Season of Discovery Holy Priest Healer Talents and Runes
On this page, you will find out the best PvE talents for your Holy Priest in WoW Classic — Season of Discovery, as well as advised runes.
Holy Priest Healer Talent Build
Recommended Rune Engravings
Gloves — Penance
Pants — Prayer of Mending
Chest — Serendipity
Waist — Empowered Renew
Feet — Spirit of the Redeemer
Helm — Divine Aegis
Wrist — Surge of Light
Back — Soul Warding
Ring — Healing Specialization
Ring — Meditation Specialization
Your talent build as a Holy Priest is fairly set in stone, as some of the most powerful talents in the Holy tree are found towards the bottom, such as Spirit of Redemption, Spiritual Guidance, and Spiritual Healing.
Penance and Circle of Healing are both incredibly strong heals that fit two very different, but equally frequent, situations. Penance is an incredibly strong single target heal, but in order to reach its value you must be in a situation where you can channel it fully. Circle of Healing is an incredibly strong instant cast, multi-target heal, but due to the Mana cost it can be difficult to use. If you have the ability to stand and cast freely Penance is usually the best option. In a situation where you are constantly moving and need sudden bursts of group healing, Circle of Healing is the better choice.
Prayer of Mending is the near default in the pants slot due to how much healing it does and its ability to act as a smart heal. While there are no other options found in this slot for healing, Homunculi is a great alternative if you find yourself not needing the healing provided from Prayer of Mending. Homunculi deals a considerable amount of damage in addition to providing debuffs that reduce the targets Attack Power, Armor and Attack speed.
Both Serendipity and Strength of Soul are great choices with niche uses. Serendipity is the default as it is generally more useful as the reduced healing time on your primary healing abilities is almost always strong though you will not often be casting Flash Heal to generate the stacks. Strength of Soul is another great option in a situation where you are consistently casting Power Word: Shield on a target to mitigate incoming damage.
Empowered Renew can act as an emergency heal as it heals immediately. This Rune also already bolsters the powerful healing-over-time effect of Renew while allowing multiple priests to have Renew active at the same time. Renewed Hope can also be situationally useful, but synergizes poorly if you find yourself using Strength of Soul.
Spirit of the Redeemer is only able to be used by a Holy Priest due to the deep talent point requirement in order to obtain Spirit of Redemption. This talent is incredibly powerful; it removes all Mana costs for 10 seconds and allows you to cast without risk of taking damage or being targeted. While this is our default option as a Holy Priest consider Pain Suppression in a situation where a target is going to take a massive amount of incoming damage and may not otherwise survive.
Divine Aegis increases the value of your critical strike rating by converting 30% of the healing into a shield on your target. This is useful in high damage situations to minimize incoming damage. Eye of the Void is another strong option for this slot should you find yourself without another Priest to cast it as the curses provided will often outweigh the healing added from Divine Aegis.
Surge of Light causes your critical strikes to cause your next Flash Heal/ Smite to be instant, making Critical Strike and Intellect even more valuable. This should be your default choice as it will greatly help in any situation with large amounts of incoming damage as consistently casting will almost certainly result in at least one critical strike.
Soul Warding is an incredibly powerful talent and a massive increase to our HPS allowing us to cast as many Power Word: Shields as Mana allows and causing them to scale even better with any bonus healing which as Holy we will have more than Discipline Speced Priests thanks to Spiritual Guidance. It is important to keep the hefty mana cost of this spell in mind though and make sure you have plenty of mana consumables ready or a Druid ready to cast Innervate on you.
Meditation Specialization and Healing Specialization both just act as passive increases as a Healing Priest by giving you more bonus healing and allowing you to regenerate more mana during combat.
More engravings are likely to come out as we reach higher level caps so make sure to checkout our general Runes guide to get a better understanding of what all tools you have available to your Priest.
Notable Holy Priest Talents
Inspiration increases the targets armor for 15 seconds after being critically healed by Flash Heal, Heal, Greater Heal or Prayer of Healing. The buff applied is incredibly strong especially on Tanks as it greatly reduces the amount of incoming physical damage thanks to the temporary additional armor.
Spirit of Redemption is made even stronger when paired with the Spirit of the Redeemer Rune. This talent allows you to take the form of a Spirit Healer, removing the Mana cost of your abilities and allowing you to heal completely uninterrupted for 10 seconds.
Spiritual Guidance increases your Spell Damage and Healing by 5% of your total Spirit, greatly increasing the value of your Spirit stat by turning it into a throughput stat in addition to its regeneration benefits.
Spiritual Healing increases the amount healed by your healing spells by 2% per rank. While this is an extremely simple talent, a flat increase on your healing totaling in at 10%, its max rank is a massive benefit.
Meditation allows us to continue regenerating 15% of our Mana while casting, making Spirit an even more valuable stat and giving us a considerable amount more regeneration throughout the course of a long encounter.
Mental Agility reduces the mana cost of our instant cast abilities like Prayer of Mending, Renew, Power Word: Shield, and Circle of Healing greatly increasing the value of mana spent per point of healing done.
Changelog
- 28 Sep. 2024: Updated to include new Runes.
- 05 Jul. 2024: Updated for Phase 4.
- 31 Mar. 2024: Updated for Phase 3.
- 11 Feb. 2024: Updated for Phase 2.
- 15 Dec. 2023: Guide updated.
More Classic Priest Guides
More Season of Discovery Class Guides
Classic Dungeon Guides
Classic Profession Guides
Classic Reputation Guides
This guide has been written by Sellin, a former top 10 US raider and current season and several time Gladiator, long time WoW Player and passionate about all things Warcraft and Theorycrafting. You can follow him on Twitter and watch him on Twitch.
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