Spiritual Guidance: Holy 101, Page 3
by Dawn Moore 
Feb 7th 2010 at 11:00PM
As I've already stated, there is no right way to heal. However, here are some basic things to remember.
- Always use Prayer of Mending when it is not on cooldown. Throw it on the tank if you don't know who is going to take damage next.
- In a raid, if more than 1 player is not at full, use Circle of Healing. The exception to this is if your targets are clearly in two very different places on the map. Typically, raid damage is area based, so your Circle of Healing should be effective if you center it on someone not at full. If damage is raid wide, try to heal in sections (for example, melee, ranged, soakers, etc). Holy by default produces a lot of wasted healing, but your job as holy is to be the first healer on the scene. Circle of Healing will allow you to do this, even if you overheal 3 people in the process.
- Use your Surge of Light Flash Heal on whoever needs it. If you have an extra one, throw it on the tank.
- Spot heal all small raid damage with Renew. Larger damage can be healed with a Flash Heal.
- If you're a Renew spam style of raid healer, Renew whenever you have nothing else to do. As long as you have 1 point in Empowered Renew, your Renew will have a chance to crit on the initial heal. That crit can proc any of your on crit abilities.
- Try to only use Prayer of Healing with your Serendipity buff stacked. Prayer of Healing is extremely costly as a spell, and not as effective in 25-man raids since various druid HoTs will tick on a target by the time you finish casting Prayer of Healing. Prayer of Healing is great in a 10-man or 5-man however.
10. Gems
I recommend any of the following gems for a holy priest. It is up to you to find a combination that works for your needs and play style. Assuming you have already read over the important stats in section 2, you should be able to select gems for your needs.
- Runed Cardinal Ruby: Spellpower
- Sparkling Majestic Zircon: Spirit
- Brilliant King's Amber: Intellect
- Quick King's Amber: Haste
- Smooth King's Amber: Critical Strike
- Reckless Ametrine: Spellpower/Haste
- Potent Ametrine: Spellpower/Critical Strike
- Luminous Ametrine: Spellpower/Intellect
- Purified Dreadstone: Spellpower/Spirit
- Seer's Eye of Zul: Intellect/Spirit
There are a few other miscellaneous gems that a priest could use, but they're odd mixes like haste/MP5. If you're looking for a gem like that, try looking at this gem table.
On socket bonuses: It's easy to utilize socket bonuses as a holy priest, since every stat is useful. However, if you are interested in stacking one stat (such as spellpower) it is usually better to just gem that one stat, rather than trying to utilize the bonuses. In some cases that won't hold true though, so always consider your spirit to spellpower conversion on blue sockets. For example, If a helm has a +9 spell power socket bonus and a blue socket, you will get more spellpower by socketing a blue spellpower/spirit gem than if you socketed a straight spellpower gem and didn't get the socket bonus.
For meta gems any of the following are useful to a priest in PvE:
- Insightful Earthsiege Diamond: This is the best meta gem to use if you need mana.
- Ember Skyflare Diamond: This gem focuses more on throughput, but contains a small mana bonus.
- Beaming Earthsiege Diamond: This is a throughput gem similar to the Ember Skyflare Diamond. Primarily this gem should only be used if your gear is starved on crit. If your crit is good, stick with the Ember Skyflare Diamond as the +intellect is more valuable.
- Revitalizing Skyflare Diamond: You guys all raved about this meta after my first article, so since I missed it back then I'll review it now: This is an option for a holy priest who wants a different kind of throughput, since Circle of Healing and Prayer of Healing both offer more chances to utilize the effect. I don't really recommend it though, since if you're already hitting someone with a critical heal, an addition 3% healing wouldn't make much difference. It strikes me as a scheme at padding meters more than saving players. That extra percentage on a critical heal is rarely going to make or break saving someone, and if you're relying on your critical heals to save someone you need to rethink your healing philosophy. Granted, as far as 3% not making a difference, the same could be said by the additional spellpower of the Ember Skyflare Diamond. The difference is that the bonus spellpower from the ESD is always there, where as the RSD only yields that extra healing on a crit. If it's something you like though, by all means.
- Tireless Skyflare Diamond: Only take this meta gem if you don't plan on using the Tuskarr's Vitality boot enchant.
11. Glyphs
Major Glyphs:
- Glyph of Guardian Spirit: I consider this the only must have glyph for holy priests. Everything else is play style dependent. If you hoard your defensive cooldowns then maybe you won't agree, but I use cooldowns with a "better safe than sorry" mentality. This glyph matches that mindset perfectly: if you needed to use that Guardian Spirit then all is well, if you didn't then the penalization for using a cooldown when you didn't need it is softened.
- Glyph of Circle of Healing: If you're raiding at all, this is a must have holy glyph. If you only do 5-mans you can pass on this one.
- Glyph of Renew: If you're a Renew spamming holy priest, this is a good choice to get your heals to your targets faster.
- Glyph of Flash Heal: If you cast Flash Heal frequently, save some mana by popping on this glyph.
- Glyph of Holy Nova: As AoE healing goes, Circle of Healing is far better than Holy Nova, so as a holy priest you'll find less usefulness from this glyph than if you were discipline or PvPing. It is a great leveling glyph though.
- Glyph of Hymn of Hope: This glyph could be useful if you desperately need more mana (I stress, desperately) and already have glyphs in to stretch your mana pool. It's an option, but I don't recommend it.
- Glyph of Inner Fire: This isn't the glyph you're looking for. You can go about your business. Move along.
- Glyph of Lightwell: If you use Lightwell (or have somehow manipulated your raid or tank to use it like a certain character from a certain science fiction classic) then this glyph is fantastically overpowered.
- Glyph of Prayer of Healing: This glyph is not going to be useful on every encounter. Consider how often you use Prayer of Healing before dropping in this glyph. It's great as a 5-man healer, and maybe very useful in 10-man raid. In a 25-man raid though, you may find the HoT applied by this glyph is overkill if there is a resto druid present.
- Glyph of Spirit of Redemption: Don't take this. Before it was nerfed, it was cute in PvP. But in PvE, if you plan your play style around being dead you might want to consider a different game.
Minor Glyphs:
- Glyph of Levitate: This glyph offers PvE utility and endless amounts of fun!
- Glyph of Fading: If you use fade frequently (as you may find yourself doing if your LFD tank is awful) this is a useful glyph to have to save a bit of mana here and there.
- Glyph of Fortitude: If you have careless DPS in your raid like my guild does, this will save you some mana when you buff people who are resurrected during combat.
- Glyph of Shadowfiend: If you don't have time to toss your Shadowfiend a HoT or shield when he spawns, this might be a minor glyph for you.
- Glyph of Shackle Undead: This glyph is obviously only good on a situational basis.
12. Endgame Enchants
- Back: Greater Speed (or: Lightweave Embroidery or Darkglow Embroidery, for tailors).
- Chest: Powerful Stats.
- Feet: Greater Spirit or Tuskarr's Vitality (or Nitro Boost, for engineers).
- Fingers: none (or Greater Spellpower for enchanters).
- Head: Arcanum of Burning Mysteries.
- Legs: Brilliant Spellthread.
- Main Hand: Mighty Spellpower.
- Hands: Exceptional Spellpower (or Hyperspeed Accelerator, for engineers).
- Shoulders: Greater Inscription of the Storm (or Master's Inscription of the Storm, for scribes).
- Two-Hand: Greater Spellpower.
- Waist: Eternal Belt Buckle.
- Wrists: Superior Spellpower (or Fur Lining - Spell Power for you crazy, leatherworking priests).
Want to find more great tips for carrying out your Priestly duties? Spiritual Guidance has you covered with all there is to know! And don't forget to check out our other Leveling Guides as well as our Wrath Guides and Galleries! 
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 5)
Anthony Feb 7th 2010 11:20PM
very thorough and informative for the new player A++
Cthulu Feb 7th 2010 11:34PM
2 exceptions I find in your article:
Glyph of Renew: is nice but the 20% is mixed in with the talents so you don't get a true 20% boost to the healing from the glyph. A renew spamming holy priest will generally not want to take this glyph as it is a net hps loss and the extra three seconds the renew sits on a target makes it easier to blanket additional targets with renews. The exception to this glyph could be tank healing priests since you put more healing in a a shorter amount of time on one target (ie the tank). But the glyph gets you more healing but less healing overall.
The talent healing prayers is a good place to snatch 2 points from if you don't need mana. Pom on cooldown is vital to priests but 20% off an already cheap spell is not make or break. I find this talent only advisable if you are going oom. Then it is a better talent to take. But this is definately a place you can get more from. Also blessed resilience the 3% boost to healing all the time vs. the 12% from test of faith. Overall blessed resilience is better for more throughput, and your argument about saving lives is very valid. The one thing I take exception to is that if your healing team is working together you will generally only get one cast to top somoene up. So extra healing for you may just mean overheal for the shaman's chain heal or druids hot ticks. You will get more throughput from the other talents on a regular basis.
Overall a great article for a new or aspiring priests.
Dawn Moore Feb 8th 2010 2:41AM
That's too bad about it not stacking with renew talents. Do you have a parse testing that? I'd love to see it.
I haven't equipped the renew glyph since pre 3.1 when it was one of the only few decent glyphs available as a disc PvPer. I liked it a lot back then, and I kept it on as I broke into Naxx as a holy priest, figuring even if I had to re-apply it more it was going to have a higher chance to be effective (as in EFFECTIVE, not 'effective healing' meter effective). You can probably tell by now I'm less about throughput for the sake of throughput, and more about 'what will benefit my targets/raid most?' Based on what you've said mana efficiency would go down using the glyph, but it might have its place in the right raid team or fight, even if you can't have it up on every raid member at once. I'll have to test it out just to see how it suits my tastes. Inefficient healing tends to make my skin crawl, but we'll see.
And yeah you're right about Healing Prayers. PoM is very cheap. Though PoH isn't; then again, I'm shocked if I use PoH more than twice a fight. I do notice when I pug though, that many holy priests treat PoH as a go-to spell, so I suppose it becomes another subjective thing. I'll probably go switch that to another optional talent. Holy is so non-concrete compared to disc! =P
Avan Feb 8th 2010 5:18AM
@Dawn Moore:
Renew when glyphed will heal for the same amount over a shorter period of time.
10k / 12 seconds: 830 HpS
10k / 9 seconds: 1111 HpS
On the opic of Renew, it has the largest coefficient of all our spells and costs less than Flash Heal. Once a Holy priest gets to a certain gear level (generally 245+ gear), Renew almost replaces Flash Heal for raid healing. In terms of spellpower, around 3100 is nice for this. I say it almost replaces FH because sometimes getting 5k out now is what'll keep the raider alive.
Cthulu Feb 8th 2010 8:08AM
@Avan
Glyph of renew causes your renew ticks to heal for 25% more than normal on the tooltip but here it is in practice.
My renew is fully talented and has an empowered renew tick of 1890(non-crit) and ticks 5 times for 2520 per tick = 14490 over 15 seconds.
Glyphed renew (for me also) has an empowered renew tick of 1890(non-crit) and ticks 4 times for 3005 per tick = 13910 over 12 seconds.
While this would seem to be more HPS it is a net HPS loss since the spell now heals for less. The glyph's actual percentage in my build (renew specced with blessed resilience) is actually 16.14% increase per renew tick. This is because the way blizzard applies multiplicitive percentages is off the base amount of the heal and not on top of the final talented heal. The glyph actually causes you to make your spell heal for less overall in order to have it heal a little more per tick.
@Dawn(Don't have a parse) but it is easy to self check it as you see the tick is not actually 25% more than the non-glyphed tick.
To calculate the true hps loss you have to factor the number of times casted over a period of time. But in this situation if you were doing an aura fight like twins and casted 3 renews every 5 seconds over 3 minutes you would end up with these raw numbers:
36 x (non=glyphed) 14490= 521640 or 2898 HPS
36 x (glyphed) 13910 = 500760 or 2782 HPS
or a net loss of roughly 4% healing.
You could argue that on one hand each tick will heal each person more and on the other hand each tick will end up with more overhealing. So it really depends on the fight/playstyle if the glyph is beneficial or not..but at face value the glyph's tooltip is very tricky.
But yes, the overall beauty of the holy tree is the flexibility to change the talents to suit your style. (in regards to healing prayers) Mana saving talents can be compared to your take on meta-gems. If you aren't having mana problems does it really matter? This is one of those places where if you have a little used spell or plenty of regen then you can scavenge some points for throughput or that terrible(I agree lazy) talent of body and soul..or lightwell etc. I have found though at my gear level (260 avg ilevel) with double solace it is very difficult to burn my mana especially if I use shadowfiend/HoH. So I have tended to go for more throughput vs. mana efficiency.
Chris Anthony Feb 8th 2010 10:43AM
@Cthulu, keep in mind that I come at this out of ignorance - I haven't been a Holy priest since BC. That said, I'm looking at your math and I'm not sure it's quite right.
Your numbers certainly look right (and you're drawing from your own healing, so I won't dispute that, but consider:
Without the glyph, you get 14490 over 15 seconds. With the glyph, you get 13910 over 12 seconds. (It looks like the glyph is actually only providing 20% more healing per tick (~2500 vs ~3000); I wonder why that's so.) That's certainly less HPM (untalented, Renew costs 657 mana, so you get 22 healing per mana unglyphed, and 21 HPM glyphed), and makes the spell less efficient. But you get 966 healing per second from unglyphed Renew (14490 healing/15 seconds), and ~1159 healing per second from glyphed Renew (13910/12 seconds).
To come at it from a different direction, assume that you have Renew ticking for 15 seconds, regardless of whether or not it's glyphed. (If it is, you have to recast it at second 12.) Unglyphed, you get 14490 healed over those 15 seconds; but glyphed, you get 16915 healed over the same 15 seconds (13910 over the first 12, plus another 3005 from the first tick of the recast Renew).
Am I doing something wrong? Like I said, I'm not a Holy priest and haven't been one for a year and a half, so if there's something I'm overlooking, please tell me.
Cthulu Feb 8th 2010 1:06PM
@chris
What I was specifically looking at was a single cast renew glyphed and unglyphed. The glyph states it increases the amount healed by 25% per tick(the actual percentage is less as you can see from the 2nd post) but heals over 12 seconds instead of 15. So you get 4 ticks instead of five (regardless of if you have empowered renew or not..that is not affected by the glyph). The actual percent increase per tick for me was around 16% (not even 20%) and I welcome any priest to try it out if you have the time and gold to spare.
Glyph of renew does make the ticks bigger (no doubt) but the benefit in a renew spec where you want to fill the gaps as much as possible it isn't as efficient. If you are casting renew on 1 target and reapplying it exactly when it falls off you will get more hps than the standard renew but at a higher mana cost. But the standard renew heals for more over the duration of the spell vs. the glyphed renew.
The only thing in your post I was not sure about is why you would recast a renew @ 12 seconds when it lasts for 15. If your clipping your renews then that throws the math a whole different direction (like dps dot clipping it is horribly inefficient.) If your clipping renew, you might as well just flash heal the person because you are not able to spread your healing out between circle/pom.
The reason the glyph doesn't provide a true 25% increase is the way blizzard calculates modifiers on spells. The modifier is a percent of a percent of a percent...in simple terms they don't just add the percents up. You don't take 15% + 15% +25% to get 55% more and you don't add the 25% from the glyph on top of the spell after the talents have been factored. I will try to find an exact formula again and post it so you can see why 25% is not 25% necessarily.
Chris Anthony Feb 8th 2010 2:27PM
@Cthulu, if you're looking at just a single spellcast, then yes, Glyph of Renew does seem to reduce the amount healed (and the HPM). But in terms of HPS it's still an increase, because the unglyphed Renew has to be divided by 15 seconds and the glyphed Renew is divided by 12 seconds.
I certainly wouldn't recast a non-glyphed Renew at second 12; what I meant was that glyphed Renew only lasts 12 seconds, so you'd have to recast then to get it to stay up for 15 seconds.
I can see why it wouldn't be a pure 25% increase because buffs like that are usually multiplicative, not additive - [base healing] * 1.05 (Twin Disciplines) * 1.15 (Improved Renew) * (1.15 * Spellpower) (Empowered Renew) * 1.25 (Glyph of Renew) - but that should make it heal for MORE, not less. I'll be interested to see the links you have - something here just doesn't smell right to me. (I don't think you're wrong - I DO think there might be a bug somewhere, because glyphs shouldn't make a spell worse!)
(Oh, but I bet I know why - the spell power coefficient isn't going up to compensate for the number of ticks going down. I'll have to do some thinking about that.)
Columhcille Feb 10th 2010 12:24PM
/clap! Enjoyable article and useful for me, too. Either of my priests usually only get in on five and ten mans; 25 mans are a whole different ball game, and this article helped open my eyes to a few spec quirks that I didn't really recognize before.! See! even someone who's been playing since '05 can learn something new every day! ;) Thanks for the input on talents.
Speaking of talents, and dual speccing, for anyone getting into later-ICC bosses that are very HPS and or Single target heal heavy, you may want to have two specs holy.. one geared toward raid/aoe/renew using and one toward greater heal/renew using. Especially for Dreamwalker if you're going to be healing on the boss. Don't forget to change out your glyphs for her, too; any single target glyphs.
My main's a shammy, so we don't have as many kewl options for healing spec swaps as priests do! Full-time-healing-priests should be thankful, and utilize all their spells and talenting options to the fullest.
Rowan Feb 7th 2010 11:29PM
Holy awesome guide...
Seriously though, this is like Holy 101, 201, and 301. Incredibly informative and well written. I myself will definitely be giving this guide a look when my priest finally hits 80. I've been leveling Shadow and queuing Discipline for 5 mans and am loving it. However, as partial as I am to Disc, I would be doing myself a disservice to not at least try Holy for a little while. That said, this is going to be great when I get the chance to play again. Thanks a bunch.
Also, I must say every Priest needs the Levitate glyph. It's not something to think about - get it. When you aren't constrained with materials you will find the most awesome and obscure ways to use Levitate.
Bith Feb 7th 2010 11:36PM
Good guide but way to turn the hate on Resto Druids and Resto Shamans for raid healing. My Holy Priest, who undergears my Resto Druid by a bit, can put out just as much if not effective, quality healing in just the right places.
Don't blame the class/spec, blame the player.
Gothia Feb 8th 2010 3:06AM
There was nothing said derogatory about Druids or Shamen other than the fact that they are in this expansion far superior raid healers - next expansion maybe we will be back in the spotlight as we were in Bc. To say that a Holy priest has to work twice as hard as other raid healers is not an understatement nor is it jelousy - plain and simple truth. A properly hasted Shaman can cast three 1.9 second chain heals between every circle that we cast and I believe Druids Wg does twice the healing of our circle. With these numbers in mind Holy priests "need" to focus on haste more than any other raid healer just to keep up and for this reason it is highly recommended that you stack spellpower as the writer said and focus on reckless in yellow slots and purified in blue slot while leaning heavily toward hasted gear.
You sir either are lying about your Druids healing abilities or are a very poor tree? As the writer said there are fights that holy does exceptionally well in, but a Druids mobility makes them a very hard healer to beat. On my druid I basically leave run on while straffing right I just spam rejuv and Wg, nobody even comes close - talk about running circles around everyone.
Here is to hoping that great things are in store for Priests in Cataclysm.
mhm Feb 7th 2010 11:54PM
:(!!!
Absoli Feb 8th 2010 12:04AM
One little think you might want to fix:
"That all said, the 25/50% chance to dispel poison is useful in 5 and 10-mans when you might not have another healer who can dispel poisons, so it might be worth taking if you find yourself solo healing."
Its actually 50/100% chance. I actually love that talent for making heroics go faster, getting rid of my own poisons, and getting people out of AOE faster :)
Dawn Moore Feb 8th 2010 12:13AM
Thanks for catching that. I'll go fix that right away. =)
Turtlehead Feb 8th 2010 12:07AM
"an addition 3% healing wouldn't make much difference"
Assuming it works like similar DPS metas (and I don't know it does), it's +3% of the bonus from the crit, not +3% of the total. 300 + 30 from crit = 330.9, not 339.9.
Either way, it's nifty holy has so many gearing options. Loved the post; currently leveling a priest to force myself to finally FINALLY heal something. Er...somebody. Did I call you meatbags somethings? I blame the mods. You're all little meat boxes blinking for clicks!
Soloing low level stuff (20-50) smite build isn't near as bad as I'd expected but AoE functional it ain't. Struggle with five mobs or do fifty on lock or mage....
Angus Feb 8th 2010 1:55AM
That meta is really much better for Discipline.
That crit got 3% more, which means the soap bubble just got more damage absorbing goodness. Disc doesn't mind if it is overhealing, as it is darn well still going to help.
Kittaw Feb 8th 2010 12:17AM
Cupcakes without frosting are merely muffins, a shadow of their former selves...
Very informative article for anyone looking to jumpstart a Holy spec. However, I'm waiting for the Disicipline 101 article as I want to try that on my priest instead. :3
serrif Feb 8th 2010 12:17AM
I'd disagree on the comment about body and soul. It's not just for fixing fails. It helps significantly on fights like rotface and putricide, for instance (rotface for getting merges to happen faster, and putricide for improving the kites). And lots of times it is just plain nice to have. For instance, if there's a hiccup in the adds on saurfang, a well-placed body and soul can save a raider. If you have people slightly slow to react, a body and soul can help an empowered flame sphere target give people more time to siphon the flame. It's a very unique and useful spell to have.
Camo Feb 8th 2010 7:14AM
Yep might be useful to get out of the way but as a disc priest I'm pretty annoyed by a weak shield and by the debuff.
Btw: Body and Soul will only cleanse poison on yourself according to the tooltip or on everone else too?