damage which then makes the shielded player take less damage.
Greater Heal - A very useful spell when healing tanks in particular. It is a large heal which can be talented to be cast reasonably quickly. It is rarely used if a holy priest is assigned to raid healing specifically.
Lightwell – A talented spell which some holy priests decide to bypass. One of the main reasons this can be deemed unnecessary to talent for is because it is difficult to train DPS to consciously click the Lightwell to heal themselves which in turn makes casting it a waste of both time and mana (although pre-casting it before the fight starts helps). Additionally, someone who doesn’t know how this spell works is likely to keep clicking it until it eventually runs out of charges.
Spirit of Redemption – This is technically not a spell and certainly not one you can randomly cast, however, it is quite a useful talent. Only a holy priest is able to heal while they are dead so it’s easy to guess you’re down a healer very shortly if you see a flying angel like this. With spells costing no mana they can continue to heal for another 15 seconds.
Gear stats
Spell power is of course a great stat. Spirit is an OK stat as it increases both mana regen and spell power (talented), however you might benefit more from increasing your intellect rather than spirit. Haste is a good stat, as is crit. A good balance between the two is important. Try to aim for close to 15% haste (lower cast time on Prayer of Healing is very nice) and 20-25% crit at least. As a cloth wearer, cloth items will cover the stats you need, but you may have roll against DPS for items. Items with both crit and haste on are quite nice, but spirit items are all right as well.
Mana regen
Shadowfiend is a summoned pet that will DPS whatever the priest tells it to attack. However, as it is a pet it can die from damage like everything else. Although this has been changed in recent patches to make it take less AoE damage for example. It will regenerate your mana for 15 seconds or until it dies. If it stays alive for the full duration you will get a good amount of mana back.
Hymn of Hope is the second priest ability for mana regen. Additionally, it will increase the party’s mana pool for 8 seconds. This is a channelled spell which makes it important to time when to use it. Starting to channelled it as AoE damage is imminent is for example not a great idea.
Strengths and weaknesses
Raid healing is where a holy priest will do particularly well due to the wide range of spells they have available. Circle of Healing together with Prayer of Healing makes for quite a strong combination with different uses. While Circle of Healing is a smart heal healing those in range, Prayer of Healing heals a particular party. On top of that you are likely to have Empowered Renew and Prayer of Mending bouncing between raid members for additional healing.
Because of their strong AoE healing abilities they rarely get put on any form for tank healing duty. Although they would do OK if they were assigned this role, there are other classes better fit at healing the tanks in a raid situation.
In heroics with a decent group, a priest healer can be seen as more fun to play as a priest has OK DPS with a healing spec. Holy Nova and Smite can prove quite a lot more fun than putting a DPS on follow and tabbing out waiting for something to need healing. In general, a holy priest is a strong healing class in a difficult heroic as well because of their vast range of spells available.
Levelling
Most characters starts at level 1 and have to make their way all the way to level 80. Although it is sort of possible to heal on the way there, some DPS along the way would come in handy! Levelling as holy will appear to be quite slow if you have previously mostly levelled DPS or tanking classes. Although there are quite a few decent talents to increase holy damage and reduce cast time of holy damage spells their damage will not be as effective as a shadow priest’s spells. However, a holy spec can be equally good to shadow until level 40 when the shadow priest can talent Shadowform which is where shadow will start being better. With Power Word: Shield and Renew for example you are likely to mostly keep alive should you not take on too many mobs at once. Over all it’s doable without being too painful.
I personally levelled my priest as holy until level 35 where I after leaving her alone for a few months gave up and specced her shadow which she kept all the way while levelling. Shadow is a strong levelling spec after you gain shadowform as you will also eventually get both Vampiric Embrace (which you can also improve) and Vampiric Touch (lower ranks do less damage) talented to give you back both health and mana while levelling.
Useful websites
Here is a short list of links to information about holy priests which is far more detailed than I have been in this introduction.
If you know of other good websites related to holy priest healing you are welcome to link to them in a comment to this post.
Summary
In a raid situation you are likely to find a holy priest assigned to raid healing almost regardless of who their healing partner is. They have a large number of useful heals, but a holy priest’s AoE healing capabilities are quite strong which in turn lowers the value of their single target ability.
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The next episode in the healing series will be on the Restoration Druid.
Tags: healing, holy, mana, opinion, priest, spells, stats, WotLK
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