WotLK Classic Holy Priest Guide

Last updated on Feb 04, 2024 at 13:56 by Abide 1 comment

Welcome to our Holy Priest guide for WotLK Classic, tailored for PvE content. Here, you will learn how all you need to know to play Holy Priest proficiently. Click the links below to navigate the guide or read this page for a short introduction.

1.

Introduction

Holy Priest continues down the path of being an excellent AoE healer, gaining even more tools to improve their healing output capabilities. As a Holy Priest, your primary job will be to keep the entire raid healthy and quickly heal up raid-wide damage.

2.

Introduction

Holy Priest remains an extremely versatile healer, having a wide array of spells to choose from that all fulfill different needs. This makes Holy Priest more complicated than other classes as it requires knowledge and quick reaction time to use the appropriate spell for the current situation. Overall, Holy Priest falls slightly behind other healers, but still remains an extremely powerful healer in capable hands.

If you would like to see where Holy Priest falls in the overall rankings among healer specs for both PvE and PvP in WotLK Classic, we have created pages dedicated to explaining what classes and specializations are the best of the best through multiple factors. However, ultimately, you should not let these lists dissuade you from playing what you enjoy.

3.

Strengths and Weaknesses

V Strengths
  • +Extremely high AoE healing, capable of quickly topping up the raid.
  • +Very diverse healing kit, allowing multiple different playstyles.
  • +Great flexibility, allowing them cover any healing needs.
X Weaknesses
  • -Gearing is extremely difficult as they share most of their gear with casters.
  • -Very Mana-reliant, easily can go OoM quickly without proper play.
  • -Struggles to keep up with other healers as gear improves.
4.

Best Races for Holy Priest

Here you can see the benefits of the different races for Holy Priest in WotLK. For healers, racial bonuses are very minor and not game changing.

4.1.

Alliance

4.1.1.

Draenei

Draenei is one of the strongest races in PvE content for Alliance, as Heroic Presence IconHeroic Presence is a great stat boost to your entire party. It still remains a party-wide buff, not raid-wide, meaning the group you are in still matters. This buff gives you nothing personally, but is great for DPS players in your group.

4.1.2.

Human

Humans remain a solid choice for Priests, but for different reasons than previously. The Human Spirit IconThe Human Spirit is a decent benefit, but not all that game changing. Humans are also arguably the strongest race in the game for PvP. Having both Will to Survive IconWill to Survive, essentially a free PvP trinket, and Perception IconPerception, Human is a solid choice if you will be doing PvP on your Priest.

4.2.

Horde

4.2.1.

Troll

Troll remains your best Holy Priest choice for the powerful Berserking IconBerserking cooldown. This allows you to quickly dish out heals when needed the most. Seeing as Haste is your best healing output stat, this one is a powerful cooldown that easily beats out any other choice.

4.2.2.

Blood Elf

Blood Elves have become a powerful race choice in WotLK, having the new and improved Arcane Torrent IconArcane Torrent. This is a great source of Mana regeneration as well as a powerful silence on nearby enemies, which has some uses in both PvE and PvP.

4.2.3.

Undead

Undead remain a decent choice for their strength in PvP. Will of the Forsaken IconWill of the Forsaken is still a great tool for PvP, especially arenas, and even has some uses in PvE content.

5.

Best Professions for Holy Priest

Jewelcrafting is an extremely powerful profession in Wrath of the Lich King, being used by almost all classes and specializations. For a Holy Priest, it provides you with Quick Dragon's Eye Icon Quick Dragon's Eye and Brilliant Dragon's Eye Icon Brilliant Dragon's Eye, both of which are a huge boost to your currently needed stats.

In addition to having the strongest gems in the game, Jewelcrafters also have access to some powerful trinkets early on, making pre-raid gearing much quicker. Figurine - Sapphire Owl Icon Figurine - Sapphire Owl is an amazing trinket for Holy Priests as you are very Mana starved early on. Having a high amount of Intellect to help with your Mana pool, two open gem sockets, and a high Mana return on-use makes this a great trinket early on.

Tailoring goes hand in hand with casters in WotLK, remaining one of the best professions they can use. First you have powerful cloak enchants at your disposal. Lightweave Embroidery IconLightweave Embroidery is a strong cloak enchant, giving you an additional 295 Spell Power every 60 seconds, making this much stronger than any other cloak enchant available. Darkglow Embroidery IconDarkglow Embroidery is your other cloak enchant choice, giving us mana instead of increased stats. Averaging out to 44 Mana per 5, this one is a good choice early on.

Tailoring also has the benefit of offering cheap leg enchants. Sanctified Spellthread IconSanctified Spellthread is your Tailoring-specific leg enchant, and while it does not have higher stats than other leg enchant choices, it is much cheaper, helping you save some gold.

Engineering on paper is not a great profession, but it provides a high amount of utility and added damage that make it arguably the strongest profession in Wrath of the Lich King.

Visage Liquification Goggles Icon Visage Liquification Goggles is your pre-raid best in slot helm option, giving you another easy piece of gear to craft early on. Nitro Boosts Icon Nitro Boosts is a powerful boot enchant choice, allowing you to cover a large amount of ground quickly. This can greatly increase your uptime on certain bosses that have high movement mechanics.

Another unique engineering enchant is Hyperspeed Accelerators Icon Hyperspeed Accelerators, a glove enchant. This gives you an on-use Haste buff, which you can utilize during damage windows to quickly heal up the raid. This glove enchant is almost worth taking Engineering alone even before looking at all of the additional benefits of the profession.

Engineering explosives continue on through WotLK with both Global Thermal Sapper Charge Icon Global Thermal Sapper Charge and Saronite Bomb Icon Saronite Bomb giving you extra damage, especially during large AoE pulls. You also get to use Runic Mana Injector Icon Runic Mana Injector which give Engineers an additional 25% Mana compared to the normal Mana potions. This is amazing for Holy Priests as you can easily burn through your Mana pool on certain boss encounters.

Overall, Engineering remains a powerful option for everyone as it brings a huge amount of utility and extra damage. If your raid requires you to have Engineering, do not feel bad about losing out on a few passive stats as the utility you gain far outweighs them.

6.

Priest Addons and Macros

Using macros and addons makes your life significantly easier when playing Wrath Classic, and they can improve your experience a lot, depending on how skilled you are at customizing them. If you are interested in learning more about addons and macros suited to Holy Priest, check out our guides below:

7.

Changelog

  • 04 Feb. 2024 (pre-raid gear page): Updated missing items.
  • 01 Jan. 2024 (pre-raid gear page): Updated for Phase 5.
  • 01 Jan. 2024 (gear page): Updated for Phase 5.
  • 01 Jan. 2024 (enchants page): Updated for Phase 5.
  • 01 Jan. 2024 (stats page): Updated for Phase 5.
  • 01 Jan. 2024 (rotation page): Updated for Phase 5.
  • 01 Jan. 2024 (talents page): Updated for Phase 5.
  • 01 Jan. 2024 (spells page): Updated for Phase 5.
  • 01 Jan. 2024 (this page): Updated for Phase 5.
  • 09 Oct. 2023 (pre-raid gear page): Updated for Phase 4.
  • 09 Oct. 2023 (gear page): Updated for Phase 4.
  • 09 Oct. 2023 (enchants page): Reviewed for Phase 4.
  • 09 Oct. 2023 (stats page): Reviewed for Phase 4.
  • 09 Oct. 2023 (rotation page): Reviewed for Phase 4.
  • 09 Oct. 2023 (talents page): Reviewed for Phase 4.
  • 09 Oct. 2023 (spells page): Reviewed for Phase 4.
  • 09 Oct. 2023 (this page): Reviewed for Phase 4.
  • 06 Jun. 2023 (pre-raid gear page): Updated with Phase 3 Pre-raid BiS list.
  • 10 May 2023 (gear page): Updated with Phase 3 Best in Slot lists. Entirely revamped page format.
  • 10 May 2023 (rotation page): Updated rotation priorities for Phase 3.
  • 04 May 2023 (enchants page): Updated for Phase 3 epic gems.
  • 18 Jan. 2023 (pre-raid gear page): Reviewed for Phase 2 release ahead of Ulduar raid release.
  • 18 Jan. 2023 (gear page): Reviewed for Phase 2 release ahead of Ulduar raid release.
  • 18 Jan. 2023 (stats page): Reviewed for Phase 2 release ahead of Ulduar raid release.
  • 18 Jan. 2023 (rotation page): Reviewed for Phase 2 release ahead of Ulduar raid release.
  • 18 Jan. 2023 (talents page): Reviewed for Phase 2 release ahead of Ulduar raid release.
  • 18 Jan. 2023 (spells page): Reviewed for Phase 2 release ahead of Ulduar raid release.
  • 18 Jan. 2023 (this page): Reviewed for Phase 2 release ahead of Ulduar raid release.
  • 12 Jan. 2023 (enchants page): Updated for Phase 2.
  • 02 Sep. 2022 (pre-raid gear page): Page added.
  • 02 Sep. 2022 (gear page): Page added.
  • 02 Sep. 2022 (enchants page): Page added.
  • 02 Sep. 2022 (stats page): Page added.
  • 02 Sep. 2022 (rotation page): Page added.
  • 02 Sep. 2022 (talents page): Page added.
  • 02 Sep. 2022 (spells page): Page added.
  • 02 Sep. 2022 (this page): Page added.
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