PvE Holy Priest Stat Priority & Reforging

Holy Priests in Mists of Pandaria are primarily interested in Spirit and Intellect, with their secondary stat priority depending on how close they are to a Haste breakpoint. You’ll need to know how to prioritize these stats so you can select the appropriate gear, gems, enchants, and consumables as well as for reforging, which is also covered in this guide.

Stat Priority

Here is your general stat priority as a Holy Priest:

1. Spirit (until mana is not an issue)
2. Intellect
3. Spell Power
4. Haste (especially to reach a breakpoint)
5. Mastery
6. Critical Strike

Spirit is the primary mana regeneration stat for all healers in Mists of Pandaria, with raw MP5 having gone away in Cataclysm. Priest healers gain 50% of their Spirit-based mana regeneration while in combat thanks to their Meditation passive effect. The amount of Spirit you need comes down to how comfortable you feel with your mana pool. Once you get to the point where you are not burning through your mana on a typical fight, you can start dropping some Spirit in favor of throughput stats. Until then, it’s more valuable to you than throughput stats since you can’t heal at all if you run out of mana. All healers have a static mana pool in Mists of Pandaria, so mana regeneration is the only way to extend your mana.

• Each point of Spirit equals about 0.56 mana regained per 5 seconds.
• Human gain 3% more value from Spirit due to their The Human Spirit racial passive.

Intellect is your primary stat as a Holy Priest, and you’ll want as much of it as you can get. Intellect is the main source of your Spell Power and also increases your Critical Strike. (Note that in Mists of Pandaria, it no longer increases your mana pool.) Your Mysticism passive effect increases your Intellect by 5%, adding further value to every point you acquire. You can’t reforge other stats to Intellect, so you’ll want to get as much as you can from your gear, although you will still want to avoid items that have completely useless stats for you such as Hit.

Hit is not a necessary stat for Holy Priests. Your Divine Fury passive ability will guarantee that your main damaging spells are Hit capped and never miss. Hit is not worth stacking for the sake of other abilities such as crowd control.

Spell Power directly increases the healing and damage of your spells. Most of your Spell Power will come from your Intellect at a 1:1 ratio, but you will occasionally see it as a secondary stat on certain items such as weapons and trinkets. Each of your spells has its own coefficient that determines how much its effect is multiplied by your Spell Power.

Haste is the only stat that has specific caps you’ll be aiming to reach. This is because some of your spells have breakpoints at which you will gain an extra tick over their duration, significantly boosting that spell’s efficiency. This applies to Holy Word: Sanctuary, Lightwell, and Renew, with Renew being the most significant. If you’re not using Renew much, the caps become less important. Beyond the caps, you can still benefit from Haste’s other effects: a quicker global cooldown for your instant spells and faster cast times for all of your cast-time and channeled spells. (Hymn of Hope and Divine Hymn no longer gain ticks from Haste, but they will channel faster and grant their effects faster like other cast-time spells.) Haste is the most valuable when you are trying to reach a Renew breakpoint, and beyond that its value is dependent on how much you are using your cast-time heals, especially Prayer of Healing.

• Every 425 points of Haste is equal to 1% increased casting speed.
• Goblins gain 1% increased Haste from their Time is Money racial passive.
• The following Haste breakpoints for your spells are baseline and can be affected by trinket effects, cooldowns, or the 5% Haste raid buff:

Mastery increases the strength of your direct healing spells through your Echo of Light passive effect, which adds a HoT to the target that heals for a percentage of the original heal over 6 seconds. This HoT can stack for each heal you cast on the same target. It is only generated from direct heals and not from HoTs, so the more you use Renew, the less valuable your Mastery becomes.

• Every 480 points of Mastery increases Echo of Light by 1%.

Critical Strike increases your chance of getting a critical hit with your spells, doubling their healing or damage. Crits can be a little iffy for healing since you can’t make them happen when you really need them, and they usually amount to wasted overheal when you don’t. It’s still not a bad stat to have, it’s just not as useful as your other options.

• Every 600 points of Critical Strike is equal to 1% increased crit chance.

Reforging

Reforging can only be done for secondary stats, so you won’t be able to alter the Intellect or Stamina on your gear. Holy Priests will want to reforge less valuable stats to Spirit until they are comfortable with their mana supply. After that, Spirit and other less valuable stats can be reforged into Haste to try to reach one of your breakpoints, or Mastery otherwise.

1. Spirit (until no mana concerns)
2. Haste (to reach a breakpoint)
3. Mastery (any other situation)