Holy Priest Healing Spec, Builds, and Talents — The War Within (Season 1)
On this page, you will find out the best talents for each tier for your Holy Priest in World of Warcraft — The War Within (Season 1). We also have default talent lists for various types of content, such as raiding or Mythic+. If you play with Warmode on, we have your PvP talents covered as well.
If you were looking for WotLK Classic content, please refer to our WotLK Classic Holy Priest talents.
Best The War WithinTalents for Holy Priest
While optimizing talents on a contextual basis is the highly recommended method of setting up your build, the Talent builds listed below work great for specific purposes.
Depending on the talents you end up choosing, your playstyle may be slightly altered. To properly understand the impact talents have on your rotation and to utilize them alongside the rest of your toolkit, have a look at the rotation page below.
Best Talents for Holy Priest
Raid Archon Lightweaver Build
The Raid Archon Lightweaver Build focuses on utilising the additional Surge of Light procs alongside Lightweaver to vastly improve spot-healing capability.
You can easily import the talent tree below by clicking 'Export Talents' and then importing it in-game.
The Holy Priest tree has several talent points or groups of talent points that can be moved around without affecting the core playstyle:
- Crisis Management can be swapped for Prismatic Echoes as they are roughly equal in value.
- Answered Prayers can be swapped for Voice of Harmony if you aren't making good use of the Apotheosis procs.
The Class Tree has some 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:
- Mass Dispel, particularly in raid encounters, can have limited usage. If Mass Dispel does not fit well with the boss you will be fighting, swapping it out will save you one point.
- Dispel Magic can be taken instead of Mass Dispel for encounters where having an additional purge is important.
Raid Oracle Divine Word Build
The Raid Oracle Divine Word Build focuses on utilising additional short-cooldown abilities to increase your healing output. Divine Word combines well with Premonition, depending where on the buff cycle you are at any one time.
You can easily import the talent tree below by clicking 'Export Talents' and then importing it in-game.
The Class Tree has some 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:
- Mass Dispel, particularly in raid encounters, can have limited usage. If Mass Dispel does not fit well with the boss you will be fighting, swapping it out will save you one point.
- Dispel Magic can be taken instead of Mass Dispel for encounters where having an additional purge is important.
Best Dungeon Talents for Holy Priest
For dungeons, see our Mythic+ guide linked below for a starter build that you can work from and tailor to your requirements. Our Mythic+ guide also goes into more detail about potential talent changes to help you adapt to your group's requirements.
For delves, we highly suggest you do them as Shadow instead of Holy due to the increased damage output as Shadow. If you still choose to do them alone, as Holy or are doing them in a group as Holy, then use the build below.
Best Mythic+ Talents for Holy Priest in The War Within
This build is my recommendation for High Mythic+ Pushing. High Mythic+ is defined as any level of Mythic+ that you are actually pushing, where the timer is a relevant concern, and the content is difficult. For one player, this may be Mythic+20, for another, it may be Mythic+12 — I recommend this build if you are doing serious Mythic+, whatever that means for you.
The reason for going Oracle is a combination of personal defense, damage output and burst healing.
Flexible Talents
There are a few changes to the suggested talent build that you could make to suit your personal preferences. These decisions are around the utility you wish to provide to your group and can be dungeon dependent.
- Desperate Measures can be taken over Prophet's Will to survive larger damage spikes.
Be sure to make use of the 'Export Talents' button to import the best build directly into your game!
Rotation for Holy Priest Talents
Some talents will require you to play in a particular way to get the most out of them. You can find more information on how your rotation will look after selecting your talents on our rotation page below.
Changelog
- 09 Sep. 2024: Updated for The War Within Season 1.
- 21 Aug. 2024: Updated for The War Within.
- 23 Jul. 2024: Updated for The War Within pre-patch.
- 07 May 2024: Reviewed for 10.2.7.
- 22 Apr. 2024: Reviewed for Dragonflight Season 4.
- 29 Mar. 2024: Updated for Patch 10.2.6.
- 17 Mar. 2024: Reviewed for Patch 10.2.6.
- 15 Jan. 2024: Updated for Patch 10.2.5.
- 06 Nov. 2023: Updated with Patch 10.2 changes.
- 04 Sep. 2023: Updated for Patch 10.1.7.
- 10 Jul. 2023: Updated for Patch 10.1.5.
- 08 May 2023: Updated talent trees and explanations for Season 2.
- 07 May 2023: Fixed a talent tree missing a talent.
- 01 May 2023: Updated for Patch 10.1.
- 20 Mar. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.7.
- 24 Jan. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.5.
- 24 Jan. 2022: Updated for patch 10.0.5 talent changes.
- 11 Dec. 2022: Reviewed for Dragonflight Season 1.
- 28 Nov. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight launch.
- 25 Oct. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight pre-patch.
More Priest Guides
Guides from Other Classes
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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