Every Sunday (and the occasional weekday) Spiritual Guidance offers holy and discipline priests advice on how to wield the holy light and groove to the disco night. Your hostess Dawn Moore will provide the music.

There is this priest trial in my guild right now. He applied as a discipline priest but what we were looking for at the time was a holy priest. Unfortunately, he doesn't know how to play holy, so I'm exploiting my veteran status and making him learn it. Coincidentally, the big bosses also want all of us here at WoW.com to work on these 101 columns, so this kills two anything-but-birds with one stone. I really like birds, by the way.

The following is meant to be an introductory guide to the priest holy tree. It is not going to tell you what to do step by step (at least not until you get to the enchants section) instead it intends to show you some options from which you can get started. If you're already a veteran holy priest, feel free to add anything I left out in the comments so readers who use this column as a resource can get as much help as possible.


1. What is Holy?

Holy is one of a priest's two healing specs. In raiding, it is most frequently used to fill a raid healing role, where as in 5-man dungeons it offers a diverse palette of abilities to keep any party alive.

2. Holy benefits

• Flexible to many different styles of play.
• Benefits from almost every caster stat and thus makes it easy to find gear upgrades.
• As a raid healer, holy offers excellent reactive and preemptive healing options.
• Provides a variety of utility spells to assist the raid.

3. Holy drawbacks

• Jack of all trades, master of none. Even as a capable raid healer, you will not be able to keep up with equally skilled druids, and healing 25-man tank damage is no easy task. In 10-mans a holy priest can fill all raid roles better.
• No niche. The holy priest is a great example of "bring the player, not the class." There is nothing a holy priest has that makes him a must-have member of the raid. Unique spells like Body and Soul and Lightwell are not universally useful to every raid, and abilities like Guardian Spirit have comparable counterparts offered by other healers.
• Not strong on every fight. A holy priest can be ideal for some encounters, and useless in others. Having a secondary spec you are competent with is ideal.

4. Stats to look for

Holy priests benefit from almost every caster stat available. Conveniently, this will allow you an amazing amount of flexibility in picking out gear. However, it also means that it is not advisable to stack one stat. The following are stats that you can benefit from as a holy priest.
 

• Spellpower: The more spellpower you have, the more your heals will heal for. Easy enough, right?
• Intellect: This stat will increase your mana pool and grant a small amount of critical strike rating. In addition to buffing your mana, it will affect your mana regeneration from spirit and increase the amount of mana returned by abilities like Shadowfiend, Hymn of Hope, and Replenishment.
• Spirit: Spirit converts to mana regeneration in and out of combat. When talented, 25% of a holy priest's spirit converts to additional spellpower. Spirit is affected by Meditation and Holy Concentration, furthering its value as a regen stat. Spirit converts to MP5 based on your intellect, so as you gain more intellect, it will take less spirit to get 1 point of MP5.
• Haste: This stat will decrease your casting time on non-instant cast spells. It will also lower the 1.5 second global cooldown (GCD) that all your spells have. While you can stack haste past the 1-second GCD haste cap and still lower the casting time of your longer cast time spells, it requires an extraordinary amount of haste to do so and would thus require handicapping all your other stats in the process. Don't do that.
• Critical strike: This stat increases the critical strike chance on your spells. In that sense, it is not guaranteed to help you all the time, but that doesn't mean you should avoid this stat. Crit helps to activate important talents in the holy tree such as Holy Concentration, Inspiration, and Surge of Light, so make sure there is some crit on your gear. Consider that you will receive an additional 5% chance to crit with holy spells from talents. There is no cap for this stat, but stacking crit has far less utility than stacking other stats. Without buffs, 20-30% crit chance is a good range to be within.
• MP5: MP5 gives no additional benefits other than mana regeneration, so it is not a stat you need to stack by gemming, but you can take it when it is an option on other gear (like trinkets).

Stamina is, of course, valuable, but you don't need to prioritize it over any of the above stats. You will naturally acquire more stamina as you get better gear.

There is no universal priority for gearing the above stats. Find a balance that works for your play style. If you find something deficient in your performance as a healer, first evaluate how you can improve your game play. If something is still lacking after that, then you can make stat adjustments based on your needs.

5. Stats to avoid

The following stats are not necessary to heal.
 

• Spell hit.
• Spell penetration.
• Melee stats such as strength, agility, armor penetration, and expertise.

Occasionally you may find gear with spell hit that is an upgrade for all other stats. If no caster DPS needs the item, feel free to bid or roll for the item; the hit won't hurt you. Just keep in mind the hit has no use to the majority of things you'll be doing in PvE as a healer.

6. Typical PvE talent setup

As a holy priest, you should place at least 13 points into the discipline tree so you can get 3 points in Meditation. In the holy tree there are a lot of options available to you. Below are a few different types of holy trees. Remember that there is no one correct spec for healing.
 

• Casting priest: This tree could be for a priest who prefers more cast heals like Greater Heal and Flash Heal.
• Spamming priest: This tree could be used by a priest who likes to spam Renew for preemptive healing on his raid or party.
• Utilipriest: This is just a dummy spec, not one I necessarily would use. Though it is workable, it picks out the two big utility talents in the holy tree in place of some throughput and preparedness.

7. Talent overview

Talents in italics are considered not mandatory. Talents with a strike through them should not be taken.

Discipline:

• Twin Disciplines - 5/5: A boring but excellent talent. This will help your overall healing.
• Improved Inner Fire - 3/3: Even though you need this to get to Meditation anyway, the spellpower bonus that this talent yields is fantastic. The extra charges will help you get through most encounters with your Inner Fire up the whole time.
• Improved Power Word: Fortitude - 2/2: You need 10 talents to get to Meditation, and this is one of the best options on the way. You might as well take this talent in case there isn't another priest in the raid.
• Meditation - 3/3: As I've already implied, taking all ranks in this talent is invaluable for your mana regeneration.
• Inner Focus - 1/1: This is the only discipline talent I don't consider mandatory. I always use it on my own trees, but I know people who don't. The longer cooldown on this ability means you will likely only be able to use it a few times during an encounter. For this reason, I take it and save it for a high mana cost spell, like Divine Hymn or Prayer of Healing.

Holy:

• Healing Focus - 0/2: There isn't a lot of push back that you're going to have to worry about, but there are fights where it does happen, and I have lost a target before by not having this talent. I consider it a "better safe than sorry" talent, but I have run though numerous instances without it as well.
• Improved Renew - 0/3: If you use Renew this is a great talent.
• Holy Specialization - 5/5: This buys you an extra 5% chance to crit on all your heals, so it's amazing.
• Spell Warding - 0/5: These talents can reduce the spell damage you take by up to 10%. This means more survivability and thus less healing you'll need to do on yourself. So far in ICC, this has done a lot more for me than Healing Focus.
• Divine Fury - 0/5: This talent is only really useful if you cast Greater Heal. If you use Greater Heal only once in a blue moon, skip this and get Serendipity instead.
• Desperate Prayer - 0/1: Like Spell Warding, this talent will help you stay alive. It is a cheap, mana efficient, instant cast self heal. It's not mandatory if it doesn't suit your play style but it's extremely useful.
• Blessed Recovery - 0/3: Do not take this talent. It's a PvP talent that has little to no utility in PvE.
• Inspiration - 3/3: There is really no reason to not take this spell. It can proc off every spell you cast, except Renew, and passive damage mitigation is good, preemptive healing.
• Holy Reach - 2/2: You absolutely need to take this spell as a holy priest. Your Circle of Healing loses a great deal of its usefulness if you don't.
• Improved Healing - 0/3: These talents aren't particularly useful if you don't cast Greater Heal. The reduction to the cost of Divine Hymn isn't justifiable since it's a once per encounter ability.
• Searing Light - 0/2: Never ever, ever take this talent for raiding or healing 5-mans! It's okay when you're solo or leveling, but as a healer it's one of those things you drop.
• Healing Prayers - 0/2: Since you're going to be using Prayer of Mending all the time, you'd benefit from dropping points in this. Prayer of Mending is a pretty cheap though, so if you like, feel free to allocate these 2 talents elsewhere. On the other hand, if you find yourself using Prayer of Healing a lot, this talent will surely take the bite off the cost.
• Spirit of Redemption - 1/1: You don't take this for the Spirit of Redemption, you take it for the 5% spirit. Angel form is just a perk.
• Spiritual Guidance - 5/5: Absolutely mandatory for a holy priest. Without it you're going to handicap your spellpower potential for no reason.
• Surge of Light - 1/2: I like 2 points in Surge of Light, but I know some priests who say 1 is enough because your Circle of Healing is guaranteed to yield at least 1 crit. I've seen cases where it didn't, so I go for 2 points. It's your call.
• Spiritual Healing - 5/5: This is a straight buff to all your spells, so take it.
• Holy Concentration - 3/3: This is vital to your mana regeneration as a holy priest and thus mandatory.
• Lightwell - 0/1: Oh, Lightwell. The victim of great ridicule, and recipient of much praise. In honesty, it's a great spell to just use for yourself, even if everyone laughs at you. You can click and receive a heal from Lightwell during most disables, and when glyphed it's incredibly powerful.
• Blessed Resilience - 0/3: This is a PvP talent with some throughput options that make it useful for PvE. Some people take it, some people don't.
• Body and Soul - 0/2: I do and do not recommend this talent. In one hand, it's an amazing talent with a utility that can save you and your raid members from movement related dangers. In the other hand, it promotes sloppy play. You can do everything in this game without Body and Soul. If you use Body and Soul to get out of binds, ask yourself why you were in that bind in the first place. Did you move when you should have? Were you paying attention? Body and Soul certainly is a fun ability but it is far from necessary and easy to get dependent on. That all said, the 50/100% chance to dispel poison is useful in 5 and 10-mans when you might not have another healer who can dispel poisons, so it might be worth taking if you find yourself solo healing.
• Empowered Healing - 0/5: This is not mandatory but it's extremely useful just for the Binding Heal bonus. As a priest, dying to miscellaneous raid damage is not acceptable in my book, because of Binding Heal. While it won't save you from walking face first into a malleable goo, it should keep you alive from the raid damage on Blood Queen, Festergut, Rotface, and many other encounters in ICC. In the case of this talent, the extra 20% healing is a great reason alone to take it.
• Serendipity - 0/3: I myself consider this spell mandatory, but since there are a lot of priests who disagree I've kept it as optional. With my raid team it's very rare that I'll cast Greater Heal or Prayer of Healing, but the likelihood of it goes up dramatically when I do so at 12% reduced cast time.
• Empowered Renew - 1/3: At least 1 point in Empowered Renew is mandatory in my book. This will allow your Renew the chance to crit on its initial application, and that can proc any of your on crit talents. If you're a big fan of Renew, obviously you can drop more talents into this one.
• Circle of Healing - 1/1: If you're a holy priest who doesn't take Circle of Healing, are you really a holy priest? Is a cupcake without frosting still a cupcake? The answer to both questions is yes, but who the heck wants to eat a cupcake without frosting? Likewise, no priest should deny themselves Circle of Healing. It is your signature ability; take it. (By the way, if you answer that cupcake question with "I would." I'm not going to bother inviting you to the weekly tea party with the mages!)
• Test of Faith - Rank 0/3: Everytime I meet a priest who doesn't take this, their justification is: "Well, ideally I never let my targets get below 50%." My answer is: "Do we prepare for the best or the worst?" This talent is not something you're going to use all the time (and during farm content feel free to swap it out for something else) but in progression I consider these talents a must. Sure it won't help you top meters, but it will help you save people in a bind; that is infinitely more important. You'll hear me say this again later with gems: a small percentage gain (such as the one from Blessed Resilience) will rarely make or break a heal that was already coming, but a 12% bonus on a dying target can make a big difference between him living or not. Remember being a good healer isn't the same as being top on an HPS meter.
• Divine Providence - 5/5: Mandatory. This buffs everything you use, and reduces the cooldown on your most used spell.
• Guardian Spirit - 1/1: Mandatory. Because even if you rarely use it, it's there just in case. You might have this funny idea that you'll never need it, because you'll never let your targets get to the point where it's required. But again, what do we prepare for? Same thing as before: the worst.

8. Leveling as Holy

While certainly possible, it's an incredible chore to level holy if you're playing solo. If you level with a friend you'll have an easier time completing quest tasks, but you may find yourself doing more healing than damage in that arrangement. This is probably what you want if you're condemning yourself to this fate, granted, but I figured I'd say it just to state the obvious.

If you absolutely must solo level as holy, be prepared to drink a lot. Feel free to go a bit deeper into the discipline tree and get Power Word: Shield talents, and possibly Meditation. Power Word: Shield combined with Glyph of Holy Nova will let you play a bit like a mage by AoEing several mobs down at a time, but you'll still end up drinking a whole lot. As a word of warning, mana problems persist until level cap.

If you would like to level using the dungeon finder tool, you can expect better queue times as a healer. You'll have to drink before most pulls to keep your mana up, so try to haggle some food out of a mage you might end up grouping with.

The stats on heirloom gear (Tattered Dreadmist Robe, Tattered Dreadmist Mantle, Dignified Headmaster's Charge, Devout Aurastone Hammer) that priests can equip is useful to priests of every spec, so if you go insane get tired while leveling holy, you can swap to another spec and the gear will still be useful. By the way, don't waste your time or currency on the PvP heirloom gear unless you plan on PvPing. The stats are awful for PvE.

A more comprehensive leveling guide for priests will be coming in a few weeks, and featuring "his shadowy-ness," Fox Van Allen.
 

9. Holy Priority

As I've already stated, there is no right way to heal. However, here are some basic things to remember.
 

• Always use Prayer of Mending when it is not on cooldown. Throw it on the tank if you don't know who is going to take damage next.
• In a raid, if more than 1 player is not at full, use Circle of Healing. The exception to this is if your targets are clearly in two very different places on the map. Typically, raid damage is area based, so your Circle of Healing should be effective if you center it on someone not at full. If damage is raid wide, try to heal in sections (for example, melee, ranged, soakers, etc). Holy by default produces a lot of wasted healing, but your job as holy is to be the first healer on the scene. Circle of Healing will allow you to do this, even if you overheal 3 people in the process.
• Use your Surge of Light Flash Heal on whoever needs it. If you have an extra one, throw it on the tank.
• Spot heal all small raid damage with Renew. Larger damage can be healed with a Flash Heal.
• If you're a Renew spam style of raid healer, Renew whenever you have nothing else to do. As long as you have 1 point in Empowered Renew, your Renew will have a chance to crit on the initial heal. That crit can proc any of your on crit abilities.
• Try to only use Prayer of Healing with your Serendipity buff stacked. Prayer of Healing is extremely costly as a spell, and not as effective in 25-man raids since various druid HoTs will tick on a target by the time you finish casting Prayer of Healing. Prayer of Healing is great in a 10-man or 5-man however.

10. Gems

I recommend any of the following gems for a holy priest. It is up to you to find a combination that works for your needs and play style. Assuming you have already read over the important stats in section 2, you should be able to select gems for your needs.
 

• Runed Cardinal Ruby: Spellpower
• Sparkling Majestic Zircon: Spirit
• Brilliant King's Amber: Intellect
• Quick King's Amber: Haste
• Smooth King's Amber: Critical Strike
• Reckless Ametrine: Spellpower/Haste
• Potent Ametrine: Spellpower/Critical Strike
• Luminous Ametrine: Spellpower/Intellect
• Purified Dreadstone: Spellpower/Spirit
• Seer's Eye of Zul: Intellect/Spirit

There are a few other miscellaneous gems that a priest could use, but they're odd mixes like haste/MP5. If you're looking for a gem like that, try looking at this gem table.

On socket bonuses: It's easy to utilize socket bonuses as a holy priest, since every stat is useful. However, if you are interested in stacking one stat (such as spellpower) it is usually better to just gem that one stat, rather than trying to utilize the bonuses. In some cases that won't hold true though, so always consider your spirit to spellpower conversion on blue sockets. For example, If a helm has a +9 spell power socket bonus and a blue socket, you will get more spellpower by socketing a blue spellpower/spirit gem than if you socketed a straight spellpower gem and didn't get the socket bonus.

For meta gems any of the following are useful to a priest in PvE:

 

• Insightful Earthsiege Diamond: This is the best meta gem to use if you need mana.
• Ember Skyflare Diamond: This gem focuses more on throughput, but contains a small mana bonus.
• Beaming Earthsiege Diamond: This is a throughput gem similar to the Ember Skyflare Diamond. Primarily this gem should only be used if your gear is starved on crit. If your crit is good, stick with the Ember Skyflare Diamond as the +intellect is more valuable.
• Revitalizing Skyflare Diamond: You guys all raved about this meta after my first article, so since I missed it back then I'll review it now: This is an option for a holy priest who wants a different kind of throughput, since Circle of Healing and Prayer of Healing both offer more chances to utilize the effect. I don't really recommend it though, since if you're already hitting someone with a critical heal, an addition 3% healing wouldn't make much difference. It strikes me as a scheme at padding meters more than saving players. That extra percentage on a critical heal is rarely going to make or break saving someone, and if you're relying on your critical heals to save someone you need to rethink your healing philosophy. Granted, as far as 3% not making a difference, the same could be said by the additional spellpower of the Ember Skyflare Diamond. The difference is that the bonus spellpower from the ESD is always there, where as the RSD only yields that extra healing on a crit. If it's something you like though, by all means.
• Tireless Skyflare Diamond: Only take this meta gem if you don't plan on using the Tuskarr's Vitality boot enchant.

11. Glyphs

Major Glyphs:
 

• Glyph of Guardian Spirit: I consider this the only must have glyph for holy priests. Everything else is play style dependent. If you hoard your defensive cooldowns then maybe you won't agree, but I use cooldowns with a "better safe than sorry" mentality. This glyph matches that mindset perfectly: if you needed to use that Guardian Spirit then all is well, if you didn't then the penalization for using a cooldown when you didn't need it is softened.
• Glyph of Circle of Healing: If you're raiding at all, this is a must have holy glyph. If you only do 5-mans you can pass on this one.
• Glyph of Renew: If you're a Renew spamming holy priest, this is a good choice to get your heals to your targets faster.
• Glyph of Flash Heal: If you cast Flash Heal frequently, save some mana by popping on this glyph.
• Glyph of Holy Nova: As AoE healing goes, Circle of Healing is far better than Holy Nova, so as a holy priest you'll find less usefulness from this glyph than if you were discipline or PvPing. It is a great leveling glyph though.
• Glyph of Hymn of Hope: This glyph could be useful if you desperately need more mana (I stress, desperately) and already have glyphs in to stretch your mana pool. It's an option, but I don't recommend it.
• Glyph of Inner Fire: This isn't the glyph you're looking for. You can go about your business. Move along.
• Glyph of Lightwell: If you use Lightwell (or have somehow manipulated your raid or tank to use it like a certain character from a certain science fiction classic) then this glyph is fantastically overpowered.
• Glyph of Prayer of Healing: This glyph is not going to be useful on every encounter. Consider how often you use Prayer of Healing before dropping in this glyph. It's great as a 5-man healer, and maybe very useful in 10-man raid. In a 25-man raid though, you may find the HoT applied by this glyph is overkill if there is a resto druid present.
• Glyph of Spirit of Redemption: Don't take this. Before it was nerfed, it was cute in PvP. But in PvE, if you plan your play style around being dead you might want to consider a different game.

Minor Glyphs:
 

• Glyph of Levitate: This glyph offers PvE utility and endless amounts of fun!
• Glyph of Fading: If you use fade frequently (as you may find yourself doing if your LFD tank is awful) this is a useful glyph to have to save a bit of mana here and there.
• Glyph of Fortitude: If you have careless DPS in your raid like my guild does, this will save you some mana when you buff people who are resurrected during combat.
• Glyph of Shadowfiend: If you don't have time to toss your Shadowfiend a HoT or shield when he spawns, this might be a minor glyph for you.
• Glyph of Shackle Undead: This glyph is obviously only good on a situational basis.

12. Endgame Enchants
 

• Back: Greater Speed (or: Lightweave Embroidery or Darkglow Embroidery, for tailors).
• Chest: Powerful Stats.
• Feet: Greater Spirit or Tuskarr's Vitality (or Nitro Boost, for engineers).
• Fingers: none (or Greater Spellpower for enchanters).
• Head: Arcanum of Burning Mysteries.
• Legs: Brilliant Spellthread.
• Main Hand: Mighty Spellpower.
• Hands: Exceptional Spellpower (or Hyperspeed Accelerator, for engineers).
• Shoulders: Greater Inscription of the Storm (or Master's Inscription of the Storm, for scribes).
• Two-Hand: Greater Spellpower.
• Waist: Eternal Belt Buckle.
• Wrists: Superior Spellpower (or Fur Lining - Spell Power for you crazy, leatherworking priests).

There! That should do it. Ain't nothing stoppin' you now. If you have any questions beyond what I've supplied here, feel free to leave a comment or message me at goldsales4u@wow.com. Again, if you have any additional information to offer to your priesty brothers and sisters, please leave it in the comments! Good luck!