Holy Priests – How to Build the Ultimate Group and Raiding Spec

Holy and Discipline Priest Build

When it’s time to be in a large raid group, or quest with a group of friends, getting the most out of your Holy talent tree is important. It’s the only tree where you can maximize your health regen and at the same time increase places like spirit, mana, and movement speed in your favor.

And now that you can duel-spec with the patch 3.1 changes, it will be important to keep the Holy talent tree set up for specific runs.

I’ve played my priest a lot, and actually respecced the guy so many times I’m almost embarrassed – but in the process I’ve worked out what really works in a hard-core raid.

This is it.

Row 1 (Healing Focus, Improved Renew, and Holy Specialization)

As a healer you probably know how important it is to be able to heal without interruption. This is why you should place 2pts in Healing Focus and gain 70% reduced pushback during any healing. Right now, don’t worry about the Holy Specialization. Instead, fill the IR and increase the amount you heal by 15%.

Row 2 (Spell Warding, Divine Fury)

I played back and forth with these 2 forever. When it comes down to it, just add 5pts to each run and move on. You reduce the amount of damage you take from spells by 10% with SW, and reduce casting times for 4 different abilities by .5 seconds.

Row 3 (Desperate Prayer, Blessed Recovery, Inspiration)

Well, you definitely need to add 1pt to the DP because it gives the caster an instant 263 to 325pt heal. The other 2 abilities I just skip for now because they don’t give me immediate results.

Row 4 (Holy Reach, Improved Healing, Searing Light)

Even after only adding 2 points in the 3rd row, you should have opened up the 4th. Here it’s important to maximize Holy Reach out because you gain 20% extra range on 6 different healing spells. IH will need to be full as well so you can get the 15% reduction in mana cost for 5 different abilities. I skipped over Searing Light for now, but only because it increases damage from spells and isn’t a healing setup.

Row 5 (Healing Prayers, Spirit of Redemption, Spiritual Guidance)

Healing Prayers is another mana reduction, and when full it will take away 20% of the mana cost for Prayer of Healing and the Prayer of Mending. The Spirit of Redemption is a great weapon when you’re in a group or raid. It allows you to run out of health, but heal others for 15 seconds, and then die. You never know who will need more help. Obviously you need a little fight in you during your adventures and the SG will do this easily. Add all 5pts and receive a 25% increase of your Spirit to spell damage.

Row 6 (Surge of Light, Spiritual Healing)

Okay, you have two options here. I personally try to stay away from Smite and Flash Heal when I’m at the higher levels, but if you use them a lot you’ll want to fill Surge of Light. I say skip it for now and fill the Spiritual Healing. It increases the amount of health you heal by an additional 10%. Plus it opens the next level.

Row 7 (Holy Concentration, Lightwell, and Light Resilience)

One of my favorite abilities in the Holy talent pool is the Lightwell ability. It is kind of like the equivalent to a portal, and members of your group or raid can click on it to gain additional health. They will receive 801 health over a 6 second period. It’s a lot nicer then shuffling through each person. Plus, you can skip over the other two and still reach level 8.

Row 8 (Body and Soul, Empowered Healing, and Serendipity)

I like the body and soul ability, but it’s not needed right now. I pass on it when trying to keep some of the talent points, and only add 2pts to Empowered Healing. The idea here was to keep 5pts in the row, and filling up Serendipity with 3 did the trick.

Row 9 (Empowered Renew, Circle of Healing, Test of Faith)

This is probably one of the most important rows to fill up. The Circle of Healing is my 2nd favorite trick, because it can heal 5 party members at the same time. Keep in mind they have to be within a 15 yard radius of you though. Test of Faith gives you a 12% increase in healing abilities towards any friends that are below 50%. Then of course, the ER does pretty much what it says.

Row 10 (Divine Providence)

You will notice that you don’t need to fill this up with 5pts to reach row 11, like other trees. Just use 3pts. It will still give you a 6% increase on several healing abilities, but we don’t need the other 4% possible.

Row 11 (Guardian Spirit)

As a player this isn’t my favorite thing to use, unless I throw it up on a tank or something. Whoever you heal gets a 40% increase in HP. There’s a few other things as well, but if you haven’t paid attention to it before, I won’t spoil everything.

20 Points Away! Do you go Shadow, or Discipline?

Personally, when I’m healing raids I’ll use up the rest of my points on Discipline to up my survivability a tad. The last thing your group needs is their primary healer getting killed (don’t you HATE that feeling?), so I tend to err towards Discipline.

Will that in mind here’s a bonus Discipline suggestion for super dedicated raid healers who want to keep that whole dying thing to a minimum:

Unbreakable Will 5/5, Silent Resolve 3/3, Improved Power Word Fortitude 2/2, Martyrdom 2/2, Meditation 3/3, Improved Power Word Shield 3/3.

All of the effects under these talents will boost your survivability by either making you harder to kill, or by reducing threat. The combo of which should help you stay alive that extra 10 or 20 seconds you need.

[adrotate group="4"]

Related posts:

1. Priest Talent Builds: The Shadow Priest Find the top Shadow Priest build here, we include a...
2. Priest Builds: The Discipline Priest Why and How to Use The Discipline Priest Spec: The...
3. Priest Leveling Guide: Get Holy With A Shadow Spec Class Guide: Priest Leveling Guide How to Level Up Your...

Discipline Build With Shadow

The discipline Priest is one of the least understood of all Priest builds. Is it good for PvP? Should I forget about discipline if I’m raiding or the primary healer? And what about solo – shadow is the clear choice right?

Those are the major questions being asked about discipline priests, and I’ll briefly answer them for you here…

Let me start with PvP.

PvP Discipline priest are an awesome sight to behold. One on one, discipline priests can be a really tough opponent to kill.

With reflective shield sending almost half the damage your receive back to your opponent (look out rogues), and then your basic healing skills backing you up, you can pretty much survive anything.

Your damage dealing isn’t quite as impressive, but if you play with a good team you can hold points until the cavalry arrives and punishes whoever thought it was a good idea to attack you.

So a big tick to discipline priests if you’re considering that route.

Grouping and Raiding.

Discipline priests can be a great build for raiding and grouping, but obviously won’t ever match a pure holy healer. What IS great about discipline priests is that in raids as a secondary healer they’ll be a bit like an anchor to the group. While your primary might die quickly when it takes aggro, you’ll be there till the finishing line unless you really mess things up, and you’ve got a real healing punch to back it up. And lets not forget that if you get attacked you’re reflecting some damage and adding to group DPS…

Solo.

Meh… while I love the discipline build for almost anything (its a great jack of all trades and has amusing abilities), solo simply won’t be as fast as a good shadow build. On the other hand, if you like to keep yourself flexible, able to solo, heal, or pvp, and you DON’T want to waste a ton of gold respeccing all the time, you won’t go wrong with discipline.

The following build is a good all-round discipline spec.

Here’s my Priest Discipline Talent Build:

Row 1 (Unbreakable Will, Twin Disciplines)

This interesting build starts with placing 3pts in the UW, and 2pts in Twin Disciplines. We only need 5 total, so mix it up and utilize a little bit of both. Neither one of them are going to be a massive help, which is why I don’t fill either one of them.

Row 2 (Silent Resolve, Improved Inner Fire, Improved Power Word: Fortitude, and Martyrdom)

Silent Resolve will be vital since it reduces Holy and Discipline threats by 20%. Plus there’s a 30% chance they won’t be dispelled. Just skip the Inner Fire for now, but if you use it more than I do, come back to it later. Fill the IPWF with 2pts so you get a 4% Stamina increase. Lastly, fill Martyrdom so you can continue casting through strings of PvP blows from those pesky melee classes, or when you need to get that last heal off before you die in a raid .

Row 3 (Meditation, Inner Focus, Improved Power Word: Shield)

I love the Meditation ability simply because it has a ridiculous 50% mana regen while you cast. So add 3pts there and placing a point in the Inner Focus gives you a mana reduction of 100% on your next cast. In fact, you should fill up the entire row. Your IPWS when full, will give you a 15% increase in damage absorbed.

Row 4 (Absolution, Mental Agility, Improved Mana Burn)

The first 2 reduce mana so it’s important to fill them both up. I skipped over the Improved Mana Burn simply because I never use it. If you do, come back to it later and cut your casting time down by 1 second.

Row 5 (Reflective Shield, Mental Strength, and Soul Warding)

I love the Reflective Shield because I don’t have to do anything and can still reflect 45% of the damage someone throws towards you, back to them. I skip over the Mental Strength because I can gain more intellect on armor and enchantments. However, adding a point to SW is important since it reduces your cooldown on PWS by 4 seconds.

Row 6 (Focused Power, Enlightenment)

I would usually just skip over these, but you will have to add 1 point to both areas, just to get your points up enough to open up the next level.

Row 7 (Focused Will, Improved Flash Heal)

You will notice that Power Infusion isn’t listed. This is because I didn’t place 5pts in Mental Strength. I do place 3 pts in the IFH, but only 2 in Focused Will.

Row 8 (Renewed Hope, Rapture, Aspiration)

Players will absolutely love you if they get a taste of the Rapture ability. Check it out on your tree and make sure you add all 3 pts. Aspiration needs to be filled so you cut down on the cooldown of Inner Focus, Power Infusion, Pain Suppression and Pennance abilities by 20%. Handy.

Row 9 (Devine Aegis, Pain Suppression, and Grace)

Okay, once you reach this level you need to make a decision. Either add a total of 5pts in the row, or move along and look at row 10. I’m not so keen on any of this row unless you want to lean towards being a healing discipline priest, and I went back to MS because I didn’t plan on building the Discipline talents to help others. Plus I could now get Power Infusion.

If you do choose to go and max out these talents, be sure to dump your remaining points (after you reach Penance) into Holy. Otherwise, its a total waste.

Row 10 (Borrowed Time)

Borrowed time is pure gold, and you’ll definitely want to max it out to gain the 25% spell haste and power word shield buff. Get it.

Row 11 (Penance)

You’ve reached the pinnacle of the discipline talent tree. Penance shoots a volley that will either cause damage or heal depending on the targets. You can’t go wrong with this one and it adds even more flexibility to your priest.

You probably noticed that I love this tree mostly for the reduction in mana usage and flexibility. In the end its one of those builds that you can be flexible with and still do well, but if you use it like I did, you’ll have more spells to cast, good mana replenishment, and the ability to be useful in many different parts of World of Warcraft.

[adrotate group="4"]

Related posts:

1. Priest Talent Builds: The Holy Priest Spec [adrotate group="6"] Holy Priests – How to Build the Ultimate...
2. Priest Talent Builds: The Shadow Priest Find the top Shadow Priest build here, we include a...
3. Priest Leveling Guide: Get Holy With A Shadow Spec Class Guide: Priest Leveling Guide How to Level Up Your...

Talents! Those juicy extra toppings you get every level which can either make the perfect leveling sandwich or spoil your fun like off mayonnaise.

How do you choose them, and which ones are right for your class?

First off, we need to establish that we are in fact picking talents to optimize your leveling speeds for PvE. Some of my readers here do in fact like to pick talents which allow them to dominate in PvP – and rightly so – its a fun and different part of the game we can all enjoy.

But for those of you who simply want to get up those levels, and fast, its time to do a little research.

Here’s just a few quick & dirty tips on choosing the right talents (an entire NEW book could be written on the details of the below points):

1. Stick to one tree! This is the worst sin we can commit in picking talents… if nothing else, be sure that you stick to one tree until its complete, then, and only then…
2. Build up ONE of your second preference talent trees.

   World of Warcraft is a well balanced game, and if you follow just these two steps your leveling speeds will be very respectable.

3. Picking PvE talents will reduce your efficiency in PvP, and vice versa.
4. Some builds are geared towards group play, while others are tailored to solo play – shadow priests for solo, and holy priests for group play are two good examples.

   If you’re going to be examining your talent lists, keep in mind that most of your time will likely be spent solo… or…

5. If you have friends or a guild you’re regularly playing with, be sure to pick builds which are effective when friends are around.

Some basic truths about each class when it comes to talent builds:

1. Priests are a support class designed for healing, not soloing.
2. Hunters & Warlocks are the best solo classes, bar none.
3. Retribution Paladins are the best solo, keep the other specs to group play.
4. Shamans – go elemental if solo, otherwise, stick to group or PvP.
5. Rogues – get assassination/combat balanced out & you’ll do fine.
6. Mages – get into the frost tree, you’ll probably do just as well as fire, but survive more fights.
7. Warriors – Fury all the way, unless grouping in which case I always recommend protection.
8. Druids – I like balance for PvE, or restoration for group based PvE.

Related posts:

1. The 10 Commandments of Horde Leveling – Part 6 Thou Shall Have Friends In High Places This is not...
2. The 10 Commandments of Horde Leveling – Part 5 Thou Shall Be a Hunter or a Warlock! While I...
3. The 10 Commandments of Horde Leveling – Part 3 Thou Shall Make Gold Ah, gold! Sweet, shiny gold! The...