Cata Holy Priest Guide (4.0.3)

[Skiderion]

Yeah I have to agree with you on that Aliena. The fight definitly warrants swapping back and forth depending on which bots are up.

I still like keeping the AoE Chakra up more often in a number of the fights for the boost to my AoE heals... I may just be stubborn. The mechanics of the fights definitly will dictate how we play more so than in WotLK which was pretty much always a bunch of renew spam mixed with the assorted gift bag of holy priest AoE heals.

I also realized that I desparately want to get Lavawalker on my sneakers because my only recourse when I am just not reacting quick enough is to either use PWS for the speed boost or use Inner will instead of Inner fire which is a direct hit to HPS. Atramedes is definitly a good awareness check.

Go LIGHTWELL!

[Grutman]

I three heal in most fights in 10 man raid content. Usually I have a pally and/or a sharman in the raid group that can do a great job with tank healing, but in some cases their output in aoe heals lacks priests. So I usually always stay in AoE chakra state and rely on others to keep up the tanks with a little help from renew/PoM. I am still a big fan of renew and manage to spam it during huge aoe fights without going oom while using Inner will.

I have two main questions though:
1. Should I go Inner fire for the SP boost to put up lightwell before and during the fight or does the output of the lightwell depend on my current Inner fire/will when it has already been placed?
2. Does anyone else think that the council is way more intensive compared to Chog in Bastion of Twilight from a healing standpoint? The council almost seems unhealable to a certain extent during the enrage. With Chog, the dont stand in this bad thing policy and that fight is cake. The aoe fear priest get is awesome during that fight, as well as leap of faith the OT/Melee DPS after adds dies.

[Crysanius]

I have not run any math on this idea but am curious to know if possibly taking the 2 points out of Veiled Shadows and only going 2/3 in Mental Agility, and picking up 2/2 Evangelism and 1/1 Archangel would be a smarter choice. While you would have to smite to gain the buff you would gain a 15% increase to heals for 18secs and also restore 5% mana, with a CD of 30seconds. Seems over time in some of the longer encounters this could be more mana efficient and healing efficient than the 1 minute CD off of Shadowfiend dropping it to 4 minutes. Like I said I have not run the math on the numbers for this but was wandering what your thoughts on it are.

Thanks

I am currently using this spec and although I'm still going oom way too much (I'm hoping this will change with better gear), I really like it. I'm always at the top for heals, that is until I go oom. I think most of my problem is I'm used to using flash heals as my main heals and I'm not a fan of renew. I'd rather smite when people are up in heals than use renew. I had to change my heal style a lot with cata and I'm still experimenting. Any recommendations for this type of spec are appreciated.

[Fawkes]

I am just hating the fact i keep going oom way to fast in sertan fight even with all my mana tricks to get mana back it leaves me drained and with teh new patch it seems holy preist are getting nerfed again for mana regen.

[feralminded]

If you are going OOM then you don't have the spirit to support flash heals. Truth be told outside of Chimaeron I would strongly recommend against ever touching a flash heal unless you have to. I currently raid with ~2600 spirit and I still cannot support much in the way of flash healing. Generally if I flash heal a couple of times I consider it a mistake and I should have chosen a better spell. I spend the vast majority of every pull casting heals of some kind so I really see no room for smites. If you want to smite I strongly recommend looking into a disco/atonement spec. It's actually not that bad these days but as holy you just cannot currently afford to smite ... at least not if you are trying to be a serious healer in a raid.

[Rankthree]

Aliena for this excellent guide
holy priest will even be more epic in the future
but but but werent you disc in a dark dark past?

[Sebadoh]

Aliena for this excellent guide
holy priest will even be more epic in the future
but but but werent you disc in a dark dark past?

Many healing priests have two healing specs and swap back and forth depending on the fight and raid comp.

[Grutman]

I raid with about 2600 spirit and I am able to Flash Heal at will on Chimaeron. In the 10 man scenario, the pally takes the responsibility of healing dps in group 1 while, I take the responsibility of healing the second group as a holy priest and the resto driud rolls hots on the tanks and keeps the OT topped off as much as possible. I usually use bind heal when I get hit to 1hp, but I don't see anything more efficient then a flash heal on that fight except when serenity is up which heals targets above 10k. I don't use heal because it heals for approx 7-8k without crit and I have had raiders drop because of it. The only mana cd I use is my SF.

In general one thing I found out that a lot of holy priests use is the sanc (aoe circle healing spell) a lot in 10 man raids. The spell itself is useless in 10 man raids. I currently don't remember the top of my head, but I think it is 9k mana for small healing bonus. On Chimaeron 10 man, you also do not want to go through the feud phase more than 3 times and at max 4 times.

[feralminded]

I raid with about 2600 spirit and I am able to Flash Heal at will on Chimaeron. In the 10 man scenario, the pally takes the responsibility of healing dps in group 1 while, I take the responsibility of healing the second group as a holy priest and the resto driud rolls hots on the tanks and keeps the OT topped off as much as possible. I usually use bind heal when I get hit to 1hp, but I don't see anything more efficient then a flash heal on that fight except when serenity is up which heals targets above 10k. I don't use heal because it heals for approx 7-8k without crit and I have had raiders drop because of it. The only mana cd I use is my SF.

In general one thing I found out that a lot of holy priests use is the sanc (aoe circle healing spell) a lot in 10 man raids. The spell itself is useless in 10 man raids. I currently don't remember the top of my head, but I think it is 9k mana for small healing bonus. On Chimaeron 10 man, you also do not want to go through the feud phase more than 3 times and at max 4 times.

On chim here's the optimal way to handle it as a holy priest (assuming you're in sanctuary for the mass AoE). If you only have 1 target in a group to heal use a greater heal. If you have 2 or more in a group use prayer of healing unless its just you and 1 other then use binding heal. If you have 2 in separate groups use 2 flash heals (unless one is you then binding heal). If you have 1 in one group and more than 1 in a separate then flash the 1 and prayer the other group. As a priest I can indefinitely keep up 2 groups during everything but feud (when I need help from the other healers) using the above strategy. I stay in sanctuary 100% of the time here as my prayer of healing isn't enough without it to bring up both groups post-massacre, plus sanctuary is pretty important during feud. Also as Aliena said above I do personally drop the holyword:sanctuary right before feud hits for the throughput boost.

[Uranos7]

Spirit is now a direct mana regen increase and not much else. You should make sure that most if not all of your gear has spirit as a stat to ensure you don't run out of mana during a fight, but do not gem or enchant for it unless there is no better option.

I reallize that this post is a few months old but feel that I should mention that for those below the 2k watermark on spirit they should gem/ ench to reach it until they can achieve it with gear alone.
This is the reason many are QQ'n about going OOM all the time in heroics; they are gemming like ppl that are fully raid geared b4 they have the basics covered.

<3 u Aliena = your advice has helped in lvl'n both my priests alot

[penpen002]

Yay the video is up. Thank you.

[auralyn21]

Yeah this was really helpful. I've been both Holy and Disc, and I really started to like Holy towards the end of wrath. I've been stalking these forums for a while, and I'm always looking for ways to improve my priest. Right now, I'm having a little trouble finding my comfy healing corner. It might just be my gear and such, planet knows I've got to get better gear. It was a good video.

I've never seen that hakkar looking dragon pet. Where is that from, it's cool.

[Pruke]

Priest (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)
Holy

• Holy Word: Sanctuary healing done has been increased by 35%. In addition, it has a new spell effect.

[Datra]

Hi all,

I was assigned as holy to tank heal on this encounter and the only way I could mange it was by absurd, copious use of flash and greater heals while in Serenity interspersed with PoMs, CoHs, etc. In order to support this I put lightweave on my back, Power Torrent on my weapon, and use the Mandala of Stirring Patterns/Core of Ripeness trinkets.

The strategy was to button mash the above spells using the Core as often as possible, and between 50-70% mana wait for two or three of these to proc. The epic megaton of int would nicely juice my shadowfiend (not to mention help in healing the tank) and I'd get enough mana back to last through the first major push of the encounter.

I do prefer not to flash heal, but when you've got to balls-to-the-wall go for maximum throughput on a single target what is better than FH FH GH POM repeat?

My only regret is I'll never rank on this, as single target healing (for the most part) a tank with Malevolent Strikes will never get you fat, juicy numbers.
~Datra

[Megacode]

Isn't HW:Sanc getting buffed in 4.1 or has it already been buffed??

[Navizion]

Nice guide Aliena,

I am trying to be a very good healer but sometimes its not easy even in normal dungeons (not heroic) (only ilevel 327 (just popped 85))
Last nite i got booted cause i had problems getting enough Mana for a boss fight in tolvir.
And then next encounter was halls of origination where i never ran out of mana...

Its about time that dps guys begin to understand that a wipe is not only the problem of the healer or tank...

[Sernity]

We have a saying in our guild , "You can't heal stupid because you will oom!" and that is a fact. I know players get mad when they die but the truth is I would rather a low dpser go down then the high dps and the tank always take top heals in instances. If I have to heal a dps more then the tank then the dps dies because I'm not going oom to keep a dps up because they can't and won't watch their threat on fights.

[Navizion]

true, but u know the flaming u get cause of the occasional lock who drops his health for mana in mid fights and then gets blasted ...
yesterday healed first BOT trash run (yes i got the staff now ) and BH
so i am progressing, all thanx to this guide

[Navizion]

and thanx to European Elite on Terokkar did my first raid BWD10 and progressed 2/6

[natsuko]

I still have a huge doubt about holy gearing... whats better staff or main hand+off hand?
Atm im using Amani Scepter of Rites and bioluminescent lamp... havent found a better off hand..but is it better than a staff?