Holy Priest Healing Easy Mode — Midnight Season 1

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. If you are looking for an Oracle build or want to further refine your Archon gameplay, see the detailed talents page.

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.

Note that the below rotation information is valid with or without the current tier set.

1. Holy Word: Serenity on an injured ally.
2. Halo when most of your raid is injured.
3. Prayer of Healing for general purpose healing and to consume Surge of Light.
4. Benediction for general purpose healing.
5. Prayer of Mending on cooldown.
6. Smite an enemy when no healing is required.
7. Holy Nova if you need to move and no healing is required.

Prayer of Healing, Smite and Holy Nova will be the majority of your casts whenever your short-cooldown spells are unavailable. The majority of your Prayer of Healing casts will be instant thanks to Surge of Light. When there is nothing to heal, you should be casting Smite or Holy Nova as they have a chance to generate additional stacks of Surge of Light. Prayer of Mending does not require much thought, casting it on a melee DPS is the best way to reduce wasted stacks.

Apotheosis should be used whenever available to help counter heavy raid-wide damage. During Apotheosis your rotation does not 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.

The Season 1 tier set is largely a passive bonus. The set bonus rewards executing your rotation well, by providing additional benefits when casting our short-cooldown spells frequently. Using Apotheosis and Prayer of Mending regularly gives more opportunity to cast Benediction in turn triggering additional Divine Images. Casting Holy Word: Serenity as often as possible also increases the number of powerful Divine Images.

For Mythic+ and delves, we suggest Archon for its simplicity and flexibility. If you are looking for an Oracle build or want to further refine your Archon gameplay, see the detailed talents page.

For Delves, we highly suggest you do them as Shadow instead of Holy due to the increased damage output as Shadow. If you still choose to do them alone, as Holy or are doing them in a group as Holy, then use this build.

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

Dungeon healing is primarily focused on triage healing, which is prioritising your allies who are in the most danger first. 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. Halo when most of your group is injured.
3. Benediction on an injured ally.
4. Flash Heal if you have no Lightweaver stacks or on an ally in immediate danger of death.
5. Prayer of Healing with Lightweaver stacks to heal your whole group.
6. Prayer of Mending when little healing is required.
7. Deal damage when no healing is required:
   1. Holy Word: Chastise.
   2. Holy Fire.
   3. Holy Nova for 3 or more targets.
   4. Smite for 1 or 2 targets.

For heavy damage, use either Divine Hymn or 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 is listed lower than Flash Heal on your priority list, it is a good backup spell to cast when you have to move.

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.

The periodic Benediction procs are triggered by regularly casting Prayer of Mending. When triggered, Flash Heal is replaced with Benediction for your next cast, increasing the healing done and triggering a Cosmic Ripple. Due to the added healing, Benediction is a high-value spell to use and should be prioritised as part of your rotation whenever it triggers.

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.
• 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 realising 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. 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 is to focus on minimising your movement to maximise 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 instant healing from consuming stacks of Surge of Light.

The Combat Assistant for healers does not help you heal. Instead, it provides a basic 1-button damage-dealing rotation that adjusts slightly depending on your talents. Be mindful that it does not take into account whether you are moving or not. So you would need to manually cast a spell if you are trying to deal damage while moving, and the Combat Assistant's suggestion has a cast time. The Combat Assistant will also not suggest long-cooldown spells such as Halo or Apotheosis.

The basic rotation involves using Holy Word: Chastise on cooldown; Holy Fire regularly; for single target, filling the gaps with Smite; for many targets, using Holy Nova.

It is important to note that the Combat Assistant is not a replacement for understanding your class and its mechanics. It is a tool to help you improve your damage output without having to focus on multiple extra buttons, and is a solid alternative for adding damage without adding more things to think about when healing.

For basic information on how this new feature works, please visit our Combat Assistant guide.