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Holy Word: Sanctuary

Holy Word: Sanctuary

2.5% of base mana	40 yd range

0.5 sec cast	40 sec cooldown

Requires Priest
Requires level 1

Blesses the ground with divine light, healing up to 6 allies for (8.45775% of Spell power) every 2 sec for 30 sec.

Spell Details

Duration

30 seconds

School

Holy

Mechanic

n/a

Dispel type

n/a

GCD category

Normal

Cost

2.5% of base mana

Range

40 yards (Long)

Cast time

500 milliseconds

Cooldown

40 seconds

GCD

1.5 seconds

Effect #1

Persistent Area Aura: Dummy
Value: 6
Radius: 8 yards
Server-side script

Effect #2

Apply Aura: Periodic Dummy
Interval: 2 seconds

Flags

Comments

Comment by xistove

At first glance, Sanctuary seems to be a situational party trick. After watching normal and heroic encounters with a hand itching to try new skills, I've found many great applications while playing with the system

The ticks per second aren't magnificent, but I have fielded their purpose as "healing stations" for designated points within an encounter. While stacking renew is also a good tactic, this assists in...well, laziness. Again, while this is situational, it comes in handy with raid members that follow the EVERYONE SPREAD OUT AS FAR AS POSSIBLE LOOK I'M INSIDE THE BORDER WALLS mentality. Low on health? Get into the Rave Station.

I can't justify using this above other skills yet, as I am more impressed by Holy Word: Aspire while in a dance of raid Renew. However, I plan on keeping an eye on Sanctuary. I can get away with it in ICC, but who knows what future challenges may bring?

In the storm of 4.0.1 I haven't had the chance to fully research Chakra's potential. If there are other factors that add to Sanctuary's effective healing to make it more of a game changer I will certainly embrace them.

Comment by Rach3l

EASILY the most shockingly beautiful spell graphic in the game. Good one, Blizzard.

Sorry, normally I wouldn't make an inane comment like this, but I saw a priest casting it in Dalaran and I asked her to do it over and over again because wow... what art.

(The only screenshot currently uploaded looks like quite a simplified version of the one I was looking at tonight. Possibly the graphic was updated when 4.0 officially released? Because it looks at least 10 times better than that one, in action.)

Comment by xenutu

Chakra + Prayer of healing = Power Word: Sancutary

Basically equivalent to Efflorescence which resto druids make after casting Swiftmend, but that is centred on the target, this can go anywhere, and I think this animation looks nicer, not like a poison patch "DONT STAND IN THE GREEN STUFF"

The animation stacks for a few seconds, creating a very pretty bright glow, but the healing doesn't stack :P

Comment by Shanter

It took me awhile to figure this out, but it makes perfect sense once you read the description for the Holy talent: Revelations.

To activate this you:

cast chakra
cast prayer of healing to enter the Chakra Sanctuary State
cast Holy Word: Chastise and instead of doing the normal spell action for chastise it instead does Holy Word: Sanctuary

Comment by Laidtorest

I've tried this spell a couple of times, and i still can't figure it out. It does around 500 per tick, but if i cast a Prayer of Healing on people standing in it, i get crits for 7k from the Holy Word: Sanctuary.

Comment by Rikker

I have a feeling that in Cataclysm it will probably become more useful - but after playing with it in WOTLK - it's pretty useless other than the pretty colors.

Comment by Fenrari

There's a good chance that this along with every other multi-target hot will be applicable in Cataclysm due to exponentially higher raid damage.

I play a priest though, so good game Blizz.

Comment by Meggie

It takes a 40 man raid to make this useful. This spell is the most expensive priest combat spell, costing nearly 11k mana. This is nearly twice the cost of PoH, but it heals only half as good. Thus, it takes about 20 people standing in the "holy fire" to get on par with PoH. Even in a 25 man raid this is not likely to happen.

Comment by Molekh

Costs about 10k mana, heals for 800 crit (!) and on 40 seconds cooldown (you need to cast another Prayer of Healing to keep the chakra state buff up if you want to cast a second Sanctuary!). The emblem of uselessness.
Compairing with Druid's Efflorescence, which heals the same, but cost just about 1k mana, and Shaman's Healing Rain, which costs same mana but heals about 2k a tick, it's pretty sad.

Nice graphic, though! ;)

Comment by rednaw

Love this spell!

Great for a boss fight or lots of big add groups for when the party receives dot damage spells. Especially if you have a few melee dps in your party/raid. Just cast it over the main fighting area to limit the damage done to your group. Ok so it's not massive healing per tick, but this will take care of most your other party members while you concentrate on direct healing the tank/s.

At Level 83 it costs around 3000 Mana and does 460HP every 2 Secs for 18 secs. So it does last quite long compared to other spells.

(At my level PoH costs 2000 Mana)

For people asking why would you use this instead of Prayer of Healing? Prayer of Healing is more for instant damage done to your group at the same time. This is great for DOT Damage and long lasting burst damage that gets applied to your group.

Comment by FinickyFlame

The only plus i can add to this spell, it does proc Echo of Light. So if you have a bunch of people inside and you have a lot of mastery... prepare yourself to have your screen full of green text!

Comment by Alastoraa

Got a huge buff aesthetically, with the pool of light replaced with a much holier looking circle, with crosses and other shapes inside in symmetrical patterns. Very beautiful.

Also got its healing buffed by 35%, making it a much stronger AoE heal.

Comment by davesignal

Holy Word: DDR

Comment by Oblodra

Just tested it again. Yay, now it's 800 health per tick instead of 600 at lvl85. I'm so happy. I think I can spend that 10k mana elsewhere, thank you very much.

Comment by 2uwghwywbn

why does it have a 0.5 sec cast time if it's meant to be a 'Holy Word'... all other word spells are instant cast even PW: Barrier which has a similar target location mechanic.

Comment by gemanoma

Which is better: Efflorescence or this?

Comment by gemanoma

This+Efflorescence+PW:Barrier+Healing Rain+Antimagic Zone= EPIC WIN!

Comment by Spleener

As of 4.2 the healing per target no longer diminishes as the number of people standing in it increase. This makes the spell obscenely good for any situation where the raid is stacked up and taking sustained damage (most notably Beth'ilac and Alysrazor,) especially in 25s.

That 10k mana cost doesn't seem so steep anymore when you can get upwards of 200k healing per cast.

Comment by Maevrim

Something I found very interesting is that I could see this graphic as a ghost running through the area. Very neat!

Comment by DaKillerCow

This has gotten a little buff on the (4.3) PTR.

The mana cost has been reduced down to 8154 mana and I'm not too sure but it may be healing for a fraction more, about 950 per tick (excluding Mastery) in T12, 8.8k Spell Power. Last time I remembered it was around 850 or so per tick with that gear level.

Comment by fklein4

Does haste increase the frequency and number of heals done during the 18 second period? I assume that it does not, as no mention of it is made, but I want to ensure that my supposition is correct.

Comment by Goatmon

I call this my Holy Circle of Awesome. And it works really well.

It's not enough to keep a group up on its own, but to keep a group alive, especially when the tank is specced and/or geared properly, I need only to drop this spell wherever the tank/melee DPS is and throw a few renews down.

At that point I can usually go to sleep and wait for someone to wake me when it's time to roll on loot.

Also yes, the graphic is really nice. Probably my favorite spell graphic in the game.

Comment by nandoconcatto

As of 5.0.4, the healing seems to be diminishing again. Tested in LFR - with 6 targets, it healed for 1200 per tick; with the entire raid stacked, it healed for approximately 400 per tick.

A GM told me that it's intended... this spell seems a bit weak now.

Comment by sylancer

Holy Word: Chastise automatically changed by switching Chakra:

Chakra: Sanctuary transforms Holy Words to Holy Word: Sanctuary, reduce Circle of Healing's CD by 2 sec, and increase healing of these spells by 25%:

Chakra: Serenity transforms Holy Words to Holy Word: Serenity, increase healing of these spells by 25%, and cause these spells and Cascade to refresh the duration of Renew:

Chakra: Chastise transforms Holy Words back to Holy Word: Chastise, grants Smite a 10% chance to reset the CD of Holy Word: Chastise, reduces the mana cost of Smite and Holy Fire by 90%, and increase damage of these spells by 50%:

Comment by Zhou

Anyone aware if the new scaling on this is intentional or a bug?

It's healing for about 75 health every ~2 seconds now. Which even at 88 is almost totally useless.

Holy Word: Sanctuary

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