Holy Priest 101

Holy Priests and Raiding

Random Terms Used
OO5SR : Outside Of 5 Second Rule
I5SR : Inside 5 Second Rule
Pom : Prayer of Mending
PoH : Prayer of Healing
CoH : Circle of Healing
RSTS: Random Secondary Targetting System
Healing S&E: Healing Spells and Effects (Blizzard notation for 'stuff that heals you')

Spec
Q: What spec should I be as a holy priest?
A: First priest in the raid should (most of the time) go 23/38/0, with 2/2 Imp DS and then up the Holy tree as you see fit. Every subsequent priest should be 1x/4x/0, up Discipline to Meditation and Inner Focus, and up Holy to CoH, with extra points spent as you see fit. The only time this argument does not hold is if you are doing Sunwell content and only run 2 holy priests. In that case, it is almost (almost, not totally) impossible to do Felmyst without 2 CoH priests, so respec as needed. For farm-mode content, IDS first, then CoH.

Q: Is CoH worth it?
A: Depends on your level of content. If you're in T4 content, short answer is no. If you're in SSC/TK, it is situationally powerful. If you're in BT/HS, yes. Absolutely. Additionally, if you are going deep Holy (for 5/5 Emp Healing), you might as well take CoH, as the only other thing you can get is regular Divine Spirit, which someone else in your raid should already have. If you are going into Sunwell, the entire instance appears to have been designed to showcase CoH, so exploit early, exploit often.

Q: Is Lightwell worth a talent point?
A: Not really. Take it if you want; you won't lose anything extremely important.

Q: Should I take SoR?
A: Yes. Full stop. The 5% spirit is worth it if nothing else.

Q: Should I take inspiration?
A: Yes. There's nothing else worth taking that is raid-centric at the 3rd tier of our holy tree, and it's amazing for tank healing. If you choose not to take it, you should always attempt to *not* heal tanks, since you will be gimped compared to any other holy priest or resto shaman who *does* have the talent.

Q: How good is Holy Concentration?
A: It's decent. 6% proc rate means it goes off at least once a minute, which helps immeasureably in getting those oh-so-sexy OO5SR ticks that make priests so powerful. I've seen it go off a lot lately back-to-back, giving a solid 20+ seconds OO5SR.

Q: Holy Reach - yes/no?
A: If you are going for a CoH build, taking Healing Reach actually gives you a 35 yard diameter CoH, which is useful. For Sunwell, this is a must talent; find room to take it.

Q: Can you give me a cookie cutter build (a la WoW:Priest Forums).
A: 20/41/0 : Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
23/38/0 : Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Q: Healing Prayers vs Mental Agility?
A: Mental Agility affects Renew, PW:S, PoM, and CoH; Healing Prayers affects PoM and PoH which, if you use PoH at all, is a net win. Some people argue for the 4% toward CoH versus 20% toward PoH and 16% toward PoM -- it really depends which one you use more. Basically, get some WWS logs, and find out how many of each spell you cast in a typical Black Temple (insert instance here) clear. Then compute how much you would have saved from each talent, and find your highest efficiency combination. Then spec that.

If you're spamming CoH, then take 5/5 MA. If you're using PoH occasionally, take 2/2 HP, because the amount of mana per cast it saves more than makes up for the 18 mana differential saved on each CoH from the 2nd point in MA. You'd have to cast 14 CoHs for every PoH to save more mana from taking the last 1/5 point in MA over 2/2 HP.

Note that this is completely ignoring the 12% gain to efficiency in PoM you gain from going 4/5, 2/2. I find I use PoM a lot over a given raid.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft is probably the heaviest "efficiency" build I can come up with that still includes CoH, and its net loss compared to a classic 20/41/0 build is 5% of your spirit as +heal from Spiritual Guidance. This works out to ~ 40 +heal for me, and ~ 30 +heal for most priests, not a big deal when we're pushing 2400-2500 +heal in BT/HS gear.

Gearing : Spirit vs Mp5
Note that 2.4 basically makes Spirit king. There is almost no situation where you should prefer Mp5 (in static form) over spirit given the changes in 2.3 and 2.4. The change in 2.3 to Meditation was a large one, and the change to Intellect<->Spirit regeneration computations in 2.4 made Spirit the complete basis of our regeneration model.

Gearing is a fairly easy question to answer beyond this: look on the WoW forums if you need help deciding where to start farming for quick upgrades. For a discussion on end-game gear (esp. T6+), see the 3rd post in this thread.

Gear Benchmarks
Q: What level of gear should I be at for <insert progression level here>?
A: To run Karazhan: 1400 +heal, 180 Mp5 *or* 400 spirit. Easily obtained through crafted pieces.
At the end of Karazhan: 1600 +heal, 275 Mp5

At the end of T4 content: 1700 +heal, 325 Mp5

At the end of T5 content: 2000 +heal, 400 Mp5.

At the end of T6 content (BT/HS): 2400 +heal, 450 Mp5.

How does Priest Regeneration work?
2.4 made a dramatic sweeping overhaul to the priest/druid regeneration model. Previously, mana was computed as a regen per 'tick' (2 second interval), and depended upon your total spirit with a static scaling constant. In 2.4, the formula has been changed to be:


5 * 0.0093271 * Spirit * Square_root ( Intellect )This makes Spirit incredibly more valuable as a stat for priests, and also makes intellect marginally useful, instead of merely giving us a mana pool to play with. It also approximately doubled our OO5SR regen (I personally went from 660 Mp5 OO5SR to 1197 Mp5 OO5SR, a *slight* change).

Example: JoePriest has 500 spirit and 135 Mp5 from gearing, as well as 500 intellect. His regeneration will be:
[5 * 0.0093271 * 500 * 500^0.5] + 135 : 656 Mp5 (OO5SR)
521 * 0.30 + 135 : 291 Mp5 (I5SR)

Q: How do I take advantage of spirit?
A: This is basically an experience thing, but take the talents Inner Focus and Holy Concentration, and start using /stopcasting macros (more info on the UI forum). Stop your casts anytime the tank does not need your heal, and start another one. Timed properly, this can get you full 5 second ticks OO5SR, which is worth a lot of regen.

Using a Holy concentration proc chained into an Inner Focus together with /stopcasting can easily give 15-20 seconds Oo5SR, while still landing two max-rank GH:7 heals. The third heal will terminate the II5SR time, but actually gives one final tick at full regen because of cast time.

Cheating the 5 Second Rule
Priest regen is all about cheating the 5 second rule. Blizzard's 5 second rule is currently set so that upon completion of a spell which *costs mana* (the critical factor), you enter a 5 second period (I5SR) where you regenerate mana at a reduced rate. This rate is dependent on your talent choices (Meditation = 30% regen I5SR) and upon your gear choices (3-piece Primal Mooncloth = 5% regen I5SR).

Given that priests gain so much regeneration from spirit, the typical difference between a regen tick I5SR and OO5SR is approximately 2x. It can range from 2x on the low-end (Mp5-heavy gear) to 3x on the high-end (spirit-heavy gear). In any case, a tick OO5SR is worth 2+ I5SR. My current gearing gives me 2.53x as much regeneration from an OO5SR tick as an I5SR tick, raid-buffed (since so many raid buffs are static Mp5).

So how do we cheat the rule?

Firstly, Inner Focus is a guaranteed way to exit the 5SR, since it makes your next cast "free" of mana, and hence does not trigger the rule. Typical sequence is something like:
- top up your tank target
- wait 2 seconds
- hit Inner Focus
- start /stopcasting GH:7 until heal is actually needed
- start a new heal -- when it lands, you re-enter the 5SR

If the tank is not getting owned, and if you are not the solo healer on that tank, you should be able to get 7-10 seconds OO5SR before the 2nd heal lands.

You can do exactly the same thing with Clearcasting, although it's a little harder to lead up to it, as Clearcasting is a random chance proc.

There are two trinkets in the game which can aid in this method of play. The first is [Bangle of Endless Blessings], an annoying drop from Botanica (I say annoying because in 18 runs, it refused to drop for me, so I hate it). The second is a drop from Lurker Below in SSC, [Earring of Soulful Meditation]. Both have a 2-minute cooldown Use-Effect which increases your spirit by an amount for 15 seconds.

Thus, if your Inner Focus happens to be up at the same time as your trinkets, and you get a Clearcasting Proc, your sequence should be something like:
- wait 2 seconds (to get close to the end of your current 5 seconds)
- hit your trinket Use Effect
- start casting GH:7, use /stopcasting, land it before the Clearcasting Proc falls off
- hit Inner Focus
- repeat GH:7 /stopcasting
- start a mana-costing heal, enter the 5SR as it lands

You can easily get a full 15 seconds of trinketed regen by doing this, which results in approximately (with Earring and 500 spirit raid buffed) 3000 mana. This varies depending on how much Mp5 and spirit you have, but it's worth a minimum of the amount of mana in a Super Mana potion, and sometimes more (current numbers for high-end spirit gear exceed 4000 mana).

Additionally, if you use ItemRack as an addon, you can use a Script to switch in spirit-based weapons while you do this for a little more oomph. This can also be done manually with a bit more work.

I have a macro which goes something like:


/script EquipSet("Regen");
/use Earring of Soulful Meditationwhich equips [Nightstaff of the Everliving] and [Soul-Wand of the Aldor] (with a +20 spirit enchant on Nightstaff), putting me over 1100 raid-buffed spirit with trinket Use effect. It makes for a very nice 15 seconds of regen.

Taking Advantage of Shadowfiend:
If you've played priest for long, you've learned to hate our stupid mana regen pets. They're slow, they randomly attack the stupidest things, and they generally return a variable amount of mana that is undependable. Despite this, they're the only game in town, so we're stuck with them.

First thing to realize is that your shadowfiend's attacks are most definitely modified by AC. Accordingly, if you have the option, tell it to attack something that has 5/5 Sunder Armor, Faerie Fire, and CoReck up. Bosses are good for this. Additionally, either macro in the "attack current target" command into your Shadowfiend use, or learn what it is keybound to. Spamming "attack you stupid beastie" can often be the difference between two extra ticks at the start, and none as your shadowfiend wanders off to attack the sheep on the other side of the instance (exaggeration, but still ... stupid thing).

Finally, if you are using your shadowfiend in an environment which has constant AE damage (example: Felmyst), you may want to macro in a /target Shadowfiend, /cast Power Word: Shield, as the shield, while costing mana, can often save the life of your Shadowfiend and restore 2-3 more ticks of mana to you.

Downranking
Q: Is downranking spells still viable?
A: Of course. The changes to downranking only removed our capacity for using Lesser Heal as a downranked spell, and penalized GH:1 a bit so that it wasn't completely overpowered. Given how much healing tanks need now, downranking to anything below GH:1 would be silly anyway.

Q: What spells are typically downranked?
A: Greater Heal 1 or Greater Heal 2 are easily spammable for a priest in T5 content, and GH:1 is still within reach for a priest in T4 content. Raid buffed, with full consumables and a tank with Amp Magic, GH:1 should hit for 2700+, for a minimal mana cost. It also scales fairly well with 5/5 Empowered Healing and Healing S&E gear, so that in full T6+ gear, GH:1 will hit for 3100+, a *very* nice cheap spell to spam.

Q: What spells should I typically be using?
This is a tough question. Every fight is different. I'll try to give an idea of different roles, and how each one uses our unique spells.

Tank Healing: Renew, GH:1,2,7, PoM, occasionally PW:S. Your primary duty here is to keep Renew up to smooth out damage, and keep a GH in the pipe all the time. When you can afford the mana, bounce a PoM off your tank for an easy 1000+ threat (roughly equivalent to a shield slam for a warrior). If you are on the move, hit the tank with PW:S and PoM to smooth out damage as you run -- instant casts are what make us better than paladins for some healing duties: use them.

Raid Healing: predictable damage can be healed, assuming the group is setup properly, with PoH and CoH. Be aware that CoH, while incredibly efficient (roughly 23 HpM), is less HPS than PoH, and if you *really* need to heal up a group, CoH may not be fast enough. [CoH works out to about 3.2k HpS, assuming 5 targets; PoH is 3.8k HpS]. If the damage is periodic, and you know you'll have 10 seconds before anyone will take damage again, use Renew 12 or GH:2. They both (at T5-levels of gearing) heal for about the same (3500-ish), and cost about the same amount of mana.