Shadowlands Holy Priest Guide

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.

Holy Priest Strengths and Weaknesses

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 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.

Best Holy Priest Racials

• Blood Elf - One of the most common races for Priests. Blood elves receive additional Critical Strike rating,Arcane Acuity, as well as the immensely useful Arcane Torrent ability. Offering mana regen and a Dispel Magic effect (Purge) to all enemies hit by the ability. While Priest already has Dispel Magic and Mass Dispel, utilizing Arcane Torrent can save mana and time, allowing the Priest to spend more time healing or dealing damage as needed.
• Goblin - Strong passive bonus haste (Time is Money) and extra, much needed mobility with their Rocket Jump.

• 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

• Fantasy: Healers that worship the power of the Light, Holy Priests use powerful healing spells to keep themselves and their allies healed through dire situations.
• Races: All races except Orc and Highmountain Tauren can be Priests.
• Resources: Holy Priests use mana as their resource for spells.
• Damage Reduction: Focused Will is a passive personal damage taken reduction from melee hits.
• Healing: Holy Word: Sanctify as well as Holy Word: Serenity are the Holy Priests bread and butter. Use other healing spells such as Prayer of Healing and Flash Heal to reduce the cooldown of your holy words.
• Basic Rotation: Holy Word: Sanctify and Holy Word: Serenity should be used as often as possible. Prayer of Mending and Circle of Healing on cooldown, utilizing AoE and Single Target healing to reduce your Holy Word cooldowns.
• Mobility: Angelic Feather provides Holy Priests with a on-demand sprint.
• Healing Cooldowns: Apart from your Holy Words, Divine Hymn is your main healing cooldown as well as Holy Word: Salvation if talented.
• Armor: Cloth
• Flavor: Priests have a variety of vanity glyphs:
  • Glyph of the Heavens to float your Levitate targets on clouds
  • Glyph of Shackle Undead to change the appearance of your Shackle Undead spell
  • Glyph of Ghostly Fade to have a more spectral looking Fade!
  And some toys as well:
  • Thaumaturgist's Orb: Summons holy orbs or ravens. Sold by Quartermaster Miranda Breechlock in Light's Hope.
  • Scarlet Confessional Book: effect of old Glyph of Confession. Sold by Cravitz Lorent in Dalaran.