Holy Priest Guide

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Table of Contents (You can use ctrl+f to skip right to a section you may be curious about)

I. Why a priest?
II. Down ranking?!?
III. How to heal and not wipe
IV. External Buffs
V. 5 man and Raiding spec
VI. Your Gear
VII. Addons and Macros
VIII. Tips on being a good healer

I. Why a priest?

Priests bring many aspects to the table. You could technically consider yourself the jack of all trades as a healer. There is the standard HoT: (Heal over Time) Renew, the basic single target heals: Heal, Greater Heal and Flash Heal, our aoe (area of effect) heal: Prayer of Healing, and our lovely bubble Power Word: Shield.

Not only healing, but as a priest you have many buffs and utilities for nearly any scenario. Our three main buffs are Prayer of Fortitude, Prayer of Spirit, and Prayer of Shadow Protection. Fortitude is a joyous buff and it is required by everyone. The other two sadly are situational depending on class and the fight. On top of our buffs, we bring helpful things such as Dispel Magic and Dispel Disease to get rid of those nasty de-buffs.

Now that you know the very basics of a Holy Priest, how about we actually get to the good stuff?

II. Down ranking?!?

As a new healer, the concept of down ranking may sound strange to you. While I will explain it as clear as I can, you must realize that down ranking is probably the most important thing you can master to starting down your path as the best holy priest.

To put it simply, down ranking is using previous ranks of heals over simply always using the max rank of the spell. An example would be using both Heal rank 1 and Heal rank 5 to keep your party alive. The hardest part about this practice will be knowing when to use what rank and when. If the tank is down about 500 health, then casting Heal rank 1 would be much more efficient than Heal rank 5. The only good thing about all this is that down ranking only applies to our single target heals: Heal, Greater Heal, Flash Heal, and Prayer of Healing. For Renew and Power Word: Shield you will always be using the max rank unless you fight some boss mechanic that needs you to use a bubble for a small amount. Concerning lesser heal, while very cheap, low ranks of Heal, Greater Heal, and Flash Heal will usually always be necessary for the HPS (Health per second) required to keep a tank and party alive. But what about Prayer of Healing? I would not worry about down ranking this spell unless you are an experienced raider that knows how to correctly use it on a boss fight or difficult trash pull.

The way to master and get used to down ranking has an easy part and a hard part. The easy part is seriously just putting the down rank spells on your skill bar and actually using them. The hard part is being able to visualize the current health of a tank or DPS (Damage Dealer) and knowing what rank of something like Heal or Greater Heal will be the most efficient one to use on them. After a few months of healing people with similar health pools, you will start to get very decent at down rank healing.

III. How to heal and not wipe

One of the first things you will probably realize when healing a 5 man for the first time is that your mana pool is actually very small. Being a priest means you not only have to keep from going oom (out of mana), but also have to know good usage of your cooldowns to help avoid going oom as well. For just about every priest their two main cooldowns will be Inner Focus and a Mana Potion. There are others as well such as Dark Runes and on-use trinkets, but they should be self-explanatory if you know how to use cooldowns like I will teach you.

The most important and crucial concept you should learn from cooldowns is that they should be used immediately and whenever they come up again. Inner Focus is the main cooldown you should learn how to correctly use. Some Priests may pop it before the pull, but it is almost always better to wait till any renews or bubbles have been cast as you would be wasting the 25% crit bonus of Inner Focus. There is a lot of wiggle room here, but for a standard 5 man you really can wait to use Inner Focus as no boss lasts more than 2 minutes anyway. There are really only three spells you should ever use Inner Focus on, which are the max ranks of Greater Heal, Flash Heal, and Prayer of Healing. But which one you use out of the three is completely dependent on the boss fight or trash pull. For an average 5 man boss, using inner focus then waiting for the tank to get slightly low on life and popping a max rank Greater Heal on them is probably the best way to use this cooldown. If the 5 man boss does a party wide aoe for a decent amount of damage, then it could be wise to use inner focus and pop a max rank Prayer of Healing. Just remember that if you are on a boss fight lasting more than 2 minutes, you will always want to pop your inner focus as early as possible and then use it each and every time it comes back up immediately.

Mana pots are very important to learn how to correctly use as well. From my own experience in Sunwell; for a boss fight you want to drink your first mana pot the second you dip below the mana it will give back to you. So if the mana pot gives back on average 1200 mana, then the second you drop say 1400 mana, use the mana pot immediately. After you use your first mana pot, always use them the second they come back off cooldown if you are doing a boss fight that lasts longer than 2 minutes.

IV. External Buffs

Another important thing any healer needs to have to avoid a wipe is external buffs. These include Flasks or elixirs, potions, mana oils, world buffs, food buffs, and enchants. Just because the best Flask any healing priest should use for raiding is Flask of Distilled Wisdom, and the best mana oils are the mp5 (mana per 5 seconds) ones does not mean you should always use these. Some boss fights may require different things to succeed.

Here is a list of the Best Raiding external buffs (Credit to Borgath):

– Flask of Distilled Wisdom: http://db.valkyrie-wow.com/?item=13511
– Elixir of Sages: http://db.valkyrie-wow.com/?item=13447
– Mageblood Potion: http://db.valkyrie-wow.com/?item=20007
– Brilliant Mana Oil: http://db.valkyrie-wow.com/?item=20748
– Buff food: Sagefish Delight: http://db.valkyrie-wow.com/?item=21217
– Scroll of Intellect/Spirit IV

Here is a list of the Best Mana Regen items that go hand in hand with the items listed above:

– Dark Rune: http://db.valkyrie-wow.com/?item=20520 or Demonic Rune: http://db.valkyrie-wow.com/?item=12662
– Major Mana Potion: http://db.valkyrie-wow.com/?item=13444
– Night Dragon’s Breath: http://db.valkyrie-wow.com/?item=11952

Here is a list of the Best Raiding Enchants:

– Gloves: Healing Power – http://db.valkyrie-w…om/?spell=25079
– Chest: Major Mana – http://db.valkyrie-w…om/?spell=20028
– Weapon: Healing Power – http://db.valkyrie-w…om/?spell=22750
– Boots: Minor Speed – http://db.valkyrie-w…om/?spell=13890
– Bracers: Healing Power – http://db.valkyrie-w…om/?spell=23802
– Cloak: Subtlety – http://db.valkyrie-w…om/?spell=25084
– Helm and Legs: Prophetic Aura – http://db.valkyrie-wow.com/?item=19789 – Requires ZG items
– Alternative Enchant for non-raiders to Helm and Legs: Arcanum of Focus – http://db.valkyrie-wow.com/?item=18330 – Received from Libram of Focus Quest
– Shoulders: Zandalar Signet of Serenity – http://db.valkyrie-wow.com/?item=20078 – Requires Exalted with ZG
– Alternative Enchant for non-raiders to Shoulders: Chromatic Mantle of the Dawn – http://db.valkyrie-wow.com/?item=18182 – Requires Exalted with Argent Dawn

V. 5 man and Raiding spec

As specs are concerned, it is really only your Holy tree that is modifiable. But just because I say this, does not mean this is true for EVERY single boss fight or trash pull. Things like other buffing priests, or a random boss mechanic may change a few things around.

Here are examples of 5 man and Raiding specs and respective feedback to each one. Which one you pick is how you think your play style more closely follows:

http://www.wowprovid…02320500323d55r -> This is a very standard Holy Priest Build, which many people run (including me).

http://www.wowprovid…02050500323d55r -> This build assumes you never use renew or not enough to make its talent worthwhile, otherwise its very similar to the one above.

http://www.wowprovid…02050500323d55r -> This build is once again similar to the other two but drops Healing Focus and a point in Holy Reach for Imp Renew. If you want max HPS and the boss fight has no spell pushback, this should give it to you. Once again for a fight with no spell pushback, most raiding priests will agree that this is your best choice for tank healing as well to maximize HPS and Inspiration uptime.

Obviously if you have multiple raiding priests, you should dedicate one to Imp Fort and have all the other priests take Imp Bubble. You could take a point out of the threat reduction for Imp Bubble only if threat is not an issue at all for the raid. For 5 mans, I will tell you to always have the 4 points in it. Technically you could even have one priest dedicated to the spirit buff, and give all the other priests the extra talent point for Holy. But I will leave this up to your own raiding roster and experience. As for spirit of redemption, I hear it is currently bugged and as it brings really nothing in its current state it’s a worthless talent to pick.

VI. Your Gear

The main stats you will be looking for as Holy Priest while gearing up is Intellect, Spirit, mp5, + Healing, and + x% spell crit. Until AQ40 and Naxx, these are pretty much the only stats you will be concerned with. For the whole spirit vs. mp5 debate, unless you are a human and maybe alliance in general (even then it’s not much different), mp5 on similar item lvl gear will just about always be better than spirit. The only time this is not necessarily the case is if you use Darkmoon Card: Blue Dragon (which is something I recommend getting) and/or have full t3, then spirit becomes a little bit more valuable due to this trinkets proc and sheer amount of it on t3. If you want all the math involved with spirit vs. mp5, you will have to look elsewhere as I just don’t have the Vanilla values anywhere I can easily look at. Intellect is extremely straight forward and doesn’t need anything about it.

+Healing on gear is very good for a starting Holy Priest. You want to aim for a decent amount of it before you jump into raids as it will provide a huge boost to your HPS. So pretty much any item with +Healing and other decent stats will almost always be your preferred choice unless mana regen is a problem. While +X% Spell Crit may seem decent, we only have one talent that scales well with crit. This means that crit really isn’t that great for a starting Holy Priest and should be left more to Holy Pallys and the likes.

Now let us talk about Stamina. While a health pool is very important so you do not die, there is really nothing that requires a certain amount of Health until you start raiding. So do not worry about stamina that much until you actually start getting raiding gear.

Here is a list of what is Best in Slot for a Holy Priest pre-raiding (Credit to Nayeli):

Helm:
Cassandra’s Grase – http://db.valkyrie-wow.com/?item=13102 – Can be bought off the AH

Neck:
Animated Chain Necklace – http://db.valkyrie-wow.com/?item=18723 – Ramstein the Gorger, Strat Undead
Alternative:
Amulet of the Redeemed – http://db.valkyrie-wow.com/?item=22327 – Sothos and Jarian, Strat Live

Shoulders:
Mantle of lost Hope: http://db.valkyrie-wow.com/?item=22234 – Lord Roccor, BRD
Alternative:
Mantle of the Scarlet Crusade: http://db.valkyrie-wow.com/?item=22405 – Cannon Master Willey, Strat Live

Back:
Hide of the Wild: http://db.valkyrie-wow.com/?item=18510 – Leatherworking, Can be bought off the AH
Alternative:
Cloak of the Cosmos: http://db.valkyrie-wow.com/?item=18389 – Immol´Thar, DM West

Chest:
Robes of the Exalted: http://db.valkyrie-wow.com/?item=13346 – Baron Rivendare, Strat Undead

Wrists:
Sublime Wristguards: http://db.valkyrie-wow.com/?item=18497 – Guard Slip´kik, DM North
Alternative:
Virtous Bracers: http://db.valkyrie-wow.com/?item=22079 – T0.5, You get the quest for these in Thralls Room, and you can buy the d1 bracers required on the AH

Weapon:
Redemption: http://db.valkyrie-wow.com/?item=22406 – Cannon Master Willey, Strat Live
Alternative:
Guiding Staff of Wisdom: http://db.valkyrie-wow.com/?item=11932 – Emperor Dagran Thaurissan, BRD

or Main+Offhand: *I would reccomend going for this due to the AV offhand, if not going for it, then Redemption would probably be your best bet*
The Hammer of Grace: http://db.valkyrie-wow.com/?item=11923 – Chest of The Seven, BRD
Thaurissan´s Royal Scepter: http://db.valkyrie-wow.com/?item=11928 – Emperor Dagran Thaurissan, BRD
Offhand Alternative:
Brightly Glowing Stone: http://db.valkyrie-wow.com/?item=18523 – King Gordok, DM North
Lei of Livegiver: http://db.valkyrie-wow.com/?item=19312 – Alterac Valley Exalted (This is the best off hand you can get before AQ40)

Wand:
Antenna of Invigoration: http://db.valkyrie-wow.com/?item=21801 – AQ 20 Trash Mob Drop, Can be bought from the AH
Alternative:
Bonecreeper Stylus: http://db.valkyrie-wow.com/?item=13938 – Dark Master Gandling, Scholo
Mana Channeling Wand: http://db.valkyrie-wow.com/?item=18483 – Cho’Rush the Observer, DM North

Hands:
Hands of the Exalted Herald: http://db.valkyrie-wow.com/?item=12554 – Princess Moira Bronzebeard, BRD

Waist:
Whipvine Cord: http://db.valkyrie-wow.com/?item=18327 – Alzzin the Wildshaper, DM East

Legs:
Padre`s Trousers: http://db.valkyrie-wow.com/?item=18386 – Illyanna Ravenoak, DM West

Boots:
Faith Healers Boots: http://db.valkyrie-wow.com/?item=22247 – Rend Blackhand, UBRS
Alternative:
Boots of the Full Moon: http://db.valkyrie-wow.com/?item=18507 – Captain Kromcrush, DM North

Fingers:
1. Band of Mending: http://db.valkyrie-wow.com/?item=22334 – Sothos and Jarien, Strat Live
2. Rosewine Circle: http://db.valkyrie-wow.com/?item=13178 – Urok Doomhowl, LBRS/UBRS

Trinkets:
1. ” Holy Bologna: what the Light won´t tell you” : Royal seal of Eldre`Thalas: http://db.valkyrie-wow.com/?item=18469 – Can drop from any DM Boss, or be bought from the AH. You can also solo your way to the library very easily through DM West.
2. Beasts Deck, Darkmoon Card: Blue Dragon: http://db.valkyrie-w…om/?item=19288. – The Ace of Beasts, what makes it so expensive, drops from The Beast in UBRS. The Beasts Deck can also be bought from the AH
Alternative:
Mindtap Talisman: http://db.valkyrie-wow.com/?item=18371 – Magister Kalendris, DM West
Briarwood Reed: http://db.valkyrie-wow.com/?item=12930 – Jed Runewatcher, UBRS

VII. Addons and Macros

What’s worse than a bad healer? Probably a decent healer that is gimping themselves with no addons. Addons bring multiple things to the table that help drastically in improving efficiency and skill. The most important addon you want as a healer is something that replaces the atrocious, abominable, disgusting, hideous thing that Blizzard calls a party and raid ui. What I use, and just about every other competitive Healer is Grid. Grid is an amazing addon that replaces your party and raid ui with nice easy to see and target, player boxes. But probably the most useful part of Grid is that is actually shows you de-buffs as nice little icons over the boxes. There are two amazing things about this. The first one is that you can easily dispel with this aid, and the second is that any de-buff or buff, such as the bomb on Baron Geddon, can be shown as an icon over a person’s box. Other useful things that Grid does are showing you HoTs, current aggro, and if someone is currently healing the target.

Another thing many people use in conjunction with Grid is Clique. Clique allows you to map things such as Dispel Magic and Disease to mouse keys you can press over a person’s box on Grid. This can help drastically in improving your dispel reaction time. These addons plus many other helpful ones can all be found in the addons section of the forums, and the ones there will be 1.12.1 compatible.

Having a boss mod such as BigWigs is a big help, and normally required by a guild, for knowing when a boss may do certain abilities or warn you when these abilities are happening. Get used to all these types of addons in general, as it is up to you when it comes to customizing your ui to be the best healer you are aiming for.

Macros are also a key part to just about any role. They can do things such as use a trinket with a skill, or even more useful things such as Mouse Over Heals. While I have not really used the macro system yet for 1.12.1 WoW, I do not know if Mouse Over Heals actually work. I will update this when I find out. During a trash pull it may also be your job to shackle a mob. Focus macros come in handy here so you do not have to manually select the mob to shackle while potentially causing a death.

But one important thing that only a macro can do for a healer is stop casting. Instead of having to move to interrupt your wasteful heal, you can use this macro in conjunction with heals to never have to move the entire fight. An excellent example of stop casting being extremely helpful is let’s say your shackle target breaks and your currently healing a person that doesn’t really need the heal at that moment. Instead of having to move, interrupting your cast to use shackle, you can just use a stop cast macro and cast shackle much faster potentially avoiding a wipe. Using stop casting macros correctly can greatly improve dispel time, when to heal reaction time, and instant cast usage time.

As I hump when it comes to 1.12.1 macro scripting, you will have to find help elsewhere for making stop casting macros that work for this patch (hopefully they do).

VIII. Tips on being a good healer

So you read this guide and felt like you know a lot about healing on a priest now? While this could be true, many things only come from experience. If a trash pull or a boss fight dishes out heavy damage, you may be required to spam a certain rank of flash heal on the raid or tank to keep them from dieing. But if you have never done the boss fight or trash pull before, you may not know this. Gear plays a big role as well. Spamming flash heal in blues and greens makes an oom priest, but in full t2 it becomes doable, and even preferred many times, as you can keep your mana up with correct cooldown usage. So modify your healing style as you acquire more gear to become a better priest in general. Also learn from your mistakes when healing, and avoid falling into the pitfall where you do not change your healing style when you keep failing over and over again. If you normally do not use Prayer of Healing, you may have to on a certain boss fight or people will die.

Okay, so you now have the experience, gear, addons, macros, buffs and everything else needed to heal. That means you automatically win right? While yes on easy bosses, the harder stuff requires a type of healing you may not be used to. This type of healing is considered proactive healing. You should get used to this as soon as possible. It is just simply pre-casting a heal spell and stopping it or letting it go off depending if it’s needed. But this is just one part of proactive healing. Another major aspect is getting ready for a part of a boss fight before it actually happens. Such as bubbling a dps when a boss targets them for a spell before the spell actually goes off. Mastering proactive healing and everything else in this guide will not only make you above average as a priest healer, you can even soar to the very best competitive priests in the world. Hopefully you at least take from this guide that healing as a priest is not difficult, it just requires patience and experience.

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