Holy Priest Healing Mythic+ Tips — Dragonflight 10.2

Holy Priest is in the middle of the pack for Mythic+ content in Dragonflight. Holy Priest has several main draws that make it an attractive spec to play for M+ content in Dragonflight, with multiple strong cooldowns in Divine Hymn and Apotheosis, reliable single-target damage, hefty group healing potential, and a straightforward, reactive playstyle. Power Infusion can also be a strong boost to your group's damage if coordinated well with a DPS.

If you are unfamiliar with Mythic+ and its associated general mechanics, you can read more about it on our Dragonflight Mythic+ page below.

For more information about the Holy Priest healing rotation in Mythic+, refer back to the Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities page.

As a healer, despite your role focus being to keep everyone alive through your healing and utility, any spare time you get should be spent on providing additional damage. Be mindful that only Smite costs very little Mana, the other spells can start to become taxing on your Mana, so particularly on some longer tyrannical bosses, you may need to reduce your damage output a little by sticking to the slightly weaker hitting Smite casts.

Damage spell priority for 4+ targets:

1. Divine Star
2. Holy Fire
3. Shadow Word: Pain (if the target will survive for the full duration)
4. Holy Nova

Damage spell priority for 1-3 targets:

1. Holy Fire
2. Shadow Word: Pain (if the target will survive for the full duration)
3. Holy Word: Chastise (if you do not need the incapacitate/stun for cc)
4. Divine Star
5. Smite

Shadow Word: Death can be cast as extra damage while on the move in place of Smite on the priority list; just be mindful that it does do damage back to you when cast. If the target is below 20% health, Shadow Word: Death has a similar priority to Holy Word: Chastise.

Holy Priest provides support for the party through healing, damage, and other additional effects, such as dispels and crowd control.

• Purify removes all harmful Magic and Disease effects on an 8-second cooldown. Often referred to as dispel, Purify is used frequently in all dungeons and can often be vital to the success of a trash pull or boss.
• Dispel Magic removes one beneficial Magic effect from an enemy target. Often referred to as purge, Dispel Magic is very useful in Mythic+, as there are a lot of enemies with very powerful Magic buffs that we can remove immediately.
• Mind Soothe provides a unique buff reducing the distance at which an enemy will aggro onto you and your allies. This has fairly niche usage but can be used in some scenarios to avoid having to pull a pack of enemies and instead walk right past them.
• Mass Dispel is cast at an area, removing all harmful effects from 5 allies inside it, and 1 beneficial effect from 5 enemies. While the 40-second cooldown is quite long; there is ample opportunity to make use of this spell to help reduce incoming damage.
• Guardian Spirit places a buff on an ally for 10 seconds, increasing their healing taken by 60%, and if they take fatal damage, it will instead heal them to 40% health. Together with the Guardian Angel talent, this becomes a powerful single-target external cooldown on a 60-second cooldown, presuming the life-saving effect does not trigger.
• Angelic Feather can be used by yourself or to assist slower allies in avoiding damage and dangerous situations.
• Body and Soul is another ability that can be used to increase either your own or an ally's movement speed by casting Power Word: Shield or Leap of Faith.
• Censure is an ability that stuns the target of your Holy Word: Chastise for 4 seconds. This can be used to help reduce incoming damage from dangerous enemies and, due to casting Smite frequently during low damage periods, will be available regularly.
• Psychic Scream causes 5 enemies within 8 yards to flee for up to 8 seconds. This can be used to interrupt groups of enemies and, due to being broken on damage, it is very likely enemies will not flee too far if they are currently being attacked by your allies. Care should still be taken with nearby enemies that may be pulled into combat if a fleeing enemy gets too close to them. The cooldown can be reduced by 15 seconds with the Psychic Voice talent.
• Shackle Undead can be used to disable a single Undead enemy for 50 seconds. Several dungeons have dangerous Undead enemies, which are good candidates for Shackle Undead. Damage taken will remove this effect.
• Leap of Faith can help assist allies in avoiding damage or saving them if they are knocked off an edge or into something bad.
• Power Word: Fortitude provides a 5% Stamina buff to all allies for 60 minutes and should be kept up on everyone at all times.
• Mind Control temporarily controls an enemy, which allows you to move, attack, and cast some of their abilities. This can be beneficial in some dungeons, as specific enemies have valuable spells that can buff your party or debuff enemies.
• Void Tendrils can be placed to root a small number of enemies, useful in situations where melee enemies need to be kept at a distance.

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

This build plays around the single-target burst healing strengths of Heal and Flash Heal being bolstered by Lightweaver and the various talents taken in both trees. In addition to this, damage talents are taken to improve your damage output; in particular, Empyreal Blaze and Burning Vehemence pair together well for an increase in both Single Target and AoE damage.

The Holy Priest tree has several talent points or groups of talent points that can be moved around without affecting the core playstyle:

• Harmonious Apparatus can be swapped for Answered Prayers for similar overall healing and damage.
• Divine Image can be swapped for Divine Word for an active healing and damage increase, instead of the passive increase from Divine Image.

The Class Tree has a lot of flexibility, and there are multiple different talents you can change around depending on the encounter and your personal preference. The following are all great candidates to be situationally removed without altering your playstyle:

• Improved Fade is a good candidate to swap for other talents as needed.
• San'layn is also a good talent to drop if you need another point for an affix-specific talent.
• Rhapsody and Holy Nova can be dropped to save 2 points if you find you aren't getting a lot of uses out of them.

To spend any of these recovered talent points, you should look at:

• Improved Purify for the disease dispel and Afflicted affix.
• Shackle Undead for the crowd-control on Undead enemies and the Incorporeal affix.
• Psychic Scream, Mind Control and Void Tendrils all have very niche usage, but you should still be aware they exist in case there is a specific need for them.

Fortified and Tyrannical are the two affixes every player will see. These affixes shift the focus of Mythic+ from boss to trash, depending on the week.

Tyrannical increases the Health pool of boss enemies by 40% and their damage dealt by 15%.

During Tyrannical weeks, we need to be more careful with Mana management on bosses. Also, heavy-hitting boss abilities might require some planning of Desperate Prayer and Fade usage to reliably survive at higher key levels.

Fortified increases the Health pool of all non-boss enemies by 20% and damage dealt by 30%.

Fortified increases the focus on your crowd control abilities, such as Censure. You should also be mindful of dangerous debuffs, which you must dispel quickly using Purify and Mass Dispel, and dangerous enemy buffs, which you can dispel with Dispel Magic.

Storming creates a short-duration tornado near enemies. Standing in this tornado will deal damage to you and cause you to be knocked back.

The biggest impact this affix will have on you is the constant interrupts on your casting if a tornado spawns under you and you need to move out of it. Care must be taken when using Divine Hymn or Symbol of Hope in case a tornado spawns near you.

Volcanic spawns volcanic plumes underneath and around players when in combat with any enemy. When damaged by Volcanic, players suffer damage and are knocked into the air. The more enemies you are in combat with, the more volcanic plumes will spawn.

Care must be taken when using Divine Hymn or Symbol of Hope in case a plume spawns underneath you.

The Afflicted affix will cause an Afflicted Soul to spawn with 3 debuffs on it, Cursed Spirit, Poisoned Spirit, and Diseased Spirit. The soul must be either healed to full or Dispelled within 10 seconds.

On Afflicted weeks, you should talent into Improved Purify to assist in clearing these Afflicted Souls out. If your dispel is on cooldown, you can use Holy Word: Serenity and Power Word: Life to quickly heal the Afflicted Souls.

The Entangling debuff will slow you by 50% and force you to snap a vine in order to remove the debuff. Since it is a snare, it can also be removed using Fade with the Phantasm talent. Be wary about using it every time, though, as you may be losing out on a defensive you may need in the near future. Some Entangling debuffs may be better to walk out of.

Incorporeal affix will summon an Incorporeal Being, which will chain-cast Destabilize, which reduces the party's damage and healing.

We can assist with crowd control using Holy Word: Chastise, Psychic Scream, and most importantly, Shackle Undead.

Raging makes enemies immune to crowd control effects once they drop below 30% health.

This affix can be particularly dangerous to your group, especially during Fortified weeks. Care should be taken when dangerous enemies drop below 30%, as abilities that may normally be stopped with crowd control can not be prevented.

Bolstering causes dying enemies to increase the damage of other nearby enemies by 20% for a short period.

This affix typically has little impact on our role as healers. To counter this affix, DPS all mobs down evenly and focus on the highest health pool enemies first. You can also use Mind Control on a high-health enemy right before other enemies die to prevent it from getting Bolster stacks.

Bursting causes enemies to detonate when slain, afflicting the group with a stacking debuff that causes players to suffer stacking damage over 4 seconds.

Bursting is dispellable. That means you can add Purify and Mass Dispel to your triage arsenal when dealing with Bursting. Mass Dispel, in particular, should be coordinated with your group so you can quickly remove all stacks from your whole party when needed. You should aim to Mass Dispel in any situation where your group is going above 5 stacks.

If you are unable to dispel Bursting, your goal is to keep your group as healthy as possible before the mobs even die and start generating Bursting stacks on your group. This means trying to monitor the health of the enemies you are in combat with. It takes a lot of stacks to outright kill a group, so you should focus on assisting allies that are taking damage from other sources, using Power Word: Life, Holy Word: Serenity, and Guardian Spirit to keep them alive. Otherwise, use Holy Word: Sanctify to boost the whole group a small amount, and triage with Flash Heal / Heal, using Trail of Light to cleave heal on your group. Focus on making sure your team survives the pull, and once it is over, you can top them up.

Sanguine places a pool of blood on the ground when an enemy dies. This pool will heal enemies who stay inside the zone while damaging players.

Psychic Scream can sometimes be used to get stubborn enemies out of the Sanguine pools. Be mindful of casting Holy Word: Chastise on enemies inside a Sanguine pool if talented into Censure, as they will heal for the duration of the stun.

Spiteful causes enemies to spawn a Spiteful Shade for a short period of time upon death.

This affix typically has little impact on our role as healers. You can use Psychic Scream and Holy Word: Chastise to stop Spiteful Shades if you or another player is in a poor position and cannot run away.