PvE Holy Priest Rotations & Cooldowns

As a healer, the Holy Priest has less of a set rotation and more of a priority system. You’ll be performing triage with your healing abilities while using your cooldowns to maximize your output and minimize your mana usage, and perhaps even weaving in a little damage where you can.

PvE Holy Priest

Gems, Enchants & Consumables

Stat Priority & Reforging

Best Professions

Pre-Raid Gear

Rotation & Cooldowns

Talents, Builds & Glyphs

Best in Slot (BiS)

Addons & Macros

Chakras

Chakras are the core mechanic of the Holy Priest, and you will always want to be in the correct Chakra for the situation at hand. It’s easier to activate your Chakras in Mists of Pandaria than it was in Cataclysm. Each Chakra has its own spell that triggers it, and they are off the global cooldown, so you don’t need to interrupt your rotation at all to switch. There is still a 30-second cooldown on activating them, however, so you will need to commit to a particular approach for at least that long.

Chakra: Chastise increases the damage you deal with all of your spells and reduces the mana cost of Smite and Holy Fire by 90%. It also puts Holy Word: Chastise in its default state as a damaging spell with a short disorient effect. This Chakra is only for dealing damage and will not see much use in endgame group content, although it can come in handy if your group is trying to beat a tight DPS check or if you don’t need the extra healing offered by your other Chakras.

Chakra: Serenity increases the healing of your single-target spells and causes them to refresh your Renew. It transforms your Holy Word: Chastise into Holy Word: Serenity, an instant heal that makes your other healing spells more likely to crit on the target. This is your single-target healing Chakra, great for tank healing, but its effects on Renew also make it effective for AoE healing in smaller groups. You will rarely want to be in this Chakra in a 25-player raid, however.

Chakra: Sanctuary increases the healing of your AoE spells and reduces the cooldown of Circle of Healing by 2 seconds. It also transforms your Holy Word: Chastise into Holy Word: Sanctuary, an AoE heal that you can place on the ground. This Chakra will be your bread and butter in 25-player raids where your AoE heals can really shine. Even in smaller group content, you may want to switch to this Chakra any time there is a lot of AoE damage going out.

Spell Priority

Inner Will should only be used if you expect to be casting a lot of instant-cast spells, including Renew, Circle of Healing, and Prayer of Mending. Otherwise you should always maintain Inner Fire for its Spell Power bonus.

You should always be in one of your Chakras based on the situation at hand. See the section about Chakra above for specifics.

1. Cast Holy Word: Serenity on cooldown if you are in Chakra: Serenity.
2. Cast Flash Heal if a target needs immediate emergency healing or if From Darkness, Comes Light procs (if you are using that talent).
3. Cast Prayer of Mending on a tank before the pull and every time it’s off cooldown.
   • If using the Divine Insight talent, be aware that you will sometimes be able to cast this twice in a row.
4. Cast Circle of Healing on cooldown if it will heal at least 3 targets.
5. Cast Holy Word: Sanctuary if you are in Chakra: Sanctuary, if the group is stacked, and if heavy damage is going out (or about to go out).
6. Cast Renew in the following circumstances:
   • To apply/maintain the HoT on the tank(s) or other priority targets.
   • On targets who need healing when you are moving and Prayer of Mending and Circle of Healing are on cooldown.
   • On targets who are taking steady ticking damage, such as from a DoT.
   • To blanket the raid ahead of heavy damage going out.
7. Cast Divine Star on cooldown if you chose this talent, if the raid is positioned for it, and if there are at least a handful of players missing health.
8. Cast Cascade or Halo on cooldown if you chose one of these talents and most of the raid is missing health.
9. Cast Prayer of Healing on a party where at least 3 of the targets are missing health.
10. Cast Binding Heal if both you and another teammate are missing health.
11. Cast Greater Heal on any target who is missing a lot of health.
12. Cast Heal to top off a target if there isn’t more urgent healing to be done.
13. Cast Holy Fire or Power Word: Solace on cooldown when possible to build Evangelism and to apply the DoT if you are using Glyph of Smite.
14. Cast Smite anytime you’re not doing something else in order to build and maintain Evangelism and contribute some extra DPS.

Important Cooldowns

In addition to your core healing spells, you have a number of abilities with longer cooldowns that you’ll want to utilize in opportune moments.

Healing & Defensive Cooldowns

• Desperate Prayer (Talent)
  Heals you for a nice chunk of your health on a 2-minute cooldown. If you have this talent, remember to use it! It can only be used on yourself.
• Divine Hymn
  This amazing raid healing cooldown has gotten even better in Mists of Pandaria. It now heals 12 players instead of 5 if you are inside a 25-player instance, greatly extending its healing in this raid size. You should be careful to cast this when you will be able to stand still and channel it for the full duration (8 seconds, reduced by your Haste). It should be used when the raid is taking a lot of damage since it’s quite powerful and also buffs the effects of other heals on the targets. You may be asked to use it as part of a cooldown rotation on certain fights.
• Fade
  Fade has niche usefulness if you need to drop aggro when adds spawn. Otherwise it’s mostly useful as a small defensive cooldown when used with Glyph of Fade.
• Guardian Spirit
  This is your main tank cooldown. It serves double duty, increasing the healing the target receives by 60% and also allowing the target to cheat death one time, healing them for half their health when it triggers. It’s on a long cooldown so use it carefully. You may be asked to use it as part of a tank defensive rotation.
• Lightwell
  This spell used to be a bit of a joke, and even after it was buffed it could be difficult to make good use of it since it required your teammates to click on it. In Mists of Pandaria, it doesn’t need to be clicked anymore, and instead automatically heals players who drop below 50% health. This makes it a much more effective cooldown in most situations, but you can use a glyph to make it require clicks again and increase the amount that it heals for if you trust your group to make good use of it.
• Power Infusion (Talent)
  This spell used to be exclusive to Discipline Priests, but now Holy can access it too. It provides a powerful 20% spell haste, 5% damage, and 20% mana cost reduction for all of your spells for 20 seconds. A great combination of throughput and mana reduction cooldown for healing through heavy damage.
• Spirit of Redemption
  This used to be a talent that you had to spec into, but now it’s a baseline passive ability for Holy Priests. After you die, you’ll get 15 seconds of free healing. You can even glyph this for an extra 10 seconds. The best spells to spam while this is active are Prayer of Healing, Flash Heal, or Renew.
• Void Shift
  You can use this to save another player who is about to take a deathblow, or even to save yourself. Just remember that you (or the other player) will be very low and will need probably need immediate healing afterward. It can be a good idea to use Desperate Prayer or another personal cooldown alongside this for that reason.

Mana Cooldowns

• Hymn of Hope
  This is a powerful mana cooldown for your entire raid group, but it requires you to stand still and channel it (and not heal) for up to 8 seconds (reduced by your Haste). Look for the best time to use it so you don’t waste its cooldown or fall too far behind on healing during its channel time. It’s a good idea to call out when you use this so that your team can pair it with their other mana cooldowns, because it not only restores mana but increases maximum mana, so any abilities that restore a percentage of your total mana will restore more while it is active.
• Shadowfiend/Mindbender (Talent)
  This is your main personal mana cooldown. Make sure it’s hitting something or it won’t give you anything. You can cast it right before Hymn of Hope to maximize the mana return you get from it, since your maximum mana will be higher while you channel that spell. If you want your Shadowfiend to benefit from Bloodlust/Heroism/Time Warp, you must summon it after the buff has gone out.

Utility Spells

Holy Priests have a variety of useful utility spells that also bear mentioning.

Crowd Control

• Dominate Mind (Talent)
• Holy Word: Chastise
• Psyfiend (Talent)
• Psychic Scream
• Shackle Undead
• Void Tendrils (Talent)

Movement

• Angelic Feather (Talent)
• Leap of Faith
• Levitate
• Power Word: Shield (with Body & Soul Talent)
  • Be careful using this if there is a Discipline Priest in your group.

Buffs

• Fear Ward
• Inner Fire
• Inner Will
• Power Word: Fortitude

Dispels

• Dispel Magic
• Mass Dispel
• Purify

Revive

• Resurrection