Holy Priest Frequently Asked Questions — Battle for Azeroth (BfA) 8.2.5

A summary of all changes can be found in our Intro page.

There was an internal change to how /cancelaura works for macros. As a result of this, it no longer works with Spirit of Redemption. To create a macro that cancels Spirit of Redemption, use the following:

• #showtooltip Spirit of Redemption
• /cancelform

While we are not very far behind other specializations in BfA and can reliably complete keystones required for the maximum rewards, Holy Priest is not currently a meta healer for pushing / speed running keystones. Keep in mind that better knowledge of the dungeons, specialisation and gear can more than make up for the difference between Holy Priest and the meta healers.

The Holy Priest Spreadsheet for BfA has been released and can be used to help compare your Stats, Trinkets, and Traits.

Holy Priest in BfA has variety and situational choices when it comes to choosing your talents. For dungeons, there are fewer choices but in raids many of the talents are viable and have their place in specific scenarios. To read more about both, check out the talent discussion page.

Due to the stat squish, Intellect is now our most powerful stat by a large margin and should be stacked as much as possible. In 99% of the cases, this means that you should use the highest item level gear you have available. Items with Leech / Avoidance are worth ~10 item levels extra, 15 if they are rings. Finally, rings do not have Intellect and thus you can afford to lose 5 to 10 item levels on them in order to use the best secondary stats possible. Keep in mind that trinkets and Azerite gear usually have special effects alongside their baseline stats, which are critical for determining their worth.

Renew in BfA now also reduces the cooldown of Holy Word: Sanctify by 2 seconds. While this is a significant change, it is not enough to significantly change the priority of when Renew would ordinarily be cast. It should still be reserved for moments where movement is required and spells or talents like Holy Word: Sanctify, Holy Word: Serenity, Circle of Healing and Divine Star are all on cooldown.

Symbol of Hope in BfA is now a channelled ability and comes baseline, restoring mana to all nearby healers based on their missing mana. Because it restores mana based on the amount of mana a healer is missing, it is ideal to use it when most of the healers are running low on mana. As a general guide, try to find a time to use it when healers are all around roughly 20% mana. Because it is channelled and requires you to stand still, it may take some forward planning to find an optimal time to channel the entire spell without being interrupted by encounter mechanics.

Binding Heal's interaction with Enduring Renewal was changed so that only the primary target of the Binding Heal cast refreshes Renew. The self-heal and cleave component of Binding Heal no longer trigger Enduring Renewal to refresh Renew on those targets