Hi,
I am looking for some tips on playing a holy priest. I main a ret pally so I know the game from a DPS standpoint but I want to get into healing and learn from that point. I have never played anything other than DPS so any tips on play style, rotation anything would be greatly appreciated.
2 Likes
If youāre more comfortable with DPS, I recommend trying Disc if your heart is set on Priest. Not only because itās in a better spot tuning wise, but the way you heal through damage might translate well coming from a dps.
That said, for most content, holy is fine. If you prefer holy, go for it. I recommend setting mouse over macros for many of your heals, it makes you MUCH quicker in sending out heals.
5 Likes
What game modes are you looking into playing?
You will learn as you go and probably have specific questions at that time. A few notes.
- there is no rotation, but rather a priority sequence based on incoming damage. Generally speaking the longer the cooldown, the stronger the heal.
- Use āhealā only with lightweaver active
- avoid prayer of healing
- donāt sit on and wait for perfect moment to use your cooldowns, once there is a good enough time, use it. They come back quick.
- always be casting; use instants when you need reposition yourself.
- find some macros, feather on yourself, PI on focus.
2 Likes
Generally I only play pve by myself. Hence my main being a pally. When I do play with anyone else itās random dungeon finder or LFR. Iābe never been in a guild so I was looking to learn to heal for regular dungeons.
At the level of casualness you will play I wouldnāt worry about trying to be perfect in anything, you can play the way you likeā¦ play around with the talent trees and skills and have fun. You will learn better that way anyway as you will get a better feel of your abilities. Youāll be great, donāt sweat. Dont be afraid of looking for a guild that suits your playstyle too. It may surprise you 
2 Likes
Itās not perfect, but follower dungeons were amazing when I was practicing Disc.
4 Likes
Healing is a whole different game . Iāve prot warred since Vanilla and thought I had a pretty good grasp on the game .
But thereās tank timing and thereās healing timing .
Iāve tried healing on all the different classes through dungeons . I just canāt get it . I donāt know how many times Iāve been embarrassed by not being able to keep my group alive .
Healing is definitely a challenge . My hats off to those who make it look effortless .
2 Likes
I agree that Disc Priest is a better way to transition into learning how to heal. Itās easy to just respec and try Holy Priest later if youāre still set on it.
Mouseover macros will save your life because the most important thing you need to learn is that your team at any given time is a bag of cats, and any number of them could be feral and violent, and a thousand miles behind you. Trying to figure out where they are is the biggest useless time sink out there.
You find the tank, you glue yourself to the tank. The DPS is just there to look pretty. You save them if you can, but remember, you cannot save them if they insist on pulling aggro from halfway across the map.
4 Likes
Ded game , find company that isnt automated ai. Someone passionate about their game and support them.
Why did you even comment?
4 Likes
Find a holy priest guide for quick spec, rotation and stats
If you been dps this whole time, youāll love healing (assuming this xpac doesnt make it unenjoyable).
I finally made my first healer in legion I think it was and loved it since. Maybe more than DPS.
Start with a guide and rotation and it will get you started on holy priest. May not be the help you wanted, but this gets you started on any character.
This was how I learned to priest quickly and was doing 10-20s in df. Not saying Iām a good priest, just that the guides prep you enough and after a couple days you should be comfortable.
1 Like
Donāt play holy! Always log on to YouTube watch a tier list video and pick that spec!
im actually gonna push back on all the people recommending disc to transition to healing.
disc is incredibly unintuitive when you are just starting out healing. you need to have a proper feel for when damage is coming in and set up beforehand with shields and attonement, your healing comes from burst damage spikes while attonement is up, the pace is different from dps but also different from normal healing, it requires a fair amount of set up and if you get caught with your pants down you dont have great emergency buttons to quickly get people back up. you have to play around shadowpet burst windows, the whole spec is actually fairly complicated. not saying its not good, its just wonky
holy, apart from the dynamic cooldown reduction aspect, has a very straightforward kit. push big heal button, get big heal result. the damage is for damage, the healing is for healing, its a very simple healer as far as healing goes.
for holy, the basic gameplay loop is to use prayer of mending on cooldown to keep as many bouncing as you can. your holy words are your āoh crap the tank/the group just took a big hitā buttons, although you dont want to be too conservative with them, you will get the charges back quickly. trail of light is an important talent that helps with spot multi target healing, and once you get lightweaver, you will use flash heal to generate charges of lightweaver and then only use heal when you have lightweaver charges to spend. i think most people these days (myself included) skip circle of healing and prayer of healing all together, though you may need them at lower levels until you get halo and particularly the halo hero talents from archon which just provide buckets of aoe healing.
your dps rotation is also pretty simple as holy, if you take imperial blaze/burning vehemence, you can chastise, you can blast out a couple instant holy fires that do single target and aoe, and youāve got smite and shadow word pain. disciplines dps rotation is a bit more involved, and you also have to be a bit more conscious of when you use it because your dps is also a large part of your burst healing, so if you send all your death and mind blast and penance charges in a calm moment during the fight but then everyone takes a big burst of damage, you can be a bit up the creek without a paddle, whereas holy can just send its damage rotation without those cooldowns negatively impacting your healing
both specs are good and fun, but iāve found disc to be much harder to play than holy, even coming from dps and tank specs as my main classes
10 Likes
This right here. Disc is great but it is an entirely different style of healing. Holy is very easy to level in dungeons and while you might not cap the resto shaman in raids you will be extremely useful. It is an extremely forgiving spec, and if you are starting off healing it is a great one to learn. Holy Priest and Resto Druid IMO are the most forgiving healing specs.
Now the most entertainingā¦that in my personal opinion is mistweaver monk.
2 Likes
Disc = spec into Harsh Discipline, press Radiance, then press Penance right after. Group is topped. Press Mindblast, then spam Smite right after. Press Pet, then press SW:D right after. As long as everyone has Atonement. Thatās all there is to Disc burst healing, itās a 1,2 combo punch. I mean there are nuances, but those are the main burst healing combos.
When you try to run the Shield build which doesnāt take Harsh Discipline is where things start getting tricky.
For Holy you pretty much spam Flash Heal. I dunno, you weave Flash, Heal, Serenity, Sanc and PoM. Iāve seen some people use Circle of Healing in the raid, but itās optional. Itās rather straight forward to get into.
Holy Priest might have the most optional stuff Iāve seen in Retail. Most of the other healers have to use basically their whole kit, Shaman and Druid anyway.
Iām not sure why everyone is giving you tips for discipline when that wasnāt even what you asked for. That and/or people are giving you completely misleading advice on what holy priest healing even is. I disagree that discipline is the way to go to learn healing when it is nearly universally agreed that it is one of the most difficult healing specs to learn and itās not beginner friendly. Meta specs are not always the most beginner appropriate ones. If you want to learn holy, please do not let what is a temporary meta influence you from what you want to do.
My recommendation is to find a guide for holy priest healing and to follow that. It will be far more helpful in getting you set up with talents, spells, and how to effectively play the spec. There are some great guides that you can find that will break down all the spells for you.
2 Likes
You donāt need to read a guide to play Holy Priest. Stop disagreeing just to disagree. There is tons of good info in here.
Add some coconut oil to your holy priest soo itās easier to slide intoo the trash and play smething else.
I have played my priest as holy for both raid and keys this season so far. I am part of a chill aotc guild and might dip my toe in mythic for funsies but I might not. (I havenāt switched to apotheosis in raid so I might not go mythic if that is what I need to do, I am tired lol) My goal for the season was to get all of my portals. I have achieved all of the things I usually go for as Holy, so if that is what you are looking for, it is absolutely doable.
I canāt speak to anything higher as that is just not me.
As for rotation, you just need to learn what lowers what Cd and build some muscle memory on pushing relevant spells that feed into getting more holy words. Lightweaving is in this season so work that into your rotation. Halo gets you so many instant flash heals and that feeds into getting more serenity charges and buffing your heal.
Use your CDs. Donāt sit on apotheosis/halo/divine hymn(if talented). I also use my symbol of hope a lot in keys.
Holy nova with rhapsody talented it fun too.
You will find your groove!
Good luck!!
3 Likes
Just to add to your advice.
Remember: never mess with a Sicilian when death is on the line!
1 Like