Holy Priest Healing Spec, Builds, and Talents — Battle for Azeroth (BfA) 8.1

1. Talent Choices for Holy Priest

Level	Choices
15	✓ Enlightenment	✓ Trail of Light	✗ Enduring Renewal
30	? Angel's Mercy	✗ Perseverance	✓ Angelic Feather
45	✓ Cosmic Ripple	? Guardian Angel	✗ Afterlife
60	✓ Psychic Voice	✓ Censure	✓ Shining Force
75	? Surge of Light	? Binding Heal	? Circle of Healing
90	? Benediction	✓ Divine Star	✓ Halo
100	? Light of the Naaru	✓ Apotheosis	✓ Holy Word: Salvation

Talents can be freely changed when out of combat and in a rested XP area (such as an inn or a capital city). Moreover, Tome of the Tranquil Mind and Codex of the Tranquil Mind can be used to temporarily allow players to change talents anywhere, as long as they are out of combat.

2. Talent Cheat Sheet for Holy Priests

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.

2.1. Raids

The talent setup below is a good starting point for raiding. It is highly recommended you read the individual talent points further down the page, as level 90 and 100 talents in particular have other situational talent options. This starter build aims to provide the easiest transition from the Legion playstyle while not compromising on group healing.

• Level 15: Enlightenment
• Level 30: Angelic Feather
• Level 45: Cosmic Ripple
• Level 60: Any
• Level 75: Circle of Healing
• Level 90: Halo
• Level 100: Holy Word: Salvation

2.2. Dungeons

The talent setup below is a good starting point for dungeons. While Holy Priest talents for dungeons are less open than raid ones, the optimal setup depends on both your group composition and the dungeon you are clearing. This build in particular aims to maximize your ability to keep the tank and other focused targets alive by boosting your single target healing.

• Level 15: Trail of Light
• Level 30: Angelic Feather
• Level 45: Guardian Angel
• Level 60: Any
• Level 75: Surge of Light
• Level 90: Divine Star
• Level 100: Apotheosis

3. Tier 1 (Level 15) Talents for Holy Priests

✔ Enlightenment

✔ Trail of Light

✘ Enduring Renewal

• Enlightenment passively increases your Mana regeneration rate by 10%.
• Trail of Light causes Flash Heal casts to also heal the previous target you healed with Flash Heal for 40% of the amount. Casting Flash Heal two or more times in a row on the same target does not cause them to benefit from Trail of Light, and instead, the previously healed other target is still healed, no matter how many heals ago you had healed them.
• Enduring Renewal causes your single target heals to refresh your Renew on the target.

Enlightenment is currently the recommended choice in this tier for raiding, providing you with more Mana to spend for the duration of the encounter.

Trail of Light is a good choice for dungeons where Mana is not a concern and you find yourself spot healing a lot with Flash Heal. It can also be useful in raid encounters with a heavy single-target focus

Enduring Renewal is not currently suggested with the existing raid or dungeon healing playstyle, as Renew is rarely cast and the Benediction talent does not reliably provide enough Renews on friendly targets.

4. Tier 2 (Level 30) Talents for Holy Priests

? Angel's Mercy

✘ Perseverance

✔ Angelic Feather

• Angel's Mercy causes damage you take to reduce the cooldown of Desperate Prayer based on how much damage is taken.
• Perseverance passively causes you to take 10% less damage from all sources while your own Renew is active on you.
• Angelic Feather is an active ability with 3 charges and a 20-second recharge time. It places a feather at the targeted location, which grants a 40% increase in movement speed for 5 seconds to the first ally who comes in contact with it. Only 3 feathers can be active at any given time.

Angel's Mercy is an option for dungeons allowing you to survive larger hits more often by enabling more frequent Desperate Prayer casts.

Perseverance is situationally an option for difficult dungeons, though you must actively cast Renew on yourself regularly to provide good value.

Angelic Feather is the suggested dungeon and raid talent as it allows you to gain a small movement speed buff at a moment's notice, and can also be cast in locations to allow your allies to instead collect the buff.

5. Tier 3 (Level 45) Talents for Holy Priests

✔ Cosmic Ripple

? Guardian Angel

✘ Afterlife

• Cosmic Ripple causes you to heal 5 nearby injured targets when your Holy Word: Sanctify or Holy Word: Serenity finish their cooldown.
• Guardian Angel reduces the cooldown of Guardian Spirit to 60 seconds when it expires on a target without having saved them from dying.
• Afterlife increases the duration of your Spirit of Redemption by 50%.

Cosmic Ripple provides the most raid healing benefit and is generally the recommended choice for raid healing.

Guardian Angel is suggested for dungeons allowing you to cast Guardian Spirit more often as often the additional healing provided is enough to save someone so the death prevention component does not trigger.

Afterlife can have some situation uses but generally is not preferred over the other two options.

6. Tier 4 (Level 60) Talents for Holy Priests

✔ Psychic Voice

✔ Censure

✔ Shining Force

• Psychic Voice reduces the cooldown of Psychic Scream by 30 seconds.
• Censure causes Holy Word: Chastise to also stun the target for 4 seconds.
• Shining Force is an active ability with a 45-second cooldown. It knocks back all enemies located around your (friendly) target, slowing their movement speed by 70% for 3 seconds.

All 3 of these talents can have good situational uses in both raiding and dungeon groups. You should pick one based on what additional utility your group requires from you.

7. Tier 5 (Level 75) Talents for Holy Priests

? Surge of Light

? Binding Heal

? Circle of Healing

• Surge of Light causes your healing spells and Smite to have an 8% chance to make your next Flash Heal instant cast and cost no Mana. Getting a Surge of Light proc while you already had an unused one will grant you 2 charges of the proc (which is the maximum you can have at any one time).
• Binding Heal is an active ability with no cooldown and a 1.5-second cast time. It heals your target, yourself, and another random ally within 20 yards. Binding Heal reduces the remaining cooldown of both Holy Word: Serenity and Holy Word: Sanctify by 3 seconds each.
• Circle of Healing is an active ability with a 15-second cooldown, which your target and up to 4 allies within 30 yards of the target.

Binding Heal is a good option for raiding, as it becomes a Mana-efficient filler spell that also reduces the cooldown of both Holy Word: Serenity and Holy Word: Sanctify. This almost entirely replaces your usage of Heal.

Surge of Light is a good option for dungeons as it provides some Mana savings, and can proc from casting Smite which generates charges while dealing damage, that you can use immediately as healing is required.

Circle of Healing is also a great option for both raids and dungeons, as it provides Mana-efficient healing and can be cast while moving.

8. Tier 6 (Level 90) Talents for Holy Priests

? Benediction

✔ Divine Star

✔ Halo

• Benediction causes your Prayer of Mending to have a 30% chance to place a Renew on each target it heals.
• Divine Star is an active ability with a 15-second cooldown. It resembles a yo-yo, in the sense that a ball of energy travels in a path away from you (in front of you), and after reaching a certain point (24 yards away), it returns. Both on the first, as well as on the second trip, it heals allies and damages enemies in its path.
• Halo is an active ability with a 40-second cooldown and a 1.5-second cast time. It creates a ring around you that expands in radius (up to 30 yards). Allies who come in contact with it are healed, and enemies are damaged.

Benediction provides regular healing but relies on you casting Prayer of Mending as often as possible.

Divine Star is useful for dungeons by providing both damage and group healing when the positioning of your group allows. It can be quite difficult to get good value in raids due to the positional requirements.

Halo is a great raid healing tool when the positioning of your raid allows for it. You should aim to get in such a position that as many raid members as possible are in range before casting it. In dungeons, it provides good healing and damage, but you need to be much more aware of your positioning and surrounds to prevent damaging enemies you are not in combat with.

9. Tier 7 (Level 100) Talents for Holy Priests

? Light of the Naaru

✔ Apotheosis

✔ Holy Word: Salvation

• Light of the Naaru reduces the cooldowns of your holy words by an additional 33% when you cast the relevant spells.
• Apotheosis is an active ability with a 2-minute cooldown. For 20 seconds, the cooldown reduction to your Holy Words is increased by 300%, and the cost of your Holy Words is reduced by 100%.
• 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.

Light of the Naaru provides an easy to use and reliable increase to your healing allowing you to cast your powerful Holy Word spells more regularly for both dungeons and raids.

Apotheosis is a small cooldown that not only increases the frequency with which you can cast holy words, but also removes their Mana cost for the 20 second duration. This is a fantastic choice for dungeons and can be extremely potent while raiding when there is regular enough damage to make good use of the full 20 seconds.

Holy Word: Salvation is essentially an additional raid cooldown. It is best used when there is more incoming damage, being great at responding to raid-wide AoE. Although the base 12-minute cooldown appears quite long, you can generally get the cooldown to around 4-5 minutes with regular casting of both Holy Word: Serenity and Holy Word: Sanctify, as both spells decrease the cooldown of Holy Word: Salvation by 30 seconds each when cast.

10. Changelog