The Holy Priest has often been thought of as the default healer in World of Warcraft, going back to the build’s strong showing out of the gate in Vanilla WoW. In Cataclysm Classic, the build gets some new tricks in the form of their Chakra and Holy Word spells, enhancing the specialization’s already-powerful raid healing capabilities.
Holy Priest Healer in Cataclysm
Holy Priests have a new core mechanic in Cataclysm: Chakra. 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
In theory this system allows you to specialize in tank healing, raiding healing, or damage on demand, but in practice you’ll spend most of your time in the raid healing stance as raid healing continues to be the Holy Priest’s specialty.
Beyond your Chakras and Holy Words, the spells should all be familiar if you’ve played a Priest healer before. Healing in general is more dynamic in Cataclysm than in prior eras, so you will be getting a lot of use out of all those different spells as you work to utilize the right tools for the job at hand.
Holy Priest Strengths & Weaknesses
Strengths
- Strong Raid Healing
Holy Priests continue to shine when they have a lot of targets who need healing. You’ll want to be in Chakra: Sanctuary as much as possible, which buffs all of your AoE heals and Renew. Along with your old friends Prayer of Mending, Circle of Healing, and Prayer of Healing, you also have Holy Word: Sanctuary, and when the group is stacked together you’ll be able to put out some pretty amazing healing numbers.
- Good Mobility
A lot of the Holy Priest’s spells are instant casts, so you won’t have as much trouble as Discipline Priests do during movement-heavy fights. You also have access to the Body and Soul talent, which can be immensely useful to your less-mobile teammates as well as yourself.
- Powerful Cooldowns
No other defensive cooldown compares to Guardian Spirit, which can allow your tank to cheat an otherwise certain death. Your Divine Hymn can also put out more healing than any other cooldown. Hymn of Hope provides mana to your entire raid team. And don’t underestimate Spirit of Redemption, which can help you change a wipe into a victory, especially if you can pair it with a Soulstone or Rebirth.
Weaknesses
- Not Unique Enough
The biggest problem with the Holy Priest in Cataclysm is that the build doesn’t have enough unique features or spells to make it worth bringing over another healer who does. The Discipline Priest’s absorption effects go a long way toward smoothing out incoming damage, and Discipline gets a lot of the same spells and cooldowns as the Holy Priest. Holy Paladins have the strongest throughput of any healer overall, and Restoration Druids and Shamans are both competitive with Holy Priests in their niche as raid healers. The Holy Priest is simply lacking in identity and winds up as the fifth wheel, so to speak.
- Unrealized Potential
Holy Priests have a couple of features that can be useful, but they often just don’t work very well in actual practice. The Chakra system theoretically allows you to change your stance according to the situation, but in reality, the Sanctuary version of the buff is too strong to give up most of the time, and the 30 second cooldown on swapping back will give you even more pause about ever changing things up mid-fight. Lightwell has always been an odd spell that requires your teammates to take charge of their own healing, which can be useful in the right circumstances, but more often means that no one actually clicks on it and it goes to waste.
Best Races for Holy Priest in Cataclysm
Horde
Goblin
The new Horde race is a very good option for a Holy Priest, with a steady 1% increase to your casting speed. They also give you a useful movement cooldown with Rocket Jump.
- Time is Money gives you a constant 1% increase to your casting speed for a nice steady increase to your throughput.
- Rocket Jump will let you leap across the battlefield so you can quickly get back to casting when you need to move.
- Best Deals Anywhere and Pack Hobgoblin don’t help with your performance, but they’re great quality-of-life features for any character.
- Better Living Through Chemistry is nice if you want to level Alchemy.
Troll
The Troll race is a great fit for a Holy Priest for the same reason it’s great for any other caster or healer: Berserking.
- Berserking gives you a 10 second Haste buff every 3 minutes, adding you another great healing cooldown that you can weave into your rotation.
- Regeneration gives you a little extra survivability.
- Da Voodoo Shuffle is nice to have, although you can dispel most of these effects on yourself.
Alliance
Human
Humans get a nice buff to their Spirit, which is now an essential stat for any healer’s mana regeneration, but even more so for Holy Priests. They have a couple of nice quality-of-life perks as well.
- The Human Spirit increases your Spirit by 3%, offering a nice boost to your mana regeneration. As a percentage-based increase, this bonus gets better the more Spirit you have from gear and other sources.
- Will to Survive is a free PvP trinket that will let you break out of stuns and other hard CC that you can’t dispel. It’s especially useful in PvP.
- Diplomacy doesn’t help your healing, but it will make it easier for you to reach the reputation caps that are needed for your gear and enchantments.
Gnome
Although the Expansive Mind racial has been nerfed a bit to increase only your mana pool and not your Intellect, it’s still a very strong trait for a Holy Priest. Gnomes also have a couple other tricks up their sleeve that won’t necessarily help your healing but are still useful.
- Expansive Mind gives you more mana to burn through and increases the amount that you’ll get back from Hymn of Hope and Shadowfiend. Since it’s a percentage and not a flat increase, the bonus gets even better with your gear.
- Escape Artist lets you break out of roots and slows, although you can dispel most of these effects on yourself.
- Arcane Resistance gives you a modest little survivability bonus on any encounters that have Arcane damage.
- Engineering Specialization is helpful if you want to level Engineering.
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