Shadowlands Holy Priest Guide

Guide

Updated
August 9, 2021 (Patch 9.1)
Wowhead
Guide provided by Wowhead

Holy Priest Overview

Welcome to Wowhead's Holy Priest guide, updated for World of Warcraft: Shadowlands! This guide will teach you to master playing Holy Priest in all aspects of the game, helping you to keep your allies alive in Raids and Mythic+ dungeons.

Throughout this guide, we will cover many different aspects to increase your Holy Priest expertise, including concepts like Holy Priest talents and talents builds, Holy Priest BiS gear choices, Holy Priest stat priorities, among many other aspects of your class and specialization. Make sure to navigate to additional pages of the guide to find more in-depth information on topics such as Mythic+, Raids, and gear recommendations.

How to Play Holy Priest in Shadowlands

Holy Priest is a versatile but immobile healer specializing in using Holy Words, or "small miracles" like Holy Word: Serenity and Holy Word: Sanctify to heal allies immediately. Priests have a long history in WoW for buffing their allies and saving them from death. As a result, Priest is often a more vulnerable healer than others, with low defensive power and mobility. They make up for it by having excellent Area of Effect healing with some single target support.

Priest brings an important raid-wide buff in Power Word: Fortitude, increasing the stamina of your allies. While Discipline focuses more on preempting incoming damage or even absorbing it, Holy Priest is the master of heavy reactive healing, able to provide a steady stream of output whenever they get a chance to plant their feet and cast. The spec is great for players new to healing, as it has a straightforward priority system. As the "classic healer", it often has many mechanics that cross over to learning other healing specs later on.

If you are a returning player or would like a more in-depth review on the spec, the rest of this guide and both the beginner's guide and rotation guide will help provide more details on the spec.


9.1 Holy Priest Changes

Holy Priest is receiving a revamp to Symbol of Hope in 9.1. The mana return is increased in addition to now reducing the cooldown of a primary defensive ability for each member of the raid within range. Priest's for example have Desperate Prayer's cooldown reduced, immunity classes do not have their immunity's cooldown reduced. Hunter's for instance have Exhilaration's cooldown reduced.

9.1 Specialization Changes & Tuning

  • Symbol of Hope has been redesigned ā€“ Bolster the morale of party or raid members within 40 yards. They each recover 60 seconds of cooldown on a major defensive ability, and they regain 18% of their missing mana, over 5 seconds (was 12%).

For all abilities, user Dracolich created a handy list.

Symbol of Hope decreases cooldowns of:

Fury - Enraged Regeneration
Arms - Die by the Sword
Protection - Shield Wall
Retribution - Shield of Vengeance
Holy - Divine Protection
Protection - Ardent Defender
All specs - Exhilaration

All specs - Crimson Vial
All specs - Desperate Prayer
All specs - Icebound Fortitude

All specs - Astral Shift
All specs - Mirror Image
All specs - Unending Resolve

All specs - Fortifying Brew
All specs - Barkskin
Vengeance - Fiery Brand
Havoc - Blur

9.0.5 Holy Priest Changes

The most significant of the below changes for Holy Priest in 9.0.5 are as follows: Flash Concentration's buff allows for greater consistency in maintaining the buff uptime, especially on high movement encounters, saving mana and decreasing inefficient "forced" Flash Heal casts to maintain duration. The Fae changes greatly improve the performance of the covenant for Holy Priest both in raids and mythic+. The bonus damage reduction increase is particularly effective for dungeons and has good use in raids as well. The bug fixes to mana return from the Wrathful Fairy and the quality of life changes to cause it to automatically jump to an enemy will provide a notable increase in mana regen for the casting Priest.

  • Divine Hymn increases healing taken by 4% (was 10%) for 15 seconds (was 8 seconds). Stacks up to 5 times (was no stacks).
  • Night Fae - Fae Guardians : Call forth three faerie guardians to attend your targets for 20 sec. Guardian Faerie now grants 20% damage reduction (was 10%), and Wrathful Faerie will now automatically be sent to the closest enemy target if Fae Guardians is used while an ally is targeted. Wrathful Faeries now properly grant resources to the casting Priest when there are multiple Wrathful Faeries active on the target.
  • Holy:
    • Wrathful Faerie: Any direct attacks against the target restore 0.5% Mana or 3 Insanity. Follows your Shadow Word: Pain.
    • Guardian Faerie: Reduces damage taken by 20% (was 10%). Follows your Power Word: Shield.
    • Benevolent Faerie: Increases the cooldown recovery rate of your target's major ability by 100%. Follows your Flash Heal
  • Divine Image now casts Searing Light when Shadow Word: Pain or Mindgames (Venthyr Ability) are used, and casts Holy Nova when Unholy Nova (Necrolord Ability) is used. Additionally, if the Priest is crowd controlled while Divine Image is active, the image will cast single target healing spells on nearby low-hp allies.
  • Divine Image spell-mirroring cooldown removed (e.g. queueing a Shadow Word: Death after a Holy Fire will now trigger 2 Searing Lights).
  • Flash Concentration buff duration increased to 20 seconds (was 15 seconds).

Holy Priest Strengths and Weaknesses

StrengthsWeaknesses
  • Specializes in heavy single-target healing, thanks to the Flash Concentration legendary, with all direct healing abilities causing a Healing Over Time effect afterwards Mastery: Echo of Light.
  • Has flexible single target and AoE oriented healing abilities in Holy Words.
  • Raid oriented cooldowns that can restore health, reduce defensive cooldowns or mana to the group. Symbol of Hope/Divine Hymn/Holy Word: Salvation
  • Can heal through death for a short period of time with Spirit of Redemption.
  • Lacks many mobile or instant cast abilities and can be impeded on specific encounters with high movement requirements.
  • Prefers some stacked players to properly take advantage of Holy Word: Sanctify.
  • Fewer defensive and survivability tools.

Holy Priest Facts

Holy Priest in Shadowlands does not have any monumental changes to the playstyle or structure. Holy is often regarded as the classic healer, offering a flexible healing style that mixes Heal over Time effects with powerful direct healing abilities in our Holy Words. Any sort of healing that is required, Holy is able to adapt and respond to well enough to keep the group healthy. They are often viewed as the "jack of all trades, master of none" for this reason. While they lack a specific niche, they make up for it in great raid-oriented tools and cooldowns, which have only grown in Shadowlands with the addition of Circle of Healing to the baseline kit.

Horde

Alliance

  • Human- Offering bonus secondaries through The Human Spirit and a stun escape in Every Man for Himself, Humans are a solid overall selection.
  • Void Elf - The Allied Race offers a decent mobility/escape tool in Spatial Rift and a solid passive effect in Entropic Embrace for damage and healing.
  • Night Elf - Depending on the time of day you will receive bonus Haste or Critical Strike with the Touch of Elune passive. In addition, Shadowmeld has a wealth of uses in high level keystones, leading away mobs from the party so they can cross a part of the instance and drop combat.

What makes Holy Priest Special

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