Holy Priest Healing Easy Mode — The War Within (11.1.7)

These are currently the easiest talent choices to perform in raid content. Note that some of the suggestions sacrifice a bit of performance for ease of use, but overall, the difference is not great. Consult the detailed talents page for the complete picture.

You can easily import the talent tree below by clicking 'Export Talents.' and then importing it in-game.

Raid healing is primarily focused on AoE group healing, as outlined below. A lot of your decision-making will be based on incoming damage and the cooldowns you have available. Holy Priest is best played using our short cooldown spells like Holy Word: Sanctify, Holy Word: Serenity and Prayer of Mending as often as practical. Do not think of these as cooldowns to save for an unknown future situation; use these regularly to benefit from their high healing and lower mana cost.

Below is the basic priority you should follow in raids. You should not cast a spell that will mostly overheal, so keep this in mind while working through the priority list and skip an item if there is likely to be significant overhealing.

1. Holy Word: Sanctify when a cluster of your raid is injured.
2. Holy Word: Serenity on an injured ally.
3. Halo when most of your raid is injured.
4. Flash Heal with Surge of Light active.
5. Prayer of Mending on cooldown.
6. Renew on cooldown.
7. Holy Nova at 20 stacks of Rhapsody.
8. Flash Heal for single-target healing.
9. Smite an enemy when no healing is required.

Flash Heal and Smite will be the majority of your casts whenever your short-cooldown spells are unavailable. The majority of your Flash Heal casts will be instant thanks to Surge of Light. When there is nothing to heal, you should be casting Smite as it has a chance to generate additional stacks of Surge of Light.

Prayer of Mending doesn't require much thought, casting it on a melee DPS is the best way to reduce wasted stacks. Renew should ideally be cast on the active tank or a debuff target taking heavy damage. Using both of these spells help reduce the cooldown on Holy Word: Serenity and Holy Word: Sanctify, further increasing your ability to prepare for upcoming damage.

Apotheosis should be used whenever available to help counter heavy raid-wide damage. During Apotheosis your rotation doesn't change, but you will notice Holy Word: Serenity and Holy Word: Sanctify available much more often. It is important during Apotheosis to cast both of your Holy Words as regularly as you can.

Divine Hymn should be used during a period of heavy raid-wide damage. Keep in mind, however, that your raid leader may instruct you to use it at a very specific time.

Holy Word: Chastise usage isn't important while learning. Once you are comfortable with the rest of the rotation, Chastise should be used just after Apotheosis or before any major incoming damage when Apotheosis is unavailable.

Try to avoid using Prayer of Healing, Heal, and Power Word: Shield when raid healing. They are a poor use of your time and Mana in nearly all situations.

For dungeons, you should consider a slightly different build which takes Lightweaver, and consider dropping some of the Prayer of Mending talents for some increased single target healing and damage talents.

You can easily import the talent tree below by clicking 'Export Talents.' and then importing it in-game.

Dungeon healing is primarily focused on single-target healing, as outlined below. A lot of your decision-making will be based on incoming damage and the cooldowns you have available. It is better to use your cooldowns early and often than it is to save them for unknown future situations.

Below is the basic priority you should follow in dungeons. You should not cast a spell that will mostly overheal, so keep this in mind as you work through the priority list and skip an item if there is likely to be significant overheal.

1. Holy Word: Serenity on an injured ally.
2. Holy Word: Sanctify when most of your group is injured.
3. Halo when most of your group is injured.
4. Heal if you have Lightweaver stacks.
5. Flash Heal if you have no Lightweaver stacks.
6. Prayer of Mending when little healing is required.
7. Renew typically on the tank.
8. Holy Fire an enemy when no healing is required.
9. Smite an enemy when no healing is required.

For heavy damage, use Apotheosis and continue your normal rotational priority. Because Apotheosis increases the amount of cooldown reduction your abilities provide, Holy Word: Serenity will be available much more often and should be used as it is ready. If this is still not enough, you also have access to Guardian Spirit.

While Prayer of Mending and Renew are listed lower than Heal and Flash Heal on your priority list, they are good backup spells to cast when you have to move. They help to reduce the cooldown of Holy Word: Serenity and Holy Word: Sanctify, as well as prepare for upcoming damage to help heal through it.

Dealing with damage while in dungeons is often overlooked by healers. While any additional damage is beneficial to your group, it should not come at the cost of keeping your group alive, which is your main priority. Holy Fire is your main damage-dealing ability. When Holy Fire is on cooldown, Smite is the best spell to cast as it costs very little Mana and has a chance to trigger Surge of Light. Shadow Word: Pain isn't listed on the priority list but can be applied to an enemy before you begin casting Smite if an enemy is going to live for at least 12 seconds, and you are confident there is no upcoming healing to prepare for.

Regardless of the content you are tackling, you should be aware of a few basic abilities:

• Purify is used in most content, as many enemies will place Magic or Disease debuffs on your allies, which can be removed by casting Purify on the affected ally. It is commonly referred to as Dispel.
• Power Word: Fortitude is a group-wide buff that lasts for 60 minutes or until death and provides an additional 5% Stamina. Apply this before getting started on a dungeon or boss.
• Desperate Prayer is an active defensive ability with a 90-second cooldown. It heals you for a portion of your maximum health and also increases your maximum health for some time; it should be used when your own life is in danger.

As a Holy Priest, you have three baseline cooldowns. Here is how you should use them:

• Divine Hymn should be used during periods of very intense damage.
• Apotheosis should also be used during periods of very intense damage.
• Symbol of Hope should be used towards the end of a raid encounter to give the highest potential Mana back to all healers in your group. A good guide is to try and use it once early on, around 80% boss health remaining. Your second usage should then be either when you are at 20% Mana or the boss is at 20% health remaining.
• Guardian Spirit should be used depending on many factors, including your group's instructions. If you do not have to save Guardian Spirit for a specific event, then just use it as a "life-saver" on the tank or another ally who needs it.

While we have a larger section dedicated to walking through common mistakes and how to avoid them, a couple are worth mentioning now. These focus on our two most valuable resources: Mana and time.

Mana is very easy to waste without realizing it. The most common way is spamming inefficient spells during downtime or periods of low healing. Stick to Smite if you want to remain active during these periods and avoid Power Word: Shield as it is very Mana inefficient and should rarely be cast. Casting DPS spells outside of Smite, when Mana is going to be a concern, is also a way to accidentally consume additional Mana without realising it.

Time is a bit more difficult to quantify, but one really easy thing you can do to get yourself more healing time in both dungeons and raids to focus on minimizing your movement to maximize the time that can be spent casting spells with a cast time. For those periods when you do have to move, you can rely on the array of instant cast spells available to us, including Prayer of Mending, Holy Word: Serenity, Holy Word: Sanctify, and, with stacks of Surge of Light, Flash Heal.