Holy Priest Healing Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities — Dragonflight 10.2.6

Welcome to our Holy Priest Rotation section. Here you will learn everything you need to know about properly healing as a Holy Priest in Raiding and Mythic+ scenarios.

If the rotations below seem overwhelming at first, you might benefit from checking out our Easy Mode page, where the simpler rotation will get you started until you are comfortable learning to heal as Holy Priest in more depth.

The content on this page is purely PvE-related. If you are looking for PvP Rotation tips, please visit our PvP page below.

Healing is primarily based on your ability to react to the damage that the group takes, and as such, there is no set rotation. Rather, you must understand what spells are best suited to the different situations that can occur during an encounter.

Below, you will find the optimal use of your abilities, and it will be up to you to combine them efficiently in combat.

Raid healing is primarily focused on group healing and priority triage on targets that may be in danger of death. 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.

The next section outlines the priority you should follow in raids. 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.

• Lightweaver talent.
• Divine Word talent.
• Holy Word: Salvation talent.
• Apotheosis talent.
• Lightwell talent.
• Power Word: Life talent.
• Halo talent.
• Divine Star talent.
• Rhapsody talent.

1. ** Holy Word: Salvation when the majority of the raid is heavily injured.
2. ** Divine Hymn when the majority of the raid is heavily injured.
3. Lightwell in a group of allies, usually near tanks and melee.
4. Divine Word followed by Holy Word: Sanctify (if available) on a cluster of injured allies.
5. Holy Word: Sanctify when a cluster of your raid is injured.
6. Holy Word: Serenity on an injured ally.
7. Apotheosis to counter heavy group damage. During Apotheosis, weave Flash Heal and Heal with Holy Word: Serenity as often as possible.
8. Circle of Healing on cooldown when at least 4 allies are injured.
9. Power Word: Life for emergency triage on an ally below 35% hitpoints.
10. Prayer of Mending on cooldown, usually on the active tank.
11. Holy Nova near 5 or more injured allies at 16 or more stacks of Rhapsody.
12. Halo when most of your raid is injured.
13. Divine Star when most of your raid is injured.
14. Flash Heal for emergency triage on an ally near death.
15. Alternate between Flash Heal and Heal for emergency triage on an ally near death, general-purpose raid, or single-target healing, utilizing the Lightweaver buff.
16. Prayer of Healing for general-purpose raid healing.
17. Shadow Word: Pain an enemy when no healing is required, and the enemy will not die in 16 seconds.
18. Smite an enemy when no healing is required.

**Note on raid cooldowns: While Divine Hymn and Holy Word: Salvation are listed on the rotation above; you will typically coordinate your raid cooldown usage with your raid leader, healing officer, or healing team to try and maximize their usage to counter dangerous parts of the encounter without overlapping or wasting them.

Be mindful when using Halo as this spell not only heals your allies but also damages enemies it hits. In some encounters, you may have dangerous enemies that are being crowd-controlled, and the damage from Halo may break this crowd-control.

When taking either Prayer Circle or Sanctified Prayers, you should aim to cast Holy Word: Sanctify then Circle of Healing to have both buffs available for the following Prayer of Healing casts.

While you shouldn't hold either Holy Word: Sanctify or Circle of Healing too long to line up this combination; it is worth waiting a few seconds if there is upcoming damage.

When talented into Divine Image, your playstyle shouldn't really change whether or not you have a Naaru active. You still want to emphasize casting whatever suits your current situation, and the Naaru will mirror that appropriately. The only exception to this is Holy Word: Chastise, which can be used right before periods of intense healing to provide an added burst. Be mindful this adds an additional mana cost to your healing rotation and, as such, should be prioritized only when you know there is healing required in the near future.

Miracle Worker provides you with an additional charge of both Holy Word: Serenity and Holy Word: Sanctify. When playing with Miracle Worker, you still want to avoid capping at 2 charges to maximize the cooldown reduction provided by casting your other spells. Exceptions to this are when there is large amounts of damage upcoming in the very near future, in which case it can be beneficial to sit on 2 charges for a short period of time.

Lightweaver is fairly simple to use. The goal is to alternate between Flash Heal and Heal, utilizing the buff that Flash Heal generates to buff the Heal casts. Ideally, you shouldn't be casting Heal without having the Lightweaver buff active. Also, be mindful of the Trail of Light talent and try to spread your trail back and forth between targets that need ongoing healing with your Flash Heal and Heal casts.

Your first obvious aim when using Lightwell should be to use it as often as possible, to get the most value out of it. When deciding if you should cast it, think ahead to where the raid may be moving and if the raid will be taking considerable damage to ensure it is in range to utilise the healing bolts from Lightwell before it expires. Finally, Lightwell will despawn when you move further than 100 yards from it so consider this to before placing it down.

Most of the time, your primary role is to heal and keep your raid alive. That said, your raid does not always need healing, which leaves you time to cast some damage spells. Most of your damage will come from Smite, as it has the added benefit of being able to also trigger Surge of Light. If you need to push out additional damage or have excess Mana, you can also cast Holy Fire on cooldown and keep Shadow Word: Pain up on any enemy that will live longer than 15 seconds

The tier bonus for Amirdrassil is focused around casting both Holy Word: Serenity and Holy Word: Sanctify more often.

Neither of the set bonuses changes how we play. The 4-set bonus will trigger enough from both the 2-set and Benediction and does not require you to be hard-casting Renew. It continues to emphasize using Holy Word: Serenity and Holy Word: Sanctify regularly so you do not lose out on potential casts of those spells.

One small optimization that can be made is to try and emphasise using 4-set procs on Holy Word: Sanctify wherever possible. With Miracle Worker talented, you should be aiming to never be at 2 charges of either Holy Word. You should also try to keep one charge of Holy Word: Sanctify available to consume on tier when it procs, rather than using your 4-set procs on Holy Word: Serenity.

Dungeon healing is primarily focused around casting your short-cooldown spells regularly, and using Flash Heal to heal multiple allies at once through the Trail of Light talent. 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 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 overhealing.

• Lightweaver talent.
• Divine Word talent.
• Holy Word: Salvation talent.
• Apotheosis talent.
• Lightwell talent.
• Power Word: Life talent.
• Divine Star talent.
• Holy Nova talent.

1. ** Holy Word: Salvation when the majority of the group is heavily injured.
2. ** Divine Hymn when the majority of the group is heavily injured.
3. Lightwell in a group of allies, usually near tanks and melee.
4. Divine Word followed by Holy Word: Serenity (if available) on an injured ally.
5. Holy Word: Sanctify when most of your group is injured.
6. Holy Word: Serenity on an injured ally.
7. Apotheosis to counter heavy group damage. During Apotheosis, weave Flash Heal and Heal with Holy Word: Serenity as often as possible.
8. Circle of Healing on cooldown when at least 4 allies are injured.
9. Prayer of Mending on cooldown, usually on the active tank.
10. Power Word: Life for emergency triage on an ally below 35% hitpoints.
11. Flash Heal for emergency triage on an ally near death.
12. Holy Nova near 5 or more injured allies at 16 or more stacks of Rhapsody.
13. Divine Star when multiple allies are injured.
14. Alternate between Flash Heal and Heal for emergency triage on an ally near death, general-purpose raid, or single-target healing, utilizing the Lightweaver buff.
15. Holy Fire an enemy when no healing is required.
16. Shadow Word: Pain an enemy when no healing is required and the enemy will not die in 16 seconds.
17. Smite an enemy when no healing is required.

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. Smite is your main damage dealing ability costs very little Mana and can proc the Surge of Light talent.

Damage spell priority for 4+ targets:

1. Divine Word with Holy Word: Chastise (if talented)
2. Divine Star
3. Holy Fire
4. Mindgames (if talented)
5. Holy Nova with 16+ stacks of Rhapsody
6. Shadow Word: Pain (if the target will survive for the full duration)
7. Holy Nova

Damage spell priority for 1-3 targets:

1. Divine Word with Holy Word: Chastise (if talented)
2. Holy Fire
3. Mindgames (if talented)
4. Shadow Word: Pain (if the target will survive for the full duration)
5. Holy Word: Chastise (if you do not need the incapacitate/stun for cc)
6. Divine Star
7. 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.

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

Divine Hymn will heal all raid members within 40 yards over 8 seconds, and also increase the healing they receive during that time.

Keep in mind that the spell is channeled, so you cannot perform other actions while casting it.

Generally, your raid leader will assign you to use this spell at a certain time in the fight to counter a heavy burst of damage. If this is the case, make sure your spell is available at that time.

Otherwise, you should simply try to find a moment when using this spell is beneficial. Most often, this will happen during a period of very intense raid damage.

Holy Word: Salvation is a strong raid cooldown that will heal all allies in range and place a Renew and 2 stacks of Prayer of Mending on them.

Generally, your raid leader will assign you to use this spell at a certain time in the fight to counter a heavy burst of damage. If this is the case, make sure your spell is available at that time.

Otherwise, you should simply try to find a moment when using this spell is beneficial. Most often, this will happen during a period of very intense raid damage.

Guardian Spirit is one of the most useful tools you can bring to a raid. Using it places a buff on the target, which lasts for 10 seconds and increases all healing received by the target by 60%. If the target receives a killing blow during this time, they will not die and instead be healed for 40% of their maximum health, consuming the Guardian Spirit effect.

While you can use this on any raid member who is about to die and whom you have no other means of saving, it is by far better used on a tank that is about to take a large amount of damage. You should make sure to communicate with the tank and other healers to ensure that you do not use multiple powerful cooldowns at the same time.

You can also use this spell to allow tanks (or other players) to survive an ability that should have otherwise been avoided, either as part of your raid's strategy or to recover from a mistake.

Keep in mind that your raid leader may assign you to use this spell for a specific event in the encounter.

Symbol of Hope is a unique cooldown that provides all healers in your raid with Mana when you channel it. It also reduces the remaining cooldown on a defensive ability for all targets.

The amount of Mana gained by each target is dependent on how much Mana they are missing, so this ability is often best used toward the end of encounters. Exceptions to this are when you are asked to use it earlier to help members of your group have their cooldowns available again much sooner.

If you are unsure of when to use it, a general rule of thumb is to use it either when your remaining Mana is below 20% or the boss' remaining hitpoints are below 20%

The above information should allow you to perform at a high level as a Holy Priest. In the following sub-sections, we offer a few additional pieces of information, and we expand on some concepts further.

Heal and Flash Heal have a passive ability that reduces the remaining cooldown of Holy Word: Serenity by 6 seconds. Prayer of Healing reduces the remaining cooldown of Holy Word: Sanctify by 6 seconds, and Renew reduces the remaining cooldown of Holy Word: Sanctify by 2 seconds.

While you do not need to actively manage this mechanic in any way, it is very important that you are aware of its existence and that you constantly monitor the remaining cooldowns of your Holy Words so that you can use them as soon as they become available.

For more information on the synergy between various talents, as well as deciding which talents you can change around and why, check out the Holy Priest Talents page.