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Holy Priest Healer Beginner's Guide - Battle for Azeroth 8.3
By AutomaticJak
Last updated
2020/01/20 at 3:09 AM
View Changelog
Table of Contents
Quick Facts
Table of Contents
Guide Navigation
Looking to start playing a Holy Priest in World of Warcraft and just want simple advice? Look no further! In this guide, we will cover everything you need to start easily playing a Holy Priest in , without all the fuss of detailed guides Whether you're new to the spec, a casual achievement hunter, or a returning player looking to refamiliarize yourself with Holy in Battle for Azeroth, these easy guidelines, covering simple and effective talents, rotation, and gear setup, will get you into the action as easily as possible.
Please keep in mind that this page is meant to get beginner players started quickly, and does not contain much in the way of detailed explanations, mechanics, competitive options, gearing, simulation comparisons, or nuance. For more in-depth information, including all those optimizations and more, check out the complete Holy Priest Guide pages linked in the navigation on the left-hand side of the page.
If you need help leveling to 120 in Battle for Azeroth, check out our
leveling tips
.
Overview
Beginners
Azerite
Essences
NEW Corruptio̵̦͚̽̿n-̴̤̤̗͓̘̖̖̖̜̊̎̈́͗̀͗̅͂̌͑̚͠
Talent Builds
Rotation, Priority, and Abilities
Advanced Concepts
Stats
Gear
Consumables
Simulations
Correcting Mistakes
Mythic+
NEW Ny'alotha Tips
Macros & Addons
WeakAuras
Common Terms
About the Author
This guide is written and maintained by
Jak
, Healer for
Future
on EU-Twisting Nether, author of the
Holy
,
Discipline
, and
Advanced Mythic+
Priest Guides.
He is also the Host of the official World of Warcraft
Mythic Dungeon International
events. You can catch Jak on
Twitter
and streaming on
Twitch
.
Watch live video from automaticjak on www.twitch.tv
Talents Choices
This Holy Priest build is well rounded and focused on raid content. For a deeper look at each talent and more specialized builds for specific activities, see the
Holy Priest Talent Guide
.
Rotation
Healing and dealing damage differ greatly, as healing does not follow a rotation, but instead prioritizes spells depending on the situation. This section gives a general overview, but more optimizes, talent variations, and advanced tips can be found in the
Holy Priest Rotation Guide
.
Cast
Holy Word: Serenity
on cooldown (if target is around 50% HP)
Cast
Holy Word: Sanctify
on cooldown (if hitting full 6 players and sufficient damage is going out).
Cast
Prayer of Mending
on cooldown.
Cast
Circle of Healing
(if talented) on cooldown
Flash Heal
as needed and to deal with spot damage
Cast
Prayer of Healing
As raid damage occurs and if mana is permitting.
Heal
as filler when not moving.
Renew
rarely, often while moving on targets taking sustained damage.
Cast
Holy Word: Chastise
on cooldown
Cast
Holy Fire
on cooldown
Cast
Smite
.
Cast
Holy Nova
over
Smite
at over 5 targets
Stat Priority
Holy Priests primarily favor Intellect through Item Level, along with Mastery, though secondary stats are generally close in value. Find out more about how stats work, including sample stat weights and scaling plots in the
Stats Guide
, or get an overview of gear to look for from dungeons and raids in the
Holy Priest Gear Guide
.
Intellect
Mastery
Critical Strike
Haste
Versatility
Gear in Battle for Azeroth is heavily focused on pursuing item level upgrades on your gear pieces. While mastery will be a primary focus to prepare for raids, if you find a non-mastery item that is 10 item levels higher than the Mastery piece, it is quite likely that the higher ilvl piece will be better. Some exceptions to item level can be rings and some trinkets. For further detail, check the gear guide.
Essences
The essence system offers powerful additional abilities to your toolkit that are unlocked throughout various activities like reputations, pvp and pve. Essences often have various situational or specific benefits, to find out more check out the full
Holy Priest Essences for the Heart of Azeroth - Battle for Azeroth 8.3
here for unlock requirements and breakdowns of specific uses.
Excerpt from the above guide
Life-Binder's Invocation
Source: Mythic+ (click for details!)
Rank 1: Complete a +4 Mythic dungeon in season 3.
Rank 2: Complete a +7 Mythic dungeon in season 3.
Rank 3: Combine 15
Focused Life Anima
from the weekly cache.
Rank 4: Complete
Battle for Azeroth Keystone Master: Season Three
.
Use on: Raids
Offering another solid cooldown to use in a raiding environment, when mana is rarely an issue. Holy Priest already has a high quantity of cooldowns at its disposal so you will almost always have something available to use when damage is incoming.
Corruption
Holy Priest in Ny'alotha will have access to new corruption effects to further improve their performance. Below is a list of desirable corruption bonuses to pursue for your gear, many of these corruption effects can have niche/situational effects, so be careful on cleansing any of these pieces unless you know you won't be using them.
Top Effects
One of the top Corruption effects to prioritize seems to be the boost to Critical Strike damage and healing
Strikethrough
for progression healing. Eternal Palace demonstrated how important healer damage can be and while Holy does not have amazing passive damage, it can further assist it while increasing their healing with this effect. While
Siphoner
seems to be the highest throughput at present,
Strikethrough
improves your damage and healing which is invaluable when pushing progression
Passive Effects
Strikethrough
- As mentioned above, healer damage is always very important during progression and Holy Priests will likely have sufficient Mastery to start moving towards more Crit in Ny'alotha.
Siphoner
- Increased Leech is always incredibly beneficial for healers, especially in progression or when encounters favor heavy "rot" ticking damage. Expect this to be a high throughput increase.
Masterful
- Mastery is often the best secondary for early progression healing and if you have heavy levels of it on your gear, you will get strong value from the secondary increase.
Severe
- Holy already moves more towards Crit in the latter part of the expansion so increasing your secondaries naturally can also help your synergy with
Strikethrough
.
Proc Effects
The above corruption effects all passively increase the value of your secondaries. While these corruption effects all give procs of secondary stats. Most secondary stats aren't far from each other in value and most of the stat procs are quite good.
Void Ritual
- A weapon corrupted effect that can corrupt other pieces of gear. This corruption price will often be high but looks to be quite potent, especially if other allies share it as well.
Infinite Stars
While recently nerfed they are Infinite so nerfing infinity is still infinity. All the same, it is still incredibly good damage that can benefit your raid or M+ runs massively.
Ineffable Truth
- This corruption effect is a weapon effect that can be applied to many different pieces. This effect could be exceedingly powerful for the spec if the damage is consistent enough to make constant use of low-cooldown Holy Words.
Deadly Momentum
- Increased Crit strike proc.
Surging Vitality
- Increased Versatility proc. Some potential of issue if there isn't sufficient damage to proc this.
Honed Mind
- Increased Mastery proc.
Passive Effects
Versatile
- Versatility is not a poor stat by any means and might be even more crucial if encounters require greater damage reduction in order to survive incoming hits. Value will be determined by the quantity of Versatility on the player's gear.
Glimpse of Clarity
- Cooldown reduction for Holy seems very interesting since the only abilities we use with cooldowns we are heavily incentivized to reduce (Holy Words/Circle). This may be stronger than just the "moderate" rank that it falls in at the moment but needs more testing to truly gauge the value.
Passive Effects
Avoidant
- Avoidance seems incredibly situational but could have specific areas where it shines for surviving a particularly challenging boss encounter in raids or Mythic+.
Expedient
- Haste is less than ideal for Holy Priests so if the player isn't having much Haste on their gear as is, they won't gain many secondaries from this effect.
Racing Pulse
- Increased Haste proc again isn't ideal for the spec so this proc is on the low end of a priority.
Enhancements
Only two gear slots can be enchanted by all players in Battle for Azeroth: weapons and rings. There are also glove enchants which can assist with professions, Enchanter-only bracer enchants which modify hearthstone use, and Tailor-only cloak enchants which reduce threat slightly.
Weapon:
Enchant Weapon - Machinist's Brilliance
Rings:
Enchant Ring - Accord of Mastery
Gems:
Leviathan's Eye of Intellect
and
Masterful Sea Currant
Azerite
Azerite is the new power system in Battle for Azeroth. Throughout completing quests, dungeons, and other activities you will further empower your
Heart of Azeroth
. The higher level the
Heart of Azeroth
, the greater amount of traits that you will be able to unlock on your Azerite pieces. Azerite pieces are the Helm, Shoulders, and Chest pieces that contain a variety of traits and bonuses.
For more information on the Azerite system be sure to check out the
Azerite Trait Guide
or the
Holy Priest Azerite Section
!
Our Holy Priest guides are always updated with the latest information from in-game experience, simulations, and logs; make sure to check our changelog to this page, by clicking on
View Changelog
at the top of the page. If you are interested in more in-depth Holy Priest guides for Visions of N'zoth, Battle for Azeroth's third and final content patch, make sure to browse the
Navigation Bar
below, and our list of
Related Guides
just beneath the
Table of Contents
.
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Azerite
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