Holy Priest Healing Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities — Shadowlands 9.2.5
On this page, you will learn how to optimize the rotation of your Holy Priest, depending on the type of damage your group is receiving. We also have advanced sections about cooldowns, procs, etc. in order to minmax your healing output and your mana efficiency. All our content is updated for World of Warcraft — Shadowlands 9.2.5.
If you were looking for TBC Classic content, please refer to our TBC Classic Holy Priest rotation.
Foreword
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.
Easy Mode
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.
PvP
The content on this page is purely PvE-related. If you are looking for PvP Rotation tips, please visit our PvP page below.
Rotation / Playstyle for Holy Priests
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 then combine them efficiently in combat.
Raid Healing
Raid healing is primarily focused around 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 working through the priority list and skip an item if there is likely to be significant overheal.
Holy Priest Covenant abilities do not change our healing rotation, instead they should be used in a situation that makes the most sense depending on which covenant you have chosen. To read more about each Covenant ability and situations theyare best used, check out the Holy Priest Covenant page and for fight-specific tips, the Holy Priest Sanctum of Domination page.
-
Flash Concentration Legendary Power.
-
Benediction talent.
-
Halo talent.
-
Divine Star talent.
-
Holy Word: Salvation talent.
-
**
Holy Word: Salvation when the majority of the raid is heavily injured.
- **
Divine Hymn when the majority of the raid is heavily injured.
Holy Word: Sanctify when a cluster of your raid is injured.
Holy Word: Serenity on an injured ally.
Circle of Healing on cooldown when at least 4 allies are injured.
Prayer of Mending on cooldown, usually on the active tank.
-
Divine Star when most of your raid is injured.
-
Flash Heal for emergency triage on an ally near death, general purpose raid or single-target healing until you reach 5 stacks of
Flash Concentration.
-
Heal for emergency triage on an ally near death, general purpose raid or single-target healing.
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 maximise their usage to counter dangerous parts of the
encounter without overlapping or wasting them.
Tier Set Bonus Rotation
Patch 9.2 introduced a tier set with 2-set and 4-set bonuses.
- 2-set
Holy Priest 2-Piece — Your Holy Words begin
Divine Conversation, increasing the cooldown reduction of your next Holy-Word-affecting spell by 15 sec.
- 4-set
Holy Priest 4-Piece —
Divine Conversation increases the effectiveness of your next Holy-Word-affecting spell by 60%.
Optimising usage of the tier set revolves around using a priority system to
make sure you are consuming the Divine Conversation buff with the most
appropriate spell to get the most out of the 15 second cooldown reduction and
the additional healing bonus.
Cast Priority with Divine Conversation buff and
Flash Concentration
Cast Priority with Divine Conversation buff and
Harmonious Apparatus or
Divine Image
Holy Word: Sanctify
Circle of Healing
Prayer of Healing (with
Prayer Circle buff up)
Prayer of Mending
Holy Word: Serenity or
Prayer of Healing without
Prayer Circle buff up
Regardless of the legendary you are using avoid accidentally consuming
Divine Conversation with a
Smite cast as it will consume it
with no meaningful healing benefit.
Optimising Flash Concentration
Flash Concentration slightly changes your rotation. Ideally with
Flash Concentration, you have the
Trail of Light and
Surge of Light talents. You then prioritise casting Heal as your primary
filler spell, replacing
Flash Heal and
Prayer of Healing. You
should only cast
Flash Heal often enough to prevent the Flash
Concentration debuff from dropping off. For more information on properly using
Trail of Light check out the section below on Tier 1 Talents
Optimising Harmonious Apparatus
When playing with Harmonious Apparatus, your primary method of raid
healing is to leverage the periods of time your
Prayer Circle buff is
active to squeeze in as many
Prayer of Healing as needed. This also means
where possible you should look to use other spells prior to casting your first
Circle of Healing. For example, if you have
Holy Word: Serenity off
cooldown and the raid takes heavy damage, try to use Serenity before Circle of
Healing, to allow for more Prayer of Healing casts during your Prayer Circle
window.
This amount of casting is obviously not sustainable all encounter, so you
should look to continue to utilise Prayer of Mending and
Smite
to stay active during periods of low damage.
Dungeon Healing
Dungeon healing is primarily focused around Heal and
Flash Heal healing
multiple allies at once through the
Trail of Light talent, and
supplementing this with regular use of your cooldown-based abilities. 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.
-
Flash Concentration Legendary Power.
Holy Word: Serenity on an injured ally.
Holy Word: Sanctify when most of your group is injured.
-
Flash Heal if your stacks of
Flash Concentration are about to drop off or until you reach 5 stacks.
-
Heal for emergency triage on an ally near death.
Divine Star if talented, when most of your group is injured.
Circle of Healing when most of your group is injured.
Heal for regular healing, utilising
Trail of Light to heal multiple allies.
Prayer of Mending when little healing is required.
Renew while moving and healing is required.
Shadow Word: Pain an enemy when no healing is required and the enemy will not die in 16 seconds.
Smite an enemy when no healing is required.
For heavy single-target damage,
use Apotheosis with
Heal and
Holy Word: Serenity as it
comes off cooldown. If this is still not enough, you also have access to
Guardian Spirit.
For heavy AoE damage, use
Apotheosis with
Heal, utilising the multi-target healing that
Trail of Light provides to keep your group alive. If this is still not
enough, you also have access to
Divine Hymn.
Holy Priest Mythic+ DPS
Dealing 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
Surge of Light, if
talented.
Damage spell priority for 4+ targets:
Divine Star
Holy Fire
Shadow Word: Pain (if the target will survive for the full duration)
Holy Nova
Damage spell priority for 1-3 targets:
Holy Fire
Shadow Word: Pain (if the target will survive for the full duration)
Holy Word: Chastise (if you do not need the incapacitate/stun for cc)
Divine Star
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 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 Boon of the Ascended Usage
When playing as Kyrian in dungeons, especially with Spheres' Harmony
or
Memory of Unity, it is important to try and maximise your usage of
Boon of the Ascended. You will primarily use this for damage, and you should ideally be using it in larger packs as often as possible.
Before casting Boon of the Ascended make sure you have an enemy
targeted to maximise the benefit from the Mikanikos Soulbind's
Effusive Anima Accelerator. During Boon you should be near melee range of
the pack, prioritise
Ascended Blast on cooldown (5 stacks), and fill
in-between with
Ascended Nova (1 stack per enemy hit). This maximises
your Boon of the Ascended buff, which not only increases the size of the
Ascended Eruption at the end of your Boon, but also grants up to 60
seconds of cooldown reduction on Boon from
Spheres' Harmony/
Memory of Unity. Combined with the
Mikanikos soulbind, you can reduce the cooldown of Boon by up to 2 minutes,
potentially reducing it to a 1-minute cooldown. Couple this with the
Decrypted Urh Cypher from the
Encrypted affix and you can
cast Boon very often.
Cooldown Usage for Holy Priests
As a Holy Priest, you have three main cooldowns. Here is how you should use them:
Divine Hymn
Divine Hymn will heal all raid members within 40 yards over
8 seconds, and also increase the healing they receive during that time by
10%.
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, in order 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
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 who is about to take a large amount of damage. You should make sure to communicate with the tank and other healers, in order 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
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 in order to help members of your group have their personal 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%
Optional Read: Mastering Your Holy Priest
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.
Holy Word Cooldown Reduction
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.
Talents
Tier 1 Talents
When talented into Trail of Light, your goal should be to move your
healing from
Heal and
Flash Heal around to get the maximum
benefit from the trail that is left behind. Repeatedly healing the same person
with Heal or Flash Heal will cause the previous target to receive Trail of Light
healing for each cast. This means your priority should always be to move on to a
new target once your Flash Heal or Heal target has reached 75%+ hitpoints. This
way the Trail healing from your new Heal or Flash Heal casts will top up the
remaining amount of their missing health.
The goal is to pay attention to who your previous target was so that when
they are fully healed up you move along to the next player. Below are some
examples on spell usage showing how Trail of Light would heal. For the
sake of keeping the explanations concise, using
Heal or
Flash Heal is referred to as "Heal/FH"
An example of how Trail of Light behaves when you are healing different people:
- You last used Heal/FH on The Tank
- You Heal/FH Player 1, Trail of Light also heals The Tank.
- You Heal/FH Player 2, Trail of Light also heals Player 1.
- You Heal/FH Player 3, Trail of Light also heals Player 2.
- You Heal/FH The Tank, Trail of Light also heals Player 3.
As you can see, Trail of Light is only ever present on one player at once, and simply follows the last person you cast Heal or Flash Heal on that wasn't your current target:
- You last used Heal/FH on The Tank
- You Heal/FH Player 1, Trail of Light also heals The Tank.
- You Heal/FH Player 2, Trail of Light also heals Player 1.
- You Heal/FH Player 2, Trail of Light also heals Player 1.
- You Heal/FH Player 2, Trail of Light also heals Player 1.
These two examples of how Trail of Light works should help explain why it is
often ideal to cast Heal or
Flash Heal on new targets
frequently to maximise the healing done by
Trail of Light, and use Trail
to top up higher health targets that are no longer in danger.
Tier 3 Talents
When talented into Guardian Angel, you should be aiming to use
Guardian Spirit regularly throughout the encounter on high-damage
targets, which are usually the tanks. The additional healing provided by having
Guardian Spirit on them benefits not only their self healing, but also healing
from other healers.
Tier 5 Talents
You should make sure to use a Surge of Light proc quickly if you reach
2 stacks, so that new charges are not wasted.
Prayer Circle does provide additional throughput in a shorter window but
be mindful not to hold
Circle of Healing unless you know there is about
to be some raid-wide damage that would really benefit from Prayer Circle. It is
still important for your throughput and efficiency to keep casting Circle of
Healing as often as possible.
Tier 6 Talents
When using Benediction, it is important you focus on casting
Prayer of Mending as often as possible to maximise the benefit this
talent provides.
Both Halo and
Divine Star when talented, should be cast as
often as they will do group healing as they are both efficient and do a large
amount of healing.
Tier 7 Talents
Holy Word: Salvation is a potent raid cooldown that heals everyone within
40 yards of you, as well as applying both renew and 2 stacks of
Prayer of Mending to each. While this ability does have a very long
base cooldown of 12 minutes, each of your
Holy Word: Serenity and
Holy Word: Sanctify casts reduce its remaining cooldown by 30 seconds.
Due to this interaction, it is important you aim to efficiently use those
holy words as often as practical to lower the cooldown of Holy Word: Salvation
when the remaining length of the encounter allows for a second cast
Apotheosis is a powerful cooldown, which you should save for
moments of heavy damage. Below, we list the spell sequences
you should use to maximise your healing-per-second.
To maximise your single-target HPS:
- Cast
Holy Word: Sanctify.
- Cast
Holy Word: Serenity.
- Cast
Flash Heal until
Holy Word: Serenity comes off cooldown.
- Cast
Holy Word: Serenity and repeat step 3.
Note: With Flash Concentration you should cast
Heal in place
of
Flash Heal, unless the Flash Concentration buff will expire soon.
To maximise your AoE HPS:
- Cast
Holy Word: Serenity.
- Cast
Holy Word: Sanctify.
- Cast
Prayer of Healing until
Holy Word: Sanctify comes off cooldown.
- Cast
Holy Word: Sanctify and repeat steps 2 and onward.
Note: With Flash Concentration you should stick to the single-target
HPS rotation above, and utilise the multi-target healing from
Trail of Light to keep your group healthy.
Changelog
- 31 May 2022: Page reviewed for Patch 9.2.5.
- 22 Feb. 2022: Updated rotation for 9.2 tuning changes, tier introduction and legendary options.
- 01 Nov. 2021: Reviewed and approved for Patch 9.1.5.
- 23 Aug. 2021: Clarified and condensed some sections.
- 29 Jun. 2021: Reviewed and approved for Patch 9.1.
- 09 Mar. 2021: Updated dungeon healing rotation.
- 12 Dec. 2020: Added some talent and legendary specific rotation information.
- 08 Dec. 2020: Added some notes about rotation with legendaries.
- 03 Dec. 2020: Fixed a missing comment about Smite and the Shadowlands Mana addition.
- 23 Nov. 2020: Updated for Shadowlands.
- 12 Oct. 2020: Page updated for the Shadowlands pre-patch.
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This guide has been written by Niphyr, a generally knowledgeable, long-time healing Priest and theorycrafter. You can follow him on Twitter.
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