WotLK Classic Holy Priest Spell Summary

Holy Priest has a wide arsenal of spells available to them. Knowing your important spells and when they are best suited to be used is a key part of performing well in any environment. The sections below aim to show you your most important spells by each category and give you a brief example of what each spell does.

As a Holy Priest, you will be focusing on healing. These are all of your main healing spells that all have a purpose depending on the situation.

• Power Word: Shield — Buffs an ally with a shield which absorbs damage and prevents spell pushback while it lasts. Also places Weakened Soul on the target, preventing them from being shielded again for a short duration.
• Binding Heal — Heals you and a friendly ally for a small amount after a quick cast. This spell causes very little threat. Useful if you and an ally are both low health.
• Circle of Healing — Instantly heals the target and up to 5 nearby party or raid members for a moderate amount. This is great for AoE healing and generally keeping the raid health topped. Each heal from Circle of Healing has its own chance to crit, giving you more procs from talents and gear. The only downside is the 6-second cooldown.
• Flash Heal — A quick, single-target heal, useful for healing individual targets that are not missing much health.
• Greater Heal — A slow cast, single-target heal. The long cast time is made up by a very large heal, great for healing tanks and players missing large amounts of health.
• Prayer of Healing — Heals the target and their nearby party members for a moderate amount. Great for AoE healing, but has a long cast time.
• Prayer of Mending — Whenever the person with this buff takes damage, Prayer of Mending will heal them for a small amount and then bounce to another nearby ally. This spell is great when there is constant damage happening to multiple allies.
• Renew — Place a heal-over-time on an ally, healing them every few seconds while the buff is active. Great to keep up on tanks as they will constantly be taking damage and anyone else that is frequently taking damage.

For a better understanding of what your healing rotation should be, be sure to check out our rotation page for a full explanation of both your single-target and AoE healing rotations.

Holy Priest gains a handful of powerful cooldowns in WotLK, giving them some much-needed utility. Unlike other classes however, your cooldowns are much more niche and have very limited, specific uses.

• Desperate Prayer — 2-minute cooldown. If you chose to take this talent, this is a personal emergency button. Instantly heals you for a very large amount, making this a powerful emergency button if you find yourself about to die.
• Guardian Spirit — 3-minute cooldown. If using Glyph of Guardian Spirit, cooldown is reduced to 1 minute if it does not proc when used. Increases the target's healing received by 40% and acts like a cheat death if the target dies while buffed with this, restoring them to 50% health and removing this buff. This is a great cooldown for tanks as you can easily predict tank deaths to mechanics and use this to keep them alive.
• Inner Focus — 3-minute cooldown. You will want to use this with your highest Mana spells such as Prayer of Healing or Divine Hymn, saving you a large amount of Mana. In addition to the 100% Mana reduction, it also increases the Crit Chance of the spell by 25%, which is great when you are using an AoE healing spell.
• Shadowfiend — 5-minute cooldown. This one is a very simple Mana-restoration cooldown, use this whenever you are running low on Mana. If possible, you will want to pair this together with Hymn of Hope for the temporary 20% increase to maximum Mana since Shadowfiend now restores 5% of your maximum Mana per attack.
• Divine Hymn — 8-minute cooldown. One of the new spells you get in Wrath of the Lich King. This is a major AoE healing cooldown and should only be used when your normal AoE healing rotation cannot keep up. You will almost always want to pair this with Inner Focus to remove the high Mana cost and get an additional 25% Crit Chance on the Divine Hymn heals.
• Hymn of Hope — 6-minute cooldown. The other new spell you get in Wrath of the Lich King. This restores Mana to nearby allies with the lowest mana overall and increases their maximum Mana by 20% temporarily. The only downside of this spell is the randomness of the targeting; it is possible that you will not be targeted by any of the ticks. You will want to use this cooldown in conjunction with other Mana-restoring cooldowns, such as Mana Tide Totem or even other Hymn of Hopes, as the temporary 20% increase to maximum Mana amplifies the effectiveness of abilities that restore a percentage of your Mana pool. Try to coordinate this with your other raid members.

In addition to your main spells and cooldowns, you also have many utility spells that can be game changing when used in the proper scenario. Make sure you understand each of the spells listed below to fully take advantage of your entire spellbook.

• Dispel Magic — Great for both removing enemies' magical buffs and removing magical debuffs afflicting allies.
• Fear Ward — Makes a friendly target immune to the first fear used against them. Use this whenever you are facing enemies that will use a fear.
• Levitate — Allows your target to float above the ground, walk above water, and greatly reduce their falling speed. Glyph of Levitate removes the reagent cost of Levitate, making it only cost Mana.
• Mass Dispel — An AoE version of Dispel Magic that removes 1 magical debuff from up to 10 friendly targets, and 1 magical buff from up to 10 enemy targets. Can also remove stronger magical buffs that cannot be dispelled in other ways, such as Ice Block and Divine Shield.
• Shackle Undead — Shackles an Undead enemy in place, preventing them from moving, attacking, and casting, but will break if they take any damage. Use this if you ever need to crowd control an Undead enemy.
• Abolish Disease — Removes 1 Disease from an ally every 3 seconds for 12 seconds total. Allows you to remove Diseases from allies, which many PvE encounters will have.
• Fade — Temporarily reduces your threat to 0. This is mostly useful when new adds have spawned as they might not have been picked up yet by the tank. Remember that this is temporary and you will regain the threat back after the effect ends.
• Mind Soothe — Reduces the aggro range of a Humanoid mob, allowing you to more easily avoid aggroing them. This is mostly used for skipping certain trash groups in PvE content and preventing patrolling mobs from randomly walking into you and aggroing.

Buffs are an important part of any party or raid group as they greatly increase your abilities to tank, heal and deal damage as a whole. Make sure you keep your buffs up at all times to ensure the highest chance of success in whatever content you are in.

• Inner Fire — Buffs the Priest only, increasing your Armor and Spell Power as long as this buff remains active. Has 20 charges; each time you are hit by a melee or ranged attack one charge will be removed. This buff can be improved with the Improved Inner Fire talent.
• Prayer of Fortitude — Buffs all nearby party and raid members, increasing their Stamina for one hour. If you only need to buff a single person, you can use Power Word: Fortitude instead, saving you some Mana. This buff can be improved with the Improved Power Word: Fortitude talent, as well as have its Mana cost reduced by using Glyph of Fortitude.
• Prayer of Spirit — Buffs all nearby party and raid members, increasing their Spirit for one hour. If you only need to buff a single person, you can use Divine Spirit instead, saving you some Mana.
• Prayer of Shadow Protection — Buffs all nearby party and raid members, increasing their Shadow Resistance for one hour. If you only need to buff a single person, you can use Shadow Protection instead, saving you some Mana. This buff can have its duration increased by using Glyph of Shadow Protection.

• Mana Burn — Burns a portion of the target's Mana based on your maximum Mana. Mostly only useful in PvP, but may have some uses in specific PvE situations.
• Holy Nova — Deals damage to all nearby enemies and heals nearby party members without causing any threat. Since this only heals people in your party it is not that useful in raids. Has some uses in dungeons as you can both DPS and heal at the same time with this spell.
• Resurrection — Simple res spell; brings an ally back to life outside of combat.
• Mind Control — Does not really have many uses in PvE content anymore. Can be useful when soloing content like quests.
• Mind Vision — Allows you to see through the point of view of your target. Mostly just a fun ability to let you scout and see things from a different perspective.
• Psychic Scream — Mostly just a panic button if you are being attacked in melee range. Typically you will not want to use this in raids as it will send mobs in all different directions. Can also be used to stop spell casts if the mob can be feared.