Holy Priest Healing Mythic+ Tips — Dragonflight 10.0.7

In order to provide the most accurate Mythic+ dungeon-specific advice, we teamed up with Serainia, one of the highest ranked Holy Priest Mythic+ streamers over at Twitch.tv.

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 Divine Word can be paired together for bursts of damage.

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

• Pontifex and Resonant Words can be swapped for Empowered Renew and Searing Light for some additional damage.

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:

• Dispel Magic is only taken to get to Improved Purify. If you do not need a purge or disease dispel, you can save 1-2 points here.
• Focused Mending is one of the weakest healing talents and can be removed in favor of a damage talent.
• Mass Dispel particularly outside of Bursting can have limited usage. If Mass Dispel does not fit well with the affixes and dungeon you will be doing, swapping it out along with Improved Mass Dispel will save you 2 points.
• Improved Fade can be the weakest of the survival talents, and provided you do not need the added survivability you can talent out of it to spend a point elsewhere.

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

• Manipulation and Shattered Perceptions both boost the power of Mindamges.
• Shackle Undead, 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.

Thundering is the Dragonflight Mythic+ Season 1 seasonal affix. This simple affix periodically buffs you with either Mark of Wind or Mark of Lightning. For its duration, you gain increased damage and healing. Before the buff runs out, you must touch a player with the opposite mark to clear it. Failure to clear your mark before the buff runs out, will stun you and deal damage to you for a short time.

Nothing specific is required to respond to this seasonal affix. Try to maximize the healing and damage you do while buffed, but also try to avoid letting it expire, resulting in you being stunned and taking damage as it will likely result in your death. You should be mindful of people who do get stunned as they will require additional healing. You can also use Leap of Faith to move them out of harm's way while they are stunned, or Guardian Spirit to save them otherwise.

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 the use of Angel's Mercy and require some planning of Desperate Prayer 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 Shining Force and 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.

Raging increases the damage dealt by enemies below 30% by 100% until they die.

This affix can be particularly dangerous to your group, especially during Fortified weeks. Care should be taken to ensure that your group is adequately applying crowd control to dangerous enemies that get low on health, to avoid unnecessary damage.

Bolstering causes dying enemies to increase the maximum health and damage of other nearby enemies by 20%.

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.

Like most affixes, this one is a group effort. Try to have your tank avoid pulling dangerous mobs while Bursting is active. DPS has the responsibility of not refreshing the Bursting stacks unnecessarily. The whole group should aim to stay in range of you during Bursting, as most of your high throughput spells require standing still to cast.

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.

The best way to handle Bursting is to diligently 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, and using this information to help decide when to use your cooldowns, such as Apotheosis and Divine Hymn, to quickly top up the group.

Below is a rough priority to help top up a group, before the mobs die and beginning to apply Bursting:

1. Apotheosis if many mobs are about to die soon, or multiple allies are dangerously low.
2. Guardian Spirit on an ally dangerously close to death.
3. Holy Word: Serenity on the lowest health ally.
4. Holy Word: Sanctify on as many group members as possible.
5. Circle of Healing on cooldown.
6. Divine Star on cooldown.
7. Flash Heal on multiple allies, utilizing the Trail of Light bonus healing on low allies.
8. Divine Hymn if your whole group is at a similar health percentage.

You can cancel Divine Hymn to cast Holy Word: Sanctify if your group needs a quick health boost. Having Divine Hymn cast before Bursting not only helps you stabilize your group but also gives you the increased healing buff for the duration of Bursting. Using Guardian Spirit or Holy Word: Serenity on an ally allows you to focus on other allies, helping you triage the whole group effectively.

Once Bursting has been applied and your group is all topped up, or at least at similar levels of health, you can focus on Holy Word: Sanctify, Circle of Healing, and Prayer of Healing to keep the group stable until Bursting wears off. If you still have low group members, continue triaging with Guardian Spirit, Holy Word: Serenity, and Flash Heal

Prayer of Mending can also be very useful during Bursting damage. To maximize your usage of Prayer of Mending, try to cast it during the pull on a target that will not be taking damage, such as yourself, then again just before Bursting begins. You will then have multiple Prayer of Mending buffs bouncing around at once.

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.

Talenting into Shining Force can be helpful to push 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. Ideally, your party controls the Spiteful Shades with stuns, slows, and snares and avoids getting melee hit by them. Be sure to move away if you are fixated on one.

Explosive will occasionally spawn Explosive Orbs that need to be targeted and burned down within a short period or they will deal significant damage to the party. Explosive Orbs are not cleavable and the number of orbs that spawn scales with the number of enemies pulled.

This affix typically has little impact on our role as healers. That said, we should assist during periods that require less healing by helping damage the orbs with our DPS spells such as Smite, Shadow Word: Pain, and Shadow Word: Death.

Grievous afflicts players with stacking damage over time effect when they fall below 90%.

This can be one of the most dangerous affixes if not dealt with properly, and as such, you may find yourself focused on keeping your entire group topped up, therefore doing much less damage than you would on a week without Grievous.

The following spells when cast will also remove a stack of Grievous on their target:

• Flash Heal
• Heal
• Holy Word: Serenity
• Prayer of Mending (on the initial cast, not each bounce)
• Renew (on the initial cast, not each tick)
• Power Word: Shield
• Holy Word: Salvation (one stack on cast)

Make sure to quickly remove the debuff with Flash Heal and Holy Word: Serenity, focusing on one ally at a time so you do not fall too far behind. If you fall behind, use Apotheosis and Guardian Spirit regularly to try and catch back up, or you will likely fall further behind and deaths will occur. Regular use of Holy Word: Sanctify, Circle of Healing, and Divine Star as they come off cooldown can help keep your group above the threshold.

Finally, encourage your group members to help out once all enemies have died by casting some healing of their own, or eating some food to heal up, such as Conjure Refreshment from a Mage or Healthstone from a Warlock. A slightly more expensive option that helps your group members heal up quickly is to use Sugar-Crusted Fish Feast after combat to quickly restore their health.

Quaking will periodically attempt to interrupt casters by creating a damaging zone around each player. About 3 seconds after the zone forms, it will deal 40% maximum health in damage to each player caught in the zone and interrupt any casts being finished during the shockwave.

The biggest impact this affix will have on you is the constant interrupts on your casting. Take special care to avoid being in the middle of casting if you are going to be hit by one of the damage zones, as it will interrupt your spell casting and can lead to ally deaths.

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 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 in case a plume spawns underneath you.