Holy - Part One - Talents and Glyphs

I'm going to start my guides with Holy, as it is my favorite of the two specs and my primary raiding spec (my disc spec usually only comes up in 10 mans and when 25 mans are missing all of the tank heals, or when I run five man instances). Remember that holy is a low mana efficiency (a.k.a. a mana hog) raid healing spec. If you want to focus on tank healing in a raid, go Disc or reroll. Yes, a holy priest can heal a tank in a pinch or be the offhealer for a tank (which is a common assignment for any healer on any given fight), but it is honestly a waste of the spec unless the fight requires no raid healing. I know that Disc has a different playstyle than Holy, but unless your comp is something like two holy priests for a 10 man, you are being utilized poorly to the detriment of the raid unless you are on as heavy a raid healing assignment as possible.

Holy is somewhat annoying in that there are several specs that are "good" raid specs.

This is my current spec.

It's a hybrid hardmode spec that picks up Body and Soul. I don't tend to use renew, so I didn't bother investing points in the renew talents for the few fights where I might work it into a stronger part of my rotation. Empowered Healing is another contentious few points, as a pure AoE raid healer is generally best off putting points into Blessed Resilience (for 3% additional healing on every spell), finishing off Surge of Light (SoL), and possibly putting points into Renew talents.

I keep this spec because I will occasionally find myself in a position where I want my Flash Heal spam and emergency Serendipity Gheals to hit as hard as possible because of how my raid's healer core functions. It's one of my few consessions to possibly being assigned to help tank heal, even though I dropped the rest of the Gheal talents. And I unabashedly like Desperate Prayer, whatever that says about me.

This is a combination Renew spec + raid healer spec. Everything in this build synergizes with and buffs Renew, Circle of Healing (CoH), Prayer of Healing (PoH), and Prayer of Mending (PoM). If you can identify good places to use Renew, and actually use it to effectiveness, then those four spells should be the majority of your healing anyway. Flash Heal is there for SoL burst, and to just spam to prepare for PoH casts (and of course random raid damage, but that's neither here nor there). There are fights that make me wish for tri-spec so I could have this as an alternate spec.

If you dislike Renew, but wish to buff your AoE heals as much as possible, try this on for size. There are three swing points in this build that you can filter into whatever talent you desire (Empowered Healing to buff your Flashes, Body and Soul for some utility, whatever you want). This buffs the CoH, PoH, PoM trifecta that is the basis of holy raid healing with every talent in the tree that improves it.

If you still use Greater Heal, and like it (this is also a good spec for new level 80 priests as they gear up through Heroics and the like), I suppose you can use this this. Again, one swing point, and no Spell Warding. I wouldn't classify this as a hard mode spec, but, to be honest, you shouldn't be using Greater Heal to the point where this spec is attractive on any hard mode attempts or even in most raids. If you wish to remain tank healing viable, I'd suggest buffing Flash Heal as much as possible, Glyph Flash Heal, and save Gheal for occasional burst.

There is a lot of good in the tree. Generally, raid specs drop most talents that buff Greater Heal, as, well, Greater Heal sucks in a raid environment. You can get similar HPS and HPM from Flash Heal, and GH is just too slow on average in comparison to the bomb heals of other tank healers (Paladins, Shamans, and Disc priests). Greater Heal does have its place in bursting up one target while it's Serendipity hasted, but overall, even if you're hesitant to let go of the talents, if you actually look at your healing done over the course of a raid, very rarely will you see Greater Heal be a large portion of your heals unless your raid comp and healing assignments are whack.

If cookie-cutter builds make you chafe, let's just go over the "non-negotiable" parts of a holy healing build.

Required (as in, I would fight your being brought to a raid without these):

Meditation: if you need me to explain this, I'm actually a little sad inside.

Inspiration: this effect procs off of just about every spell in the Holy common raid heals arsenal (not Renew, and not PoM while they fix the bug oops). You'll be hitting tanks with smart heals, so you'll be assisting in keeping this at a high uptime, and any boss that does physical AoE (or, uh, Faction Champs) means that this will be damage reduction to the raid as a whole as it no longer boosts armor but reduces physical damage taken by 10%. In theory, it is negotiable if you have a Disc priest or a resto shaman on every tank, and you have thirty resto shamans, but it's not like it frees up a ton of points for an amazing tier of the tree.

Spiritual Guidance and Spiritual Healing: take them. It's free throughput. Not exciting points, but these talents are part of what gives us AoE healing numbers that soar above Disc priests.

Spirit of Redemption: I hate turning into an angel too, even if it means I can still heal for a little bit. But, it's free item points for a stat that's going to be on the vast majority of your gear and gives you regen and spellpower.

Holy Concentration: Even if you don't use Flash Heal that much, this is pretty much the whole reason Holy priests stack crit and can be sizable.

Serendipity: a lot of people seem to love to hate this talent. It takes too long to stack, what if you need to cast two PoH in a row, etc. However, you should always have it stacked and ready to go in a raid, even in unexpected burst scenarios (it's not hard to just spot a few flash heals on a tank when you have nothing else to do), and it's an incredible HPS increase. It also gives Holy some burst healing, something that we sometimes lack. Learn to abuse it or I'll be dubious that you know how to priest.

Circle of Healing: one of the best AoE heals in the game, even with the 6 second CD. HPS and HPM are topnotch. Without the CD we'd all be CoH spamming our brains out and speccing Mental Agility.

Divine Providence: 10% to all of our AoE heals for five points puts this in league with Spiritual Healing. The reduced CD on PoM is clunky on occasion, but highly useful for steady AoE fights or fights where an available PoM is handy.

Guardian Spirit: Get this or go home. Period. It is probably the most powerful "OH SHIT" button in the game, and is quite nice when glyphed. There are many fights where CD rotations are crucial, and there are times when it can prevent a wipe.

Strongly suggested:
Twin Disciplines: because the other first tier talent is a PvP talent, and this buffs the healing done by PoM and CoH, two bread and butter holy spells.

Improved Inner Fire: this is free spellpower. Take it. Enjoy it.

Improved Power Word Fortitude: this is required if you're the only priest in the raid, but you can get away with not having it if other priests spec into it. However, I have no idea what you'd take as the rest of the tier is either required and already taken or a PvP talent. The extra 4% stamina is also nice as priests have some of the lowest HP pools in a raid :(

Inner Focus: you can get by without it, but having it to pair with Divine Hymn is a lot of mana savings, and it's always an option if you've just run completely dry and want to cry inside.

Healing Focus: yes, I know most raid damage in the game doesn't cause pushback. Yes, I also know that for the most part, if something whacks you, you die in a raid. But, there are still types of damage that cause pushback (healing through a Twin Valks vortex, for example), and there are adds in the game that will be able to whack on you for awhile without killing you (Mimiron junk bots, a Thorim arena add or two, all of Faction Champions).

These are moments when pushback is, in fact, going to have a high chance of being fatal for someone and this is when this talent is going to be worth having. And, besides, the first few tiers of Holy are patently mediocre. What are you going to do, put a few points in Divine Fury for effective haste for a spell you should rarely be using? Get some mana savings on spells you rarely use (Improved Healing)? You don't need the points to max out Renew in a Renew spec, either.

Back at Wrath release when it didn't stack with Concentration Aura at all, it was fine to drop, but they stack now, if not perfectly, then very close to.

Holy Reach: this is extra range. I can't fathom why you wouldn't take it when you're dealing with the huge, stupid rooms we see all over Wrath raid content. Not quite as make or break as it was in TBC without the smart heals and targetable PoH, but still highly useful. This is very close to being on that "required to be brought to a raid" list.

Surge of Light: you can get away with one point in it, I promise, in fact it may be preferable unless you have mana problems. This talent gives you a free burst of instant cast non-crit Flash Heal goodness. It can be used while moving or to add extra frontloaded burst. This is primarily a regen talent, as the inability to crit is a throughput decrease, even if Holy Priests rarely model crit as a throughput stat.

With one point in the talent (25% proc chance) and 30% raid buffed crit chance, I had 176 procs over 47.3 minutes of actual combat over a raid night with numerous types of fights (ToGC up to Twin Valks wipes, Sarth+3 for mount farming). With the Glyph of Flash Heal this is 110,176 mana saved assuming all procs are used, or the equivalent of ~194 mp5 in free Flash Heals. If you raid without the FH Glyph, this same proc amount is worth 136,048 mana saved, or ~240 mp5 in free Flash Heals. Of course, proc rate will vary according to fight type, so these mp5 values are variable, and a touch inflated because an SoL proc means that you'll use a Flash Heal in a situation where you might not have healed at all, or used a different spell.

Raising the proc chance to 50% will of course increase the amount of mana saved. Procs are easily farmed with our massive AoE heals, but if you do a lot of single target healing for whatever reason (and honestly, I hope you aren't), consider dropping it as it will negatively impact your single target healing throughput. A raid healing mana regen talent through and through. I personally prefer only one point in it as a concession to throughput while still keeping a strong regen talent, and it frees up points to do things like max out Body and Soul in my build.

Test of Faith: I almost put this up with "required" again, but I decided to be kind. It is not uncommon to have to use raid heals after massive burst that will bring whoever you are healing below 50%, meaning that for mass raid healing burst scenarios, it's free 12% more healing. To put it another way, it's increased throughput when you need it most.

Spell Warding: a lot of raid damage is magic damage. This is a hard mode type of talent, and it's a survival talent. Priests have low HP, and it can save your life by effectively giving you 10% additional HP versus magic damage. And it's not like Divine Fury is a wonderful talent for raid healing.

Healing Prayers: a ridiculous amount of regen. Using PoM on CD, it's worth 75mp5, and that's before trying to model the mana savings on Prayer of Healing (our huge mana hog).

Holy Specialization: it's free crit as all of our heals are in the holy school. Crit has a regen benefit properly set up, and this talent saves you item points (230 crit rating to be exact) so you can reach the effectiveness cap with fewer crit pieces.

Personal Taste:
Improved Renew and Empowered Renew. If you use Renew or like Renew and want to learn to use it, take them. If you don't, don't take them and spend your points elsewhere. Generally though you'll need a point or two in Improved Renew to advance in the Holy tree. The only issue is that it is a heavy point investment to buff a situational spell, and you need to evaluate if you'll get use out of it. Look at your own logs if you're in doubt. Renew is a very high HPM spell, and if you can get it to tick as effective healing it's quite nice as long as the damage pattern cooperates. Probably more efficient overall in a 10 man scenario with two healers: a strong tank healer and a holy priest, but it does depend on how your raid as a whole heals and if you'll use the spell.

Body and Soul: I love it, and I don't even use it that well most of the time. You can help a tank position, help someone kite or catch up to the group, you can get your poisons off yourself (Faction Champs, Yogger), and it can help you position if you've planted for too long and are in a bad spot. Some people argue that it facilitates poor play, but honestly I feel that you should take any advantage you can get during progression, and I find those same people who turn elitist at a targetable 60% speed boost also often enchant their boots with Tuskarr's Vitality instead of something to boost their stats like crit or spirit while talking about how speed boosts don't help DPS or HPS numbers. (I was tickled when I saw this exact person complaining about the talent :P)

This talent is of reduced effectiveness if you have a Disc priest that often shields the raid, however, and you need to be careful with applying Weakened Soul willynilly if you have a Disc priest. But, it's something else to bring to a raid besides your AoE burst and powerful healing CD (Guardian Spirit).

Empowered Healing: if you feel like you want your Flash Heals and rare, occasional GHeal to hit as hard as possible, take it. If you don't cast enough Flash Heals, or would rather boost your better AoE heals, skip it. It does boost Binding Heal as well (and man does it hit like a truck), but BH is so situational that I don't consider it part of the consideration about whether or not to take this talent.

Blessed Resilience: there are priests that will argue with me about this, but it comes down to personal taste mostly because of the evils of tree bloat. Required to Strongly Suggested if you want a pure AoE healing build and want to tell Flash Heal to pike it outside of Serendipity stacking and Surge of Light procs. Most priests I see either take BR or Empowered Healing, rarely both. Mathematically, looking at how logs of how a holy priest should heal most fights, it is better than Empowered Healing, but it depends on the roles you regularly fill or assist on in a raid, and it is going to be stronger in a 25 environment where you will have actual proper tank healers on your roster.

Worthless:
Silent Resolve: this is hard for healers of a certain age, but the breakdown is that all this talent does is it makes you produce 0.4 threat for each point of healing done instead of 0.5 threat per point healed. This talents was required when AoE tanking was much harder for tanks that weren't paladins and you could pull adds off of a tank with pure healing threat. This should never be the case these days between tank changes and AoE threat buffs from raid members. Most times you end up with an add these days because it was never picked up, in which case SR wouldn't have saved you, only Fade. Well it might have made the add attack a different healer, but that's not really a convincing reason to take the talent.

Blessed Recovery: it's a PvP talent. I hate you guys.

Searing Light: it's a soloing talent. Raid healing mean you get to be a limp noodle, sorry. Invest in a dual spec or make powerful friends.

Improved Power Word: Shield: if you want to shield this much, be a Disc priest.

What Is This I Don't Even:
Lightwell: in concept, an amazing amount of healing. In practice, good luck fighting with your raid to use it on the few fights where it is appropriate. Some priests take it for their own use or the use of the few they know will use it, and it's only one point.

Divine Fury and Improved Healing: effectively, these only buff Greater Heal. If you use Gheal a lot for whatever reason, consider taking them, but ideally in a raid you should only have to use it occasionally, making these talents effectively worthless, but something a lot of people cling to. Gheal spam from a holy priest just isn't good HPS. Divine Hymn should be used with Inner Focus, and taking three points to reduce the mana cost of a spell with a 10 min CD is silly, even if it is going to be an 8 min CD in 3.3.

Mental Agility: this is technically a decent regen talent as Holy does use some instants on a regular basis (PoM, CoH, Renew if you use it), but the big mana hog for Holy is really PoH at this point (or Flash spam). The idea of this talent is more of a holdover from before CoH had a CD and CoH spam was often the best way to heal raid damage. Now with the two main instants of Holy having CDs, the regen benefit is minimal and you have to give up four points in throughput talents to pick this up. Terrible tradeoff.

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When choosing how to spend your talent points, the best thing to do is trade regen talents for throughput talents or vis versa according to what you need in your spec. You can drop a weak regen talent for a strong one, I suppose, but if you're attempting to stack regen, isn't that counterproductive? Dropping weak throughput for strong throughput is worth it only if you have to choose between two talents with the points you have left. There are situations where this will be a good idea, but they are few. Weigh talents according to regen gain, throughput gain, and utility gain, and try to gain the most from all of your talent points for your playstyle and gear level (earlier gear levels need more regen for the most part). Holy priests will find several variations on good specs unlike Disc, which only has minor variations between spec choice.

I've categorized the talents according to their place as regen, throughput, or utility talents with short commentary on their strength to complement the required/suggested/etc list above.

Regen Talents
Meditation (strong)
Healing Prayers (strong)
Surge of Light (strong, but slight negative throughput effect)
Holy Concentration (strong)
Inner Focus (mid)
Holy Specialization (mid)
Spirit of Redemption (weak to mid, but still worth taking for the effect of spirit on SP)
Improved Healing (weak, as you shouldn't be using Gheal very much!)

Throughput Talents
Circle of Healing (strong)
Serendipity (strong, on command burst)
Spiritual Guidance (strong)
Spiritual Healing (strong)
Divine Providence (strong)
Guardian Spirit (strong)
Improved and Empowered Renew (strong but only for Renew)
Test of Faith (mid to strong, situational, but powerful when that situation occurs, which can be often)
Holy Reach (mid, the larger the range, the more likely the spell is to hit all the possible targets)
Blessed Resilience (mid)
Twin Disciplines (mid)
Improved Inner Fire (mid, worth 54 spellpower)
Empowered Healing (mid to weak, depending on how often you use Flash Heal)
Inner Focus (weak as throughput talent)
Spirit of Redemption (weak to mid, but worth taking for the combo of SP and regen from spirit scaling)
Holy Specialization (unpredictable increase, useful so you can stack more throughput stats on gear)
Divine Fury (weak, as while it's a lot of haste rating equivalent, it is for a spell that isn't worth chain casting)
Healing Focus (weak technically as it only rarely comes up)

Utility Talents
Guardian Spirit (strong)
Body and Soul (strong)
Improved Power Word: Fortitude (mid)

Random
Spell Warding (survival talent)
Desperate Prayer (survival talent, but up to you if you think you need it)
Healing Focus (if pushback occurs, you want it to be as short as possible)

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Gylphs:

+Major

Circle of Healing is flat required. It basically adds an extra 20% healing to one of our highest HPS and HPM spells, and that's hard to argue with.

Guardian Spirit: Very amazing glyph, and I wouldn't want to raid without it. It can help smooth out CD rotations, and helps frequently on progression. It is also a good way to learn not to be stingy with the CD.

Flash Heal: Cost reduction on a spell that we occasionally have reason to spam is never a terrible thing. It's a regen choice through and through, but do realize that Flash Heal is usually going to be around 15-30% of your healing depending on the fight, and generally toward the lower range of that, and some of that is going to be free Flash Heals from Surge of Light which aren't affected by the glyph, being free and all. I definitely suggest it for newer priests, but it is one to drop as you get more used to the rotation and mana management of the spec.

Prayer of Healing: I've never been terribly impressed with this glyph. The heal is about ~770 a tick as holy with around 3200 SP, and whether or not you get use out of the HoT is entirely dependent on fight. It will only shine on fights like Firefighter or Twin Valks, where the damage is constant enough that you can guarantee a group is taking damage. In most other scenarios, there will be enough AoE heals and bored AoE healers to burst targets up before most of the HoT component is used. I'd also call this strong for 10 mans with a strict tank healer partner, and, thinking on it, Algalon star explosions, especially for the 10 man version where you often have a single raid healer. It is pure, free HPS gain, but evaluate your healer core and the fight to know if it'll mostly be overheal or not.

Renew: Only use this glyph if you are Renew-specced and actually use Renew. Nothing makes me more annoyed than seeing someone spec for all the Renew talents, glyph for it, and then never or rarely use it, even on highly appropriate fights (Twin Valks, Firefighter, Algalon, I Choose You Steelbreaker, etc). If you do use it, this is a nice glyph.

Holy Nova: Post-nerf, I just don't buy that this is that strong of a gylph for Holy anymore. The HPS is similar to PoH in a spamming scenario with similar HPM, but it is group only and limited range, meaning that in order to get really good use out of the glyph, you have to set up raid groups for the few situations where it is still really good. I don't find it good enough to lose Mana Tide over in 25s and I can produce similar healing numbers without the heavy restrictions with my other spells, and it mainly shined on 25 man Firefighter where there used to be pushback, making the instant nature very attractive during p2.

Power Word: Shield: No. Just no. You should never cast enough PW:S to make this glyph worth it, and if you do, look into Disc as a spec.

Spirit of Redemption: A very situational glyph that is dependent on you dying on a fight to be useful. While anything you can use during progression to effect is technically good, we have better, more consistent glyphs to put in the slot.

Hymn of Hope: The minimal raid utility benefit and possible personal regen benefit don't seem worth wasting a major glyph slot on when we have some nice glyphs to choose from.

+Minor

Minor glyphs aren't really serious business, to be honest.

Fading: 30% cheaper Fade is nice, but Fade isn't going to be your mana hog, and on only a few fights would you ever use Fade on CD.

Fortitude: 50% cheaper Fort is nice, even if it usually is only buffed during raid downtime when you can drink. This can be decent mana savings for buffing battle rezzed individuals during a fight.

Levitate: Probably one of the few glyphs every priest uses as farming light feathers was never very fun.

Shadow Protection: For some reason Prayer of Shadow Prot is a 20 minutes buff. Bumping it up to 30 minutes feels more even in terms of hour buffs, but it isn't like there are 20 minute fights in the game at the moment.

Shadowfiend: Nice if your fiend dies like the worthless pet it is. This comes up less often than it used to with its AoE resistance, however.


NEXT TIME: Gearing!