PvE Holy Priest Healer Guide

Holy Priest PvE

Talents, Builds & Glyphs

Stat Priority

Best Races

Gems, Enchants & Consumables

Rotation & Cooldowns

Best Professions

Best in Slot (BiS) & Pre-Raid Gear

Addons & Macros

Welcome to the Holy Priest DPS PvE guide for World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King!

And, welcome to the class that can cover multiple different aspects of healing!

Holy Priests were incredible back in TBC due to Circle of Healing providing nearly instantaneous healing to entire raid groups even rivaling Shaman Healers. Unfortunately, Holy Priests lose a lot of momentum in Wrath because Circle of Healing now has a 6-second cooldown. However, we have a couple of tricks up our sleeve through our Tank healing and/or raid healing.

This guide will teach you how to properly play a Holy Priest in PvE scenarios, Providing Raid or Tank heals that rival other healers!

Holy Priest Strengths & Weaknesses

Strengths

• Damage Prevention
  While Discipline Priests are the Kings at Damage prevention, Holy priests are also able to cover this category as well.

• Outstanding utility with healing
  Holy Priests are incredible in the utility department, able to cover nearly all healing roles.

Weaknesses

• Not as needed in Raid Environments
  Compared to our other healer friends, we aren’t as needed, since Discipline Priests are able to cover the damage Prevention while Resto Druids cover Raid healing. Also, Holy Paladins cover Tank heals, making us a role that is easy to fill with other classes.

Holy Priest Utility

With our vast amount of Utility from healing, we bring a couple of useful spells and abilities:

• Guardian Spirit
  This is your big single-target cooldown (CD). It serves two purposes. Firstly, it can be used to prevent death. Then, it can also be used to increase healing on the target by 40% (this affects the healing of all healers). Because of the two facets this spell has, it has a variety of uses. You can save someone from death at the last moment, or you can plan ahead and provide a large increase of healing to the target so they don’t risk death.

• Mass Dispel
  Players who did the Sunwell raid in TBC know how incredibly powerful this ability is, where it’s absolutely crucial in fights like Felmyst and M’uru. Great news: it’s still exclusive to the Priest class in WotLK! Any fight where multiple players need to be dispelled quickly, or where there are enemies with invulnerability-type effects, and it will be up to you as a Priest to save the day with a well-aimed Mass Dispel.

• Stamina buff (does not stack) – Prayer of Fortitude
  The stamina buff has been a Priest’s unique trait since the dawn of time. Every raid will want 1 Priest of any specialization for this buff alone, as it drastically increases your chances of surviving dangerous raid mechanics.

• Spirit buff (does not stack) – Prayer of Spirit
  This buff was previously exclusive to Discipline Priests, but has now become available to Priests of any specialization. Furthermore, Spirit is now a very useful stat for many caster classes, rather than a strictly healer-specific stat, making this buff a must-have. Affliction Warlocks can now also offer this buff with their Felhunter pet (Fel Intelligence), but their version is straight-up weaker than ours, and since every raid will want at least 1 Priest for our other amazing utility spells, it will be your domain to apply this powerful buff.

• Hymn of Hope
  Priests of all specializations have access to this incredible mana regeneration raid cooldown. This spell can very often make the difference between a kill and a wipe due to your healers going out of mana. It is impossible to underestimate how useful this ability will be in your raid.

• Divine Hymn
  Heals 3 allies with lowest health nearby or raid targets within 40 yards, for 8s, and increases healing done to them by 10% for a maximum of 12 heals.

Conclusion

We hope this guide has been able to help you decide if PvE Holy Priest is the class / spec for you. Make sure to check out our other sections, such as talents, gear, gems etc., to get more information on how to improve your performance as a Holy Priest in WotLK!