The Cataclysm Pre-Patch ushers in a host of changes to class talents and abilities for World of Warcraft. You’ll find yourself with some completely new spells as well as some that have been dramatically altered. Holy Priests will have access to almost their entire Cataclysm toolkit at level 80, including Chakra, their new healing stance system.
What’s New
Chakra
Chakra is the core mechanic for Holy Priests in Cataclysm. It’s essentially a stance system, buffing certain types of abilities and giving you a different Holy Word spell based on the Chakra you activate:
- Chakra: Serenity buffs your single target heals and gives you Holy Word: Serenity
- Chakra: Sanctuary buffs your AoE heals and Renew and gives you Holy Word: Sanctuary
- Chakra: Chastise buffs your Shadow and Holy spell damage and gives you Holy Word: Chastise
Chakras allow a Holy Priest to specialize in tank healing, raid healing, or damage on the fly, emphasizing the spec’s flexibility while also requiring a little planning ahead. Holy Priests remain strongest as raid healers in Cataclysm, but now you’ll have extra tools for single-target heals in dungeons or dealing damage in solo content.
Mastery: Echo of Light
There’s a new stat in Cataclysm: Mastery. This stat works differently for each specialization. The Mastery ability for Holy Priests is Echo of Light, which causes almost all of your heals to leave a six-second HoT on the target. Renew and Lightwell ticks don’t count, but the instant healing when you apply a Renew does. Pretty much every other heal in your spellbook will apply the HoT. The higher your Mastery stat, the more healing your Echo of Light will do.
There is no gear available with Mastery in the Cataclysm Pre-patch, so aside from Reforging you won’t be able to make use of this stat until Cataclysm Classic launches in full.
Spiritual Healing
The Holy Specialization gets a flat 15% increase to its healing output through Spiritual Healing, which you get automatically when you select the specialization.
Meditation
Both Holy and Discipline Priests also get Meditation automatically, replacing the old talent. Note that this ability now specifies “mana regeneration from Spirit.” Spirit is a much more important stat for all healers in Cataclysm due to the removal of the MP5 stat.
Absolution
Both Priest healing specializations also gain Absolution, allowing you to remove two debuffs from friendly targets. (Shadow Priests can no longer dispel friendly targets in Cataclysm.)
Abilities
Along with Chakra, you’ll have one new key ability to weave in to your gameplay. This spell is Holy Word: Chastise by default, but it changes depending upon which Chakra state you’re in.
Holy Word: Chastise
If you’re not in a Chakra state or you activate Chakra: Chastise, you will have access to the Holy Word: Chastise ability. This is a useful crowd control spell on a relatively short 30-second cooldown. Just keep in mind that the effect only lasts for 3 seconds and breaks on damage.
Holy Word: Serenity
Activating Chakra: Serenity will change your Holy Word ability to Holy Word: Serenity. This ability is pretty much an instant Flash Heal on a 10-second cooldown, and it also increases the chance for your heals to crit on the target for the next 6 seconds. This is a very useful heal for single-target healing, doubling as a small, instant emergency heal and a buff to your tank healing.
Holy Word: Sanctuary
If you have Chakra: Sanctuary active, you’ll get Holy Word: Sanctuary, the most powerful of the three Holy Word spells. You can place this AoE ability on the ground once every 40 seconds, providing everyone who stands in it with steady healing over the next 18 seconds. This gives you yet another powerful AoE heal that can be ticking while you cast other heals, further emphasizing the Holy Priest’s strength as a raid healer.
Changed Abilities
There are plenty of minor changes to abilities in Cataclysm, but this section will only cover those that will significantly affect your gameplay as a Holy Priest.
Renew
Renew has some interesting interactions with both of your healing Chakra states and some new talents to improve it. Chakra: Serenity causes your direct heals to refresh your on the target, making the spell extremely efficient in any content where you’re going to be tank healing or spot healing, like in dungeons. Meanwhile your Chakra: Sanctuary buffs the healing done by Renew by 15%, so if you’re moving a lot or people are spread out, you can consider throwing out some HoTs instead of casting one of your AoE heals.
As far as talents go, Improved Renew is still there, and now it leads to Divine Touch and Rapid Renewal. Divine Touch lets you get some more up-front healing out of the spell, which will also proc your Mastery HoT. Rapid Renewal lets you ignore the normal GCD and rapid-fire HoTs every 0.5 seconds, making it much more feasible to blanket your raid in Renews. There’s also Glyph of Renew to even further buff the spell if you expect to use it frequently.
Greater Heal
This spell, largely forgotten in Wrath, is a lot more useful in Cataclysm, especially in the early portion of the expansion when mana is tight. Greater Heal lets you get a big heal on a single target for relatively cheap, and you have a lot of talents that improve it as well. It still procs Inspiration, and now there’s Surge of Light, which gives you a chance to proc a free instant Flash Heal, and Serendipity, which reduces the mana cost of subsequent casts. Many of these talents also apply to Heal and Binding Heal, which can both be very situationally useful as well.
Lightwell
Long considered a bit of a joke among Priest talents, Lightwell may see a bit more use now that you can click it from up to 40 yards away. It’s still a very awkward spell that requires your raid members to be responsible for their own healing, but in some groups and situations that can work in your favor. It’s situational at best, but not a guaranteed skip anymore.
Divine Hymn
The Divine Hymn spell works the same as it did in Wrath, but it now heals more targets. You can also double its healing output and reduce its cooldown from 8 minutes to 3 with the deep Holy talent Heavenly Voice, allowing you to squeeze a couple of uses into a single fight or have it up quicker after a wipe.
Single Target Healing
For tank healing or spot healing, you’ll want to have Chakra: Serenity active.
Maintain Renew on your main healing target(s). It should refresh as you heal them with other spells, but you will want to be sure to re-cast it if necessary. Holy Word: Serenity can be used on cooldown to throw a quick heal on someone who needs it or to buff your healing on your main target. Use primarily Flash Heal as long as you have the mana for it, or Binding Heal if your character also needs healing. Use Greater Heal to spend Serendipity stacks or if you’re tight on mana.
Avoid Power Word: Shield if you have a Discipline Priest in the group, but otherwise it can be used as a quick emergency save if someone is going to die before you can get a heal on them.
AoE Healing
Any time you’re going to be healing more than a few targets, you should have Chakra: Sanctuary active.
Use Prayer of Mending on cooldown on a tank or another target who you expect to take damage. Use Circle of Healing on cooldown, and Prayer of Healing in between for your primary AoE heals. Place a Holy Word: Sanctuary on a stacked group that is taking consistent damage. Use Divine Hymn to counter a big AoE or if you need to catch up. When there aren’t more than a couple of targets in need of healing, spot-heal with Flash Heal or Binding Heal.
Cooldowns
Guardian Spirit
This ability is unchanged except for a slight buff, increasing the target’s healing received by 60% rather than 40%. Use it on a target who is taking a dangerous amount of damage.
Desperate Prayer
This is your personal emergency heal. It costs no mana. Don’t forget to actually use it!
Divine Hymn
Use this as your big raid healing cooldown during heavy AoE damage or if you’re falling behind on healing.
Hymn of Hope
This is a powerful mana cooldown for your entire group, but it requires you to stand still and channel it (and not heal) for up to 8 seconds (reduced by your Haste). Look for the best time to use it so you don’t waste its cooldown or fall too far behind on healing during its channel time.
It’s a good idea to call out when you use this so that your team can pair it with their other mana cooldowns. The reason for this is that Hymn of Hope not only restores mana but increases maximum mana, so any abilities that restore a percentage of your total mana will restore more while it is active.
Shadowfiend
This little guy hasn’t changed. Use it when you need the mana, but make sure it’s hitting something. Cast it right before Hymn of Hope to maximize the mana return you get from it.
Talents
Cataclysm brings the first talent tree revamp to WoW Classic. You’ll now need to commit to a tree and put 31 points into it before you can dip into another tree. As mentioned earlier in this guide, selecting the Holy tree will give you a few baseline abilities:
In addition, you’ll only get one point every two levels from 10 to 80, with each of the last 5 levels granting an additional point. At level 80 you’ll have 36 points to spend, while you’ll have 41 at level 85. The talents themselves have been moved around and compressed, with most only having one or two ranks and none having more than three. You won’t see many “filler” talents that can easily be skipped. Most of the Holy tree is now non-optional, but there are still a few choices to be made.
The first row gives us Improved Renew, Empowered Healing, and Divine Fury, which are all solid buffs to core healing abilities. They also give us the points we’ll need to get deeper into the tree.
In the second row, Desperate Prayer gives us a free, instant self-heal on a two-minute cooldown. Surge of Light allows us to proc another free, instant heal that we can cast on others. Inspiration reduces the physical damage taken by our targets and is essential.
Row three is where you’ll start to make some choices. Divine Touch makes your Renew stronger and allows you to reach Rapid Renewal, which is great if you expect to get a lot of use out of your primary HoT. Holy Concentration is mandatory for mana regeneration as well as being required to obtain Chakra in row 5. Lightwell is easily the most controversial talent in the tree. It can be useful in the right circumstances, but it requires your group to take responsibility for their own healing, which may be asking a lot. Most priests will skip it for more sure-fire healing methods. Tome of Light allows you to use your Holy Word spells more often, which is generally something you’ll want to do.
Rapid Renewal starts off row four if you took Divine Touch. These abilities combined can make Renew spam a viable approach to raid healing, but in most situations you’ll find that your direct heals give you better bang for your buck. Spirit of Redemption remains the same as it has always been, allowing you to put out some powerful heals for 15 seconds after you die while also announcing to your teammates that you messed up and need a battle rez. Serendipity makes your heals a little faster and more efficient and is well worth the points for most builds.
Row five gives you a couple more choices to make, starting with Body and Soul. This talent gives a mini-sprint to anyone you put a shield on as well as allowing you to cleanse poison from yourself. The main reason you might skip this talent is if you have a Discipline Priest in the group and won’t be able to shield people very often. Next is Chakra, a core talent that you will absolutely want to have. This unlocks the next talent over, Revelations, which gives you access to Holy Word: Serenity and Holy Word: Sanctuary when you’re in their associated Chakras. Blessed Resilience is mainly a PvP talent, although it can give you some extra survivability for PvE content as well if you have the talents to spare.
In row six, Test of Faith makes your heals more effective on the targets who need it most. Heavenly Voice makes your already powerful Divine Hymn cooldown even stronger. Circle of Healing is another mandatory talent as long as you’re going to be healing more than a couple of people.
The capstone talent in row seven is Guardian Spirit, the strongest tank cooldown in the game and a no-brainer for any build.
Finally, when you’ve put at least 31 points into the Holy tree, you’ll be able to take a few talents from one of the other trees. At level 80, you’ll most likely want to choose between Twin Disciplines and Mental Agility in the Discipline tree. The former is better for throughput while the latter will help with your mana. Darkness is also an option in the Shadow tree, buffing your throughput by boosting your Haste.
You won’t have the points yet in the Pre-patch to go for Evangelism and Archangel even if you want to, and those talents are pretty situational for Holy Priests even at level 85. There’s nothing else within reach in the Discipline or Shadow trees that is of any interest to a Holy Priest.
Glyphs
Like the talent trees, glyphs also get an overhaul in Cataclysm. You’ll now have three tiers of glyphs: Prime, Major, and Minor, and you’ll get to choose three of each to use in your build. The new Prime Glyphs are the most powerful while the Major Glyphs are more situational and Minor Glyphs are smaller quality of life improvements.
Prime
Glyph of Prayer of Healing
This is our most powerful glyph and is pretty much mandatory for any group content.
Glyph of Flash Heal
This glyph buffs one of our core healing abilities and most Holy Priests will want to have it equipped at all times.
Glyph of Renew
Like the talents that affect Renew, this glyph’s usefulness depends upon whether you expect to get much use out of that spell. If you don’t expect to use your HoT very much, you may prefer to choose one of the other two Prime Glyphs below. If you do plan to use it a lot, this glyph is an obvious choice.
Glyph of Guardian Spirit
This glyph lets you get more use out of your powerful tank cooldown. A great third option if you don’t need one of the glyphs above.
Glyph of Lightwell
If you’re using Lightwell at all, you may want to consider using this glyph to make it more worthwhile.
Major
Glyph of Prayer of Mending
There’s almost no healing situation where you don’t want to keep Prayer of Mending on cooldown, so you’ll probably want this glyph for any kind of content.
Glyph of Circle of Healing
This glyph is nearly mandatory for raid content as it buffs your Circle of Healing spell, which is a core feature of your raid healing toolkit. But you should absolutely skip it in any content where you won’t have more than 5 targets to heal.
Glyph of Dispel Magic
This glyph makes your Dispel Magic into a heal as well as a cleanse.
Glyph of Mass Dispel
If you think you’ll be using Mass Dispel a lot, you may want to take this glyph over the one above.
Minor
Glyph of Fortitude
This glyph makes your Power Word: Fortitude cheaper to cast, which is especially useful if you have to rebuff someone while you’re in combat (usually a tank).
Glyph of Shadowfiend
Although hopefully your Shadowfiend won’t be dying in the first place, it’s nice to know that if it does, you’ll still get some mana out of it.
Glyph of Levitate
With this rune, you won’t have to worry about carrying around a bunch of Light Feathers anymore — or jumping off a cliff only to realize you ran out of feathers and forgot to buy more.
Stats
There are some big changes to stats in World of Warcraft with the Cataclysm Pre-patch. For one thing, Spell Power and Healing Power are mostly gone, replaced by pure Intellect. Intellect increases your throughput as well as your mana pool and your crit chance and will be the most important stat for you as a Holy Priest.
MP5 has also gone away with the Cataclysm, leaving Spirit as your only choice for mana regeneration. This also means you’ll be competing more with other healers for Spirit gear.
Haste can be a tricky stat for healers, increasing your throughput but also increasing the speed at which you spend your mana. It’s therefore better not to stack Haste until you feel comfortable with your mana pool. That said, Haste can make you feel extra powerful, since you can get spells out faster and even lower your global cooldown. At certain breakpoints you can get extra ticks on your HoTs, so a lot of Priests will aim for those breakpoints and not worry about stacking Haste beyond them if they can’t reach the next one.
Mastery is a new stat in Cataclysm that has unique effects for each specialization. For Holy Priests, each point of Mastery increases the healing done by Echo of Light. This is free extra healing, making Mastery a more efficient stat to focus on when mana is tighter. However, there won’t be any Mastery available on gear in the Pre-patch, unless you reforge your gear for it.
Critical Strike is your lowest value stat as a Holy Priest. It’s free extra healing like Mastery, but as a healer you’re usually aiming to heal just the right amount to top someone off, so a crit often winds up wasted as overheal. That said, a few of your abilities proc from crits, so it’s still useful.
With all of this in mind, your stat priority will generally be:
- Intellect
- Spirit
- Haste
- Mastery
- Critical Strike
Remember, this is not set in stone and certain gear levels, groups, fights, or any number of variables may shift this around.
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