Holy Priest PvP Rotation and Playstyle — Midnight Pre-Patch (12.0.1)

The main role for a Holy Priest, besides keeping your team alive, is to use your utility to prevent your teammates from using cooldowns and keep them offensive. Secondly, you want to support your team with Crowd Control, such as Holy Word: Chastise, Psychic Scream and Mind Control, damage and offensive purges. Positioning plays a key role for you, especially since Priest is not as mobile as other classes.

A unique passive that Holy Priests have is with their Holy Word spells. This passive lets you use certain abilities to reduce the cooldown of your Holy Word spells.

• Holy Word: Serenity — Every time you use Flash Heal or Prayer of Healing, it reduces the cooldown of Holy Word: Serenity by 6 seconds. Take advantage of this when you are playing with a team with strong single-target damage. The more times you use Flash Heal the faster you will have your strongest heal.
• Holy Word: Sanctify — Every time you use Prayer of Healing, it reduces the cooldown of Holy Word: Sanctify by 6 seconds. Note: if you are playing Ultimate Serenity, this will replace Holy Word: Sanctify.
• Holy Word: Chastise — Every time you use Smite or Holy Nova, the remaining cooldown of Holy Word: Chastise is reduced by 4 seconds. This is a very strong passive to take advantage of. It is important to use Smite if there is any downtime in an arena match, even if it is on totems or pets. Reducing the cooldown of your crowd control spell can catch teams off guard.

Discuss with your team to have a game plan. You and your team need to agree on who to control and who to kill before the game begins. You also need to know who will use their defensive cooldowns first, as overlapping defensives will make it very difficult for you to keep your team alive.

Buff your team with Power Word: Fortitude before the gates open. If you are playing against a team that can dispel this buff, remember to reapply Power Word: Fortitude throughout the arena match.

As soon as the gates open you will want to use Prayer of Mending on your teammates, to try to get Renew rolling on them. This will help you get additional healing from the talent Renewed Faith.

The great thing about Holy Priest is that they have the multiple ways to keep teammates alive and high on health. It is important to note that if you are using Apotheosis, try to wait until you have at least one Surge of Light proc. This will guarantee a shorter cooldown on Holy Word: Serenity and it is all instant. Generally speaking, try to cast Flash Heal after you used a Holy Word spell to get the maximum cooldown reduction.

• The first method is best when the enemy team has multiple kicks available. It is also the fastest way to heal someone to high HP.
  1. Use Prayer of Mending as soon as it is off cooldown. This will make up a large majority of your healing.
     • This will put a Power Word: Shield on your target if you are playing Oracle.
     • You will get an additional 4 stacks of Prayer of Mending on a second ally if you are playing Oracle.
     • With Benediction, there is a chance to put a Renew on your target. You get bonus healing when playing Renewed Faith.
     • Immediately use Prayer of Mending if you get an Epiphany proc.
  2. Use Holy Word: Serenity for a large amount of both single-target, and spread healing if you are playing Ultimate Serenity.
  3. If you are not playing Ultimate Serenity, use Holy Word: Sanctify on your teammates to deal with spread pressure.
  4. Use Power Infusion on your teammate. Due to Twins of the Sun Priestess both of you gain the effect.
     • If you do not necessarily need the extra haste, try to use it on your teammate when they have their major damage ability ready, to maximize the team's damage output.
  5. Use Flash Heal if you have Surge of Light.
  6. If you are stunned or need additional cooldowns to keep your teammate alive, Guardian Spirit should be used.
  7. Use Spirit of Redemption if you are running this PvP talent. You can free-cast holy spells without any mana cost during your spirit form. This is especially great to refresh the cooldown of Holy Word: Serenity. You can also use Mass Dispel on your teammates to get rid of dots.
     • Because you cannot be interrupted while in this form, it is a great time to channel Divine Hymn if you need the healing.
  8. Use Holy Word: Serenity.
  9. Cast Flash Heal.
  10. Use Prayer of Mending.
  11. Use Holy Fire and Smite if there is downtime when you recover from enemy cooldowns.
• The second method is best used when playing against teams with strong spread pressure.
  1. Use Spirit of Redemption if you are running this PvP talent. You can free-cast holy spells without any mana cost during your spirit form. This is especially great to refresh the cooldown of Holy Word: Serenity. You can also use Mass Dispel on your teammates to get rid of dots.
     • Because you cannot be interrupted while in this form, it is a great time to channel Divine Hymn if you need the healing.
  2. Use Holy Word: Serenity.
  3. Cast Flash Heal.
  4. Use Prayer of Mending.
  5. Use Holy Word: Sanctify.
  6. Use Holy Word: Serenity.
  7. Cast Flash Heal if your team is still low.
  8. Use Holy Fire and Smite if there is downtime when you recover from enemy cooldowns.

Use this to heal sustained damage throughout the match (damage done when the other team does not have burst cooldowns available). Generally speaking, try to cast Flash Heal or Heal after you used a Holy Word spell to benefit from Resonant Words.

1. Use Prayer of Mending as soon as it is off cooldown. This will make up a large majority of your healing.
   • This will put a Power Word: Shield on your target if you are playing Oracle.
   • You will get an additional 4 stacks of Prayer of Mending on a second ally if you are playing Oracle.
   • With Benediction, there is a chance to put a Renew on your target. You get bonus healing when playing Renewed Faith.
   • Immediately use Prayer of Mending if you get an Epiphany proc.
2. Use Flash Heal if you have Surge of Light.
3. Use Holy Word: Serenity for a large amount of both single-target, and spread healing if you are playing Ultimate Serenity.
4. If you are not playing Ultimate Serenity, use Holy Word: Sanctify on your teammates to deal with spread pressure.
5. Cast Flash Heal.
6. Cast Holy Fire and Smite if your team is safe and you want to play aggressively with your team.

Something to always keep in mind during the course of an arena match is dealing damage while also healing. Do not sacrifice healing to do more damage, but when there are situations where your team is safe, it is a good idea to output some damage. Here is what you can do to deal more damage:

• Holy Fire is a casted spell that deals a decent amount of damage. It is important to note that the more you do damage with Holy Fire, the faster Holy Word: Chastise will come off cooldown.
• Smite is another casted spell. If Holy Fire is on cooldown and you still want to do damage, start casting Smite to do some single-target damage. It is important to note that the more you do damage with Smite, the faster Holy Word: Chastise will come off cooldown.
• Shadow Word: Death is a very interesting damage ability. The primary use for this ability is to deal damage with it to an enemy before they crowd control you. If it does not kill the enemy, it will deal damage to you, breaking the crowd control.

• Power Infusion is by far one of the strongest healing and damage cooldowns you have. Due to Twins of the Sun Priestess, you can use Power Infusion on your teammate, so both of you gain the effect. You will use Power Infusion whenever your team has damage cooldowns available, and if the enemy healer is in Crowd Control. This is especially powerful when the enemy has no way to Purge Power Infusion.
• Shadow Word: Death should be used on enemies below 20% health, it has a much more important use for a Discipline Priest. You can use this ability at any time, but if the target does not die, it will deal damage to yourself. This is extremely important because, if there is an enemy Mage on the other team, you can use Shadow Word: Death at the end of the cast and deal damage to yourself, breaking the crowd control on you.
• Guardian Spirit should be used when you or a teammate is very low on health and you have do not have a way to get out of a stun. Instead of dying, you will instantly heal for 40% of your maximum health.
• Desperate Prayer increases your health by 25% for 10 seconds, and instantly heals you for that amount. This is great for when you get are being targeted.
• Although not a defensive for yourself, Leap of Faith is great for helping teammates who are stuck in a stun or overextended. This ability can also be used to get your teammate behind a pillar to heal them.

It is advised to use Macros to use abilities on enemies or allies without having to target them. For this reason, we have a page dedicated to them.