Seebus’ WoW Classic Holy Priest Guide

• Author: Seebus
• Date: March 21, 2019
• Updated: December 10, 2020
• Expansion: WoW Classic

Hey guys! In my preparation for classic I went through a lot of guides/videos/articles and started gathering all the information I needed in a document which became this guide. It is mostly based on Shayss’ “What the light will tell you“. Please let me know what you think of it and if there is any information I accidentally left out. I played a holy priest with a focus on PvE from Beta until the end of TBC and am the Priest Class Leader of <Senile Chieftains>.

Abbreviations

Int – Intellect
Mp5 – Mana per 5 seconds
HoT – Healing over Time
BiS – Best in slot
CD – Cooldown
IF – Inner Focus
OOM – Out of Mana
PoH – Prayer of Healing
PW:S – Power Word: Shield
Fort – Fortitude
PoF – Prayer of Fortitude
DS – Divine Spirit
PoS – Prayer of Spirit
Crit – Critical Hit
PI – Power Infusion
Spi – Spirit
Stam – stamina

Race

Races aren’t really that important except when it comes to end game PvE but this might help you to choose. I only list abilities that somehow might affect leveling and/or PvE.

Undead

• Touch of Weakness – The next melee attack on the caster will cause (10.7% of Spell power) Shadow damage and reduce the damage caused by the attacker by 20 for 2 min.
• Devouring Plague – Afflicts the target with a disease that causes 896 Shadow damage over 24 sec. Damage caused by the Devouring Plague heals the caster.
• Will of the Forsaken – Provides immunity to Charm, Fear and Sleep while active. May also be used while already afflicted by Charm, Fear or Sleep. Lasts 5 sec. 2 min cooldown
• Cannibalize – When activated, regenerates 7% of total health every 2 sec for 10 sec. Only works on Humanoid or Undead corpses within 5 yds. Any movement, action, or damage taken while Cannibalizing will cancel the effect.
• Underwater Breathing – Underwater breath lasts 300% longer than normal. This is pretty useful during the leveling phase
• Shadow Resistance – Shadow Resistance increased by 10. Very very minor.

Troll

• Hex of Weakness – Weakens the target enemy, reducing damage caused by 20 for 2 min.
• Shadowguard – The caster is surrounded by shadows. When a spell, melee or ranged attack hits the caster, the attacker will be struck for (26.7% of Spell power) Shadow damage. Attackers can only be damaged once every few seconds. This damage causes no threat. 3 charges. Lasts 10 min.
• Berserking – Increases your casting and attack speed up to 30% depending on how damaged you are. Useful in PvE encounters.
• Regeneration – Health regeneration rate increased by 10%. 10% of total Health regeneration may continue during combat. Okay for levelling.

Dwarf

• Fear Ward – Targetable buff that makes the target immune to the next fear effect. This spell is insane. 30 second CD? wtf.
• Desperate Prayer – Instantly heals the caster. Kinda low self heal, nice to have.
• Stoneform – While active, grants immunity to Bleed, Poison, and Disease effects. Very strong in PvP, not too bad in PvE.
• Find Treasure – Allows the dwarf to sense nearby treasure, making it appear on the minimap. Not really useful.
• Frost Resistance – Frost Resistance increased by 10. Very very minor.

Human

• Desperate Prayer – Instantly heals the caster. Kinda low self heal, nice to have. (same as dwarf)
• Feedback – The priest becomes surrounded with anti-magic energy. Any successful spell cast against the priest will burn 105 of the attacker’s Mana, causing 1 Shadow damage for each point of Mana burned. Lasts 15 sec.
• The Human Spirit – Increases spirit by 5%. Nice to have as a priest due to Spirtual Guidance.
• Diplomacy – Very good for rep farming overall.
• Perception – Dramatically increases stealth detection for 20 sec.

Night Elf

• Starshards – Rains starshards down on the enemy target’s head, causing 936 Arcane damage over 6 sec.
• Elune’s Grace – Reduces ranged damage taken by 95 and increases chance to dodge by 10% for 15 sec.
• Shadowmeld – Activate to slip into the shadows, reducing the chance for enemies to detect your presence. Lasts until cancelled or upon moving.
• Nature Resistance – Nature Resistance increased by 10. Very very minor.
• Wisp Spirit – Transform into a wisp upon death, increasing speed by 50%. You will die a lot in WoW, it is a given, and being able to get back into an instance asap so you can start drinking up is pretty cute.

Recommendations

For Horde Undead is by far the most useful kind of priest to have but only due to convenience. Cannibalize and Underwater Breathing are very useful during leveling and WoTF is neat for fights where you might get feared of sleeped. Troll in PvE due to the powerful Berserking cooldown which increases cast speed. Undead in PvP due to Will of the Forsaken.

For alliance it is Dwarf all the way. Fear Ward is ridiculously strong and Stoneform helps a lot especially in AQ.

In the end though, your racials won’t make or break you.

Talents

21/30/0

This is your standard build and there is of course loads of room to maneuver, depending on how you fit into your priest team.

Absolute must have talents are:

Healing Focus When you take damage, while casting, you get knockback on your spellcast, this means the spell you are casting is taking longer to actually land. While it doesn’t shine so hard in raids, except on fights with constant damage like Vael, you will need it for dungeons. Sometimes fade just isn’t enough when you get those bad tanks that can’t hold threat.

Inspiration After a critical heal you give a 15 second buff that increases that players armour by 25%. This is huge for tanks and you will be healing a lot of them throughout your journey.

Spiritual Healing10% more healing from your healing spells. It is a straightup throughput boost. Not taking it for PvE is like saying you want to give urself a handicap.

Inner Focus A nice way to push the heal output temporarily. Try to combine it with instant casts to maximize its worth. For a deep dive scroll down to spells. Flexible talents (some are ok, some are just bad):

Flexible talents (some are ok, some are just bad):

Divine Spirit This isn’t something every priest in the raid has to get. It only really helps other priests so ask your priests bros if you should get it or if one of them will get it. In theory, anyone with a mana bar and any troll character will benefit from getting buffed with Divine Spirit. Or if you’re counting on people to regen their health and mana between pulls, you can include the entire raid.

Improved Power Word: Shield As a general rule of thumb you should never be spamming shields. PW:S is an incredibly mana inneficient spell but in the right situation is very useful. Great examples of shield use is just before a dragon breath in BWL or just after a Mortal Strike from Broodlord. This will cushion the blow and can sometimes even be the difference between life and death. In cases like these it is useful to have that slightly stronger shield.

• 3/3 Improved Power Word: Shield +15% base value
• PW:S 10 base value (no Imp. PW:S) 942
• PW:S 10 base value (3/3 Imp. PW:S) 1083.3
• Added base value (3/3 Imp. PW:S) +141.3

Improved Renew Renew is our HoT. It does a reasonable amount of healing but more often than not you don’t get much bang for your buck due to the raid just being topped off instantly by snipers. Even renew on the MT isn’t that useful since it can’t crit and no crit = no inspiration. You can’t even have multiple renews on one target. As for the talent, this increase only works on the BASE healing that the spell provides. This means no matter how much + healing you get, the bonus + healing you get from the talent will always be the same.

• 3/3 Improved Renew +15% base value
• Renew 10 base value (no Imp. Renew) 970
• Renew 10 base value (3/3 Imp. Renew) 1115.5
• Added base value (3/3 Imp. Renew) +145.5 total (29.1 per tick)

Holy Nova An instant AoE spell that both heals friendlies and damages foes. This is maybe useful in dungeons and even on some raid bosses like Vael and allows you farming DM East. Or you can use rank 1 Holy Nova to catch rogues. Or you can put the point in something else.

Spirit of Redemption It only works when you die. If you are dying, you are doing it wrong or your raid is bad. Don’t drop Divine Spirit for this.

Lightwell No. Never take this. The healing effect breaks if you are damaged. It only has 5 charges and worst of all it requires OTHER players to even make use of it. The graphic detail is small aswell so good luck to those raiders finding it in a 40 man raid.

Holy ReachThis does have its uses. It is also very situational. Good play can make this talent worthless if you are already positioned to heal everyone anyway.

Improved Prayer of Healing Having 10% cheaper PoH (20% with 2 talents) does sound cool but you shouldn’t be useing enough PoH to get any real value out of this talent. Most of the time if you are using PoH anyway you will be using it in conjunction with IF which makes your PoH cost no mana at all.

Improved Power Word: Fortitude 16 extra stamina (160 HP). In theory, having one priest with this is enough. C’mon, though.

31/20/0

This spec is more tailored towards geared guilds who excel at fast boss kills. It isn’t flexible in its talent choices and does gimp you a bit as a healer, BUT it boosts your Raid damage and gives you the coveted PI spell.

Power Infusion Infuses the target with power, increasing their spell damage and healing by 20%. Lasts 15sec. You will have mages tripping over their robes trying to bribe you with “Special Favors” to become their buff god. It does feel good to be adored. Ideally you should cast this spell on the strongest mage in the raid, when he has popped his trinkets, like Ephemeral Power for maximum effectiveness.

Force of Will Just a side note but the talent Force of Will also increases your personal dps a bit with 5% extra crit on your holy spells and 5% extra damage. You will most likely not notice the difference but on bosses like Ebonroc + Flamegor you need so few healers that you will end up smiting most of the time anyway.

Spells

The art of spellweaving! This part is going to come down to a lot of actual experience from playing the game. A general rule of thumb is the higher the rank, the more powerful and the more mana a spell will cost. Choosing the correct spell for the right situation is important because it affects your effective healing, your overhealing and your mana management. This is also why priests have a reasonably high skill cap. We simply have a ridiculous amount of spells at our disposal.

Spell Co-efficients:

• Prayer of Healing: 0.286
• Power Word Shield: 0.1
• Greater Heal: 0.857
• Flash Heal: 0.433
• Holy Nova: 0.114
• Renew: 1
• Heal: 0.857

Co-efficient explanation

All of the spells you will use benefit differently from your +Healing. Example; if you equiped a piece of gear that gives +10 healing and then used a Flash Heal you do not get +10 Extra healing on your Flash Heal. You will get +4.3 Healing but if you casted a Renew you would get +10 extra healing divided over the course of the HoT. The reason this is important to know is because as your gear improves you will want to downrank your spells. This is why +Healing is so strong as a stat for us. The lower rank a spell is the cheaper it will cost. This means you will have more mana to play with over the course of a fight.

Lesser Heal

It becomes completely worthless after the leveling phase.

Heal

• Heal rank 3: Used the most for consistent healing. It’s mana cost isn’t over the top and you will probably not run oom just from spamming this before a boss is dead.
• Heal rank 4: This will simply replace rank 3 when you got BWL + gear.

Greater Heal

This is a powerful spell that you should use in situations where there is going to come a lot of damage. It becomes even stronger if you run 8/8 tier 2 by adding a rank 5 renew to the healed target but this isn’t so important.

• Greater heal rank 1: Used for consistent healing when you are around end of AQ -> Naxx level of gear.
• Greater heal rank 3: This is your average burst heal
• Greater heal rank 5: Used for massive damage! Like when Nef is about to use a breath you can pre-cast this to land as the breath hits.

Flash Heal

• Flash heal rank 4: Used to top off people quickly during spiky damage. Like when someone in the raid gets hit with a shadowbolt or gets a tick from rain of fire on the trash after Broodlord.
• Flash heal rank 7: Used for healing massive incoming damage quickly. Be careful, spamming this will make you oom fast but if you have a pretty strong guild and the bosses die fast then it doesn’t really matter.

Renew

Renew sucks but you should still have it on your bars. It does have its uses in places like dungeons and when you need a cast while moving. Use max rank only.

Prayer of Healing

You can use all ranks of this depending on the damage the group has taken. Very expensive and IF is normally what I would use in conjunction with a max rank PoH. Don’t spam this unless you want to go oom fast. I found very limited use for this spell actually.

Holy Nova

An instant moderate AoE heal to top your group. It requires positioning and I would recommend using only the max rank. You won’t be spamming this unless you are on Vael.

Power Word: Shield

PW:S is a situational spell. It is a horribly inefficient spell but it does have it’s place on your actionbars. Use it in places just before you know the someone is about to get wrecked. Always use the Max rank of this spell.

Yori wrote: ↑

Bear in mind that ANY warrior will HATE you for putting PW: Shield on them as that means they will not be generating any rage from getting damaged (which is where most tank rage comes from, initially even as dps warr). Most importantly, do not precast shield on a tank before a pull as they will have a tremendously difficult time generating aggro that way. However, assuming the tank has enough rage and you/they are confident in their tanking abilities, you can use shield on them to prevent or mitigate taking damage when the situation calls for it. 

Inner Focus

It’s our only major cooldown, so I’m going to take an embarrassingly close look at this spell. In most cases, Inner Focus is wasted on anything but these spells:

• Max rank Greater Heal (if target will live for 2.5 sec)
• Max rank Flash Heal (if target will live for 1.5 sec and your latency is low)
• Max rank Power Word: Shield (if target wont live for 1.5 sec and your latency is low)
• Max rank Prayer of Healing
• Dispel Magic (if you’re just spamming Dispel Magic)
• Rebuffing Fortitude on a battle-ressed tank (70 stamina is 700 HP)
• Out of combat, you can use it for buffs/ressing too

If you’re trying to cast Inner Focus followed by another spell, you need to wait for your game to tell the server and for the server to reply before you can cast your next spell. If your latency is high, it might be a bad idea to try and cram in an Inner Focus before you cast an emergency Flash Heal or Power Word: Shield. The obvious benefits of Inner Focus are the removed mana cost and the +25% crit chance. This is the main reason why you want to maximize the number of Inner Focus casts during an encounter. The not so obvious benefit is that it allows you to begin or continue full mana regen. Because of this, you don’t want your first cast after a pull to be with Inner Focus. Instead, spend a little bit of mana and THEN use Inner Focus so that you can potentially regenerate your mana deficit.

Stat Priorities

+ Healing > Spirit > Mp5

+ Healing – This is your most sought after stat. Your + healing will not only directly increase the power of your heals, but indirectly affect your mana management through the use of downranked spells. A general rule of thumb is that if an item gives more + healing it is better.

Spirit – Very useful to have on your gear. Most standard priests specs will have Meditation for extra regen during combat and Spiritual Guidance for the extra healing bonus from 25% of your spirit which, again also effects your mana usage through downranked spells.

Mp5 – Mp5 is nice to have but not to the point where you should forsake your + healing.

Yori wrote: ↑

As soon as you start casting, the game puts your mana regen into the ‘casting’ state, which persists even after you have finished casting your spell, for a total of 5 seconds; during those 5 seconds your mana regen is effectively set to 20% of its total value; now, priests do not suffer from this as much as other casters due to Meditation (Disc), but it still is a substantial penalty.

Int– Int isn’t something you should aim for directly outside of the leveling phase. Your gear will come with it naturally. 59 int is 1% crit as well but you would need to stack tremendous amount of Int to actually make real use out of it and this generally leads to gimping your +Healing which is very bad.

Spell Crit – Spell crit is something you should view as a bonus. It isn’t something you should aim for directly. It does benefit Inspiration but most items with + Spell crit will not come with good + healing. Leave that gear for the Mages and Warlocks instead.

Stamina – Another stat you shouldn’t aim for directly. Having higher HP does help you survive easier but this comes naturally on gear as well.

Gear

Professions

Tailoring

This is kind of mandatory because you can get the Truefaith Vestments . These are equivalent if not better than tier 2 and your next upgrade will only be in AQ40 or if you manage to get all pieces for the T2 set bonus. Very worth it.

Enchanting

Often paired with Tailoring. It is always nice to be able to make your own enchants and disenchanting items might make some gold on the side. Might be hard to get the good recipes though and is mostly a money sink.

Engineering

Lots of toys here. Goblin sapper charges are mad. On use instant explosion dealing 450 to 751 damage to all enemies around you. I loved using this stuff on the Skeletal constucts on Nefarian and the Whelps when the aoe call is given on the way to Broodlord.

Alchemy

A good way to make some money as a priest! I plan on rerolling from Tailoring after getting the Truefaith Vestments .

First Aid

Standard, you should level this while you are leveling to 60 and make sure you have this maxed with a few Runecloth Bandages in your bags at all times. When you get silenced or you are OOM or you have priest call on Nefarian then use this. Be careful not to use it on people taking damage like the tank though because it will just break the channel. An excellent example of where I used these would be Rend. After each wave you can heal people up without having to consume extra mana to top them off. Even more useful when you still have bad gear.

Consumables

Consumables and buffs come from many places in vanilla. It is your job as a healer to be decked out with as many of these as you can during progression. Even if you have content on farm, depending on your guilds requirements, there are some simply mandatory consumables and buffs to bring. Note: There are already loads of buffs/Consumables guides out there, for that reason I will only list the mandatory few that you should always have for any standard raid.

Flask of Distilled Wisdom

2000 extra mana for 2 hours, persists through death. These will be expensive but I highly recommend you bring them with you on progression.

Major Mana Potion

Gives 1300-2250 Mana on use. Has a 2 min CD. This stuff will be like drinking gold. You will be using a LOT of these.

Kreeg’s Stout Beatdown

+25 Spirit, -5 Int – Bring for progression. Keep some stacks in bank. Use on longer fights.

Brilliant Mana Oil

12 mp5 and 25 + healing for 1 hour. This persists through death but is only available with ZG patch. So use Lesser Mana Oil till then.

Nightfin Soup

8mp5, lasts 15 minutes

Mageblood Potion

12 mp5 for 1 Hour duration but is only available with ZG patch.

Demonic Rune

900-1500 mana and you lose 600-100 Health. Doesn’t share CD with Major Mana potion.

Restorative Potion

Removes 1 magic, curse, poison or disease effect on you every 5 seconds for 30 seconds, 2 min CD. Super useful for Lucifron and Shazzrah.

Greater Fire Protection Potion

1950-3200 Damage absorb of specific kind of spells, stacks with each other but not with itself, 1 Hour duration. They all have their use somewhere. Take note of where you are going to raid next and prepare accordingly, eg: In MC you should bring Fire Protection potions for Ragnaros.

Lily Root

Conjured using Lei of Lilies, which has a 1 hour cooldown. You can hold multiple Lily Root.

World Buffs

Rallying Cry of the Dragonslayer
10% spell crit, 5% melee crit and 140 attack power, lasts 2 hours – This one you can get whenever someone hands in the Head of Onyxia. Before raid time I would camp the quest giver, your guild might be handing in a head aswell and you should take advantage of this.

Dire Maul Tribute run
Slip’kik’s Savvy for 3% spell crit, Mol’dar’s Moxie for15% stamina and Fengus’ Ferocity for 200 AP, lasts 2 hours – I personally make sure to always have this buff. DM:N tribute runs as a priest is a breeze due to our Mind Control and Mind Soothe spells. You also should try to snag the Major Mana Potions at the end.

Leveling

General Strategy

Keep your wand up to date and conserve mana by wanding. Don’t drink at all unless you need to (hard quests, dungeons, etc). Not only is this faster, but it saves you a lot of money which you can use for BoE blue wands in the 30s and 40s, and an early mount. Standard advice of only buying the spells you need to save money also applies. Stack as much spirit as you can. +spell damage, int, and stam are ok but a waste of itemization compared to spirit for pure leveling speed. Try not to fight enemies more than two levels higher than you. Priests especially favor killing weaker enemies due to spirit tap, though I would still stick with enemies within 5 levels of you due to the way the xp formulas work.

Yori wrote: ↑

During the leveling phase it is advisable to take two gathering professions (unless you want to sink all your money into Enchanting), preferably Skinning and Herbalism, unlearning Skinning to learn Tailoing at lvl 60. Herbalism will help you with either leveling Alchemy which you could take at lvl 60 after you have crafted your Truefaith Vestment, or with gathering those herbs you need for your potions, giving them to a guild mate who can craft them for you at no charge. 

Wands

5 Lesser Magic Wand
13 Greater Magic Wand
19+ Gravestone Scepter
31+ Goblin Igniter
51 Wand of Biting Cold

In the 30s and 40s I highly recommend buying BoE blue wands from the AH. Its the only way to keep your wand truly up to date. 19+ wand can be gotten at that level if you can convince people you can heal BFD at that level (you can). 31+ wand you would need help through the quest chain at that level. It isn’t a big upgrade and can be skipped. 51 won’t be in game If AV isn’t in game at launch. Here are some other options, and other than these your best bets are still potentially pricey AH BoEs: 50, but you may want to choose the prayer beads reward instead. Not pre-raid BiS, but still good. -> 54 BoE, but with a very high drop rate. It will be cheap.

Spec

5/5 Wand Spec -> 5/5 Spirit Tap -> 2/2 Imp SW:Pain -> Holy Spec until 5/5 Divine Fury ->
3/5 Shadow Focus -> Rest in Holy till 45.

At level 45 swap to:
5/5 Wand Spec -> 41 Shadow -> Rest in Disc for Meditation and Inner Focus.

Instead of respeccing Shadow you can stay Holy or go a bit deeper in Disc for Meditation and Inner Focus. This makes you better at healing dungeons, which is quite helpful at high level.

Rotation

PW:Shield or Renew -> Mind Blast -> SW:Pain -> Wand

If mana gets close to full then dump it by replacing wanding with Holy Fire -> Smite spam + Mind Blast when off cd till dead. It is best to use mana in bursts to maximize mana regen. Renew is more mana efficient, but PW:Shield is safer.

Dungeons

Before level 40+ dungeons you should mostly be helping the group DPS by wanding and using some of your mana for DPS, tossing a big heal + renew combo on tank when he gets below 50% to top him as necessary. You should conserve mana and plan to end a fight with 50%+ mana to be on the safe side. Survival > Speed. Try to steal killing blows on mobs to trigger Spirit Tap. Mind Blast does a lot of extra threat so use it sparingly, but if well timed is nice as a finisher to trigger Spirit Tap. For harder content at higher levels you conserve mana for healing, wand less and instead cancel-cast big heals more. Spirit regen is still important and you want to maximize time spent regenning mana, so use few big heals rather than many small heals. Will be easy to heal until Maraudon (Princess), Sunken Temple, and Blackrock Depths even if you spec Shadow. Even those are doable as Shadow, but getting difficult enough that Holy is well worth considering. +Healing is a waste of itemization before you are max level and well on your way to pre-raid BiS. Int is by far the most valuable for surviving hard dungeon encounters. Spirit is good for reducing downtime and can help in the hard encounters some too.

Gold

The best way to “farm” is to spec holy nova and get into DM East once its released. Herbalism helps to maximize the G/hour.

You can start farming here from level 55 depending on your gear. You need a minimum of 5,5k Mana and Shadow Protection is recommended. If you have the DM North key you can vendor your items at Shen’dralar Provisioner.

Addons

I tend to run a really lightweight setup myself, but here is a short list of useful Addons you can play with:

• Grid – Standard Raid Frames for Healers.
• Clique – Allows you to cast spells with your mouse.
• CT_RaidAssist – Shows useful things like when someone is already being ressed.
• Decursive – I am not a fan of this addon personally but as a beginner it can be useful if you don’t know where and what to dispel. A list pops up and you just click the names as they come up, and dispel them.

General Advice

Assignments

Priests have the power to be top healers and a common issue with a lot of newbies and scrubs is that they use the healing meter as a reflection of their performance. This is how tanks die. When you are assigned to healing a tank on a bossfight then THAT is your job. If the tank dies due to not being healed you are directly responsible for it and, most likley, the groups wipe. Being a meter whore makes you more of a liability than an asset to your guild, especially if you choose to disregard your specific assignments. If you are assigned to raid healing then sure, go for them meters!

Ressing

People will die. After the fight the first thing you do is ressurecting the dead. The less time they spend taking a dirtnap, the more time they spend buffing and healing up. This all comes down to less downtime.

Drinking

Move with the pack and drink the moment you reach your target. You don’t need full mana every fight but you do need to keep taking sips and you need to be in range to heal. Move towards the place you need to be next, if the situation allows it, so you can drink sooner.

Consumables and Enchants

Always have consumables on you for raids and always be enchanted with the best possible enchants you can get. The stronger you are, the easier your teams life will be.

Pocket Tanks

Make friends with tanks. Make them love you. If you are good you can pick them up whenever you wana do a tribute run for buffs.

Addons and screen clutter

Don’t be retarded. If you have too many addons covering your screen and you can’t see that you are standing in fire, then you are failing. Try to have as much room on your screen as you can. You need to be able to see what’s happening.

Major Mana Potions

You will drink this stuff like a fiend. Ask friends to send you these, snipe cheap deals on AH, ask guildies to cod you cheap, run DM:N tribute for them. You will look like a crackwhore to most but it is for a good cause.

Raid Stats

One fantastic resource for self-improvement is to review raid stats. Your guild might already have someone recording and uploading raid stats to legacyplayers.com. If not, you should organize for someone (or ideally several people) to start doing so. Once the stats are uploaded on the site, have a look at your stats and pay particular attention to which spells you’re overhealing with. The key is to find rational answers for your performance. Sometimes your assigned target doesn’t have much incoming damage. Sometimes your raid outgears the content. Sometimes you just don’t play well.

Sniping

Landing an effective heal feels good. Getting beaten to the punch by others doesn’t feel so good, especially if you fail to cancel in time. Failing to land an effective heal for a while feels awful. Sometimes these feelings inspire a low int priest to start sniping with Flash Heal, even if there’s no emergency. This ruins his mana-efficiency and forces the other healers to either spam fast heals as well (resulting in the same competition as before but with worse mana-efficiency) or sit back until the low int priest runs OOM. It’s a bad habit. Don’t do it.

Canceling Heals

You might be used to pre-casting heals and canceling a lot. However, the healing paradigm now includes healing predictions from other healers. If you’re casting a heal on someone, other healers might decide that they don’t have to. Thus it’s important to avoid canceling heals unless the target is only missing a negligible amount of HP, else you risk screwing up everyone else. Don’t leave a tank at 70% HP and cancel your heal because you expected him to take just a little bit more damage and you were casting a big, juicy heal that will now overheal if you let it finish. Other healers expect you to finish it. Don’t worry about that bit of overhealing if canceling means the tank might die.

Miscellaneous

Mats needed for Truefaith Vestments

12x Bolt of Runecloth (60x Runecloth)
10x Mooncloth (20x Felcloth)
4x Righteous Orb (Trash Stratholme)
4x Golden Pearl (Trash 41+)
10x Ghost Dye (Alchemists)
2x Rune Thread (Vendor)

Mats to respec Alchemy

66x Peacebloom
66x Silverleaf
98 x Briarthorn
30 x Bruiseweed
23 x Mageroyal
51 x Stranglekelp
32 x Liferoot
32 x Kingsblood
52 x Goldthorn
5 x Wild Steelbloom
76 x Sungrass
30 x Khadgar’s Whisker
21 x Arthas’ Tears
42 x Blindweed
34 x Golden Sansam
17 x Mountain Silversage

Special Bags

Onyxia Hide Backpack
18 Slot Bag, available in Phase 1 from Onyxia

Supply Bag
18 Slot Bag, available in Phase 6

Contact

Reddit: sebfield
Discord: seebus#6679
Mail: [email protected]
Guild: <Senile Chieftains>

Other Resources

Official Classic Priest Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Classic_priest
Official Classic Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/classicwow/
Official Classic Priest Discord: https://discord.gg/MXPeww3

Sources

https://www.senilechieftains.com/guide/priest-holy
https://brainingguild.wordpress.com/201 … ing-guide/
https://forum.elysium-project.org/topic … -tell-you/
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ … 8zM-U/edit
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ … 1622864778
https://www.reddit.com/r/classicwow/com … ing_guide/
https://forum.elysium-project.org/topic … ing-guide/
https://countdowntoclassic.com/