Here is a couple of compilations of some posts that i have found quite useful for coming to grips with the new talent changes for priests in cataclysm. Its a new world out there! I found the following articles quite good in summing up the new spell rotations and pretty much all you need to know for playing your holy priest in cataclysm.

Cata Holy Priest Guide (4.0.3)

Priests are the only class capable of healing that has not one, but two talent trees dedicated to healing. Currently, discipline priests can adapt to fill any role and have strong prevention spells while holy priests mostly fill the niche of raid healers. For that, we have a wide array of tools, but the healing spells you’ll most commonly use are:

* Chakra
* Prayer of Mending
* Prayer of Healing
* Circle of Healing
* Lightwell
* Heal
* Greater Heal
* Holy Word: Serenity/Sanctuary
* Guardian Spirit
* Life Grip
* Divine Hymn
* Hymn of Hope
* Inner Fire

Those should have spots on your main action bar and be easily accessible. Less commonly used but good to keep keybound and memorized are:

* Renew
* Binding Heal
* Flash Heal
* Power Word: Shield
* Desperate Prayer
* Inner Will

It is worth mentioning that Renew, Binding Heal and Flash Heal are very fast healing spells that provide a lot of throughput quickly, but they will drain your mana pool very fast and as such should only be used in emergencies. Keeping a renew on a tank when you’re mostly tank healing is the exception – especially when you’re in Heal Chakra, this provides a lot of extra over-time healing without you having to re-apply it.

The game mechanics have changed a lot from Wrath. Blanket-healing (a term used to describe the steady application of HoTs to counter bosses’ raid-wide aura damage) is a thing of the past. No current bosses have aura mechanics, instead you’re presented with big burst damage that typically gives you a longer time frame to heal your group members back up. This encourages slower, more efficient heals such as the ones mentioned in the first tier above, whereas the fast heals should be saved for emergencies.

Another thing that slows healing down considerably is the fact that health pools have increased by a lot, while the base healing of healing spells hasn’t increased by that much, which results in healers having to heal more to replenish someone’s whole health pool.

It is important to remember not to panic when you see someone’s health pool drop drastically (unless that someone is the tank, then it’s ok to panic) and instead start healing your raid back up in an efficient manner. Mana conservation while keeping your raid alive is key to successful priest healing.

==Spells==

(average gear in this part refers to an in-game average gearscore of roughly 350)

The new mechanic in Cataclysm that really is a niche unique to Holy Priests is Chakra. Chakra seems like a complex mechanic at first glance, but once you get the hang of it it’s really easy and fun to use.

Once Chakra is activated (it works much like Inner Focus in that it affects the next compatible spell that you cast and will stay active without duration or triggering a cooldown until you use one of them), you can use it with either Heal, Prayer of Healing&Prayer of Mending or Smite. Depending on which spell you choose to activate Chakra with, you will get a buff to certain spells while your Chakra state is active. The original Chakra cooldown and duration is 30 seconds, but it can be prolonged by talents, so if you make use of that, you don’t have to recast it every 30 seconds.

On top of the passive buff, if you take the talent “Revelations” your Holy Word: Chastise will change into a different spell depending on which Chakra state you enable.

When entering Serenity “Heal” Chakra state, your direct healing spells such as Heal, Flash Heal and Greater Heal will have 10% additional crit chance and casting them will refresh the Renew duration provided Renew has been cast on the target. The “Heal” Chakra state will enable Holy Word: Serenity, which is an instant but relatively small heal that also increases your critical strike chance on that target by 25% for 6 seconds. This Chakra state will be your bread and butter spell in 5-man instances, heroics and quite a few 10-man raids.

When entering Sanctuary “Prayer of Healing” Chakra state, all of your AoE healing spells will heal for 10% more and your Circle of Healing cooldown is reduced by 2 seconds (from 10 seconds down to 8). The “Prayer of Healing” Chakra state will enable Holy Word: Sanctuary, which is a targetable AoE heal that heals each person within it for roughly ~600-900 health every 2 seconds for 18 seconds (9 ticks). The healing effect is reduced if more than 6 targets benefit from Sanctuary.

Prayer of Mending is an amazing spell that no other class currently has an equivalent to. Once used on a target, it’ll take effect once that target takes damage and after healing it, will bounce to another raid member in range. Prayer of Mending has 5 charges and will bounce until either its charges run out or the current target does not take damage within thirty seconds. it’s on a 10-second cooldown and should be used on cooldown on a tank or someone else that will predictably take frequent damage. With average gear (ilvl350), it heals for about 6000 on a non-crit and 8000+ on a crit.

Prayer of Healing is a party-wide AoE healing spell with a 2.5-second cast time and a 40 yard range. This will be one of your most-used AoE healing tools and also one of your most mana-efficient AoE heals. With average gear it heals for about 8000 on non-crit and 11500+ on a crit. This should be used whenever whole parties are taking big chunks of damage, especially if said damage is predictable and you can start casting PoH before the actual damage happens. As a fun little comparison, it costs less mana to cast than Flash Heal.

Circle of Healing is a very potent smart AoE healing spell that affects 5 or up to 6 targets if glyphed, with average gear heals each target for about 4000 non-crit and 5500-6500 on crit and has a 10 second cooldown timer. Circle of Healing should be used whenever 3 or more targets in the same general area take damage. Since it’s a smart heal, you’re not able to pick who it’s going to heal, but it’ll pick the 5 (or 6) lowest health raid members within 18 yards of the target. CoH is an instant spell so it’s excellent to use while moving around.

Lightwell, frowned upon by priests and laughed at by everyone else for many expansions, has completely changed its tune. Lightwell is your highest healing-per-mana spell and will save many, MANY lives – if only you can get people to click it. However, this is a constant work-in-progress by priests and raid leaders the world over, and many people have become accustomed to clicking the damn lightwell at this point. Keep the good work up! This is a group effort. With average gear, Lightwell will heal for about 6400 and tick three times for a total of roughly ~19200 health. Lightwell can be placed before a fight even starts, which means you’re able to recover the mana spent on it before a pull, essentially making it free healing. Lightwell lasts for 10 charges (15 glyphed) or 3 minutes.

Heal is your new bread-and-butter single target healing spell. Most trivial AoE and tank damage can be healed up over time by just using Heal. It is incredibly mana efficient, and you will basically find yourself gaining mana while using it provided you have a few raid buffs. Don’t forget to activate the corresponding Chakra state when you know you’re going to be using a lot of direct healing spells. Heal has a 3 second cast time (2.5 with talents) and with average gear heals for about 8000 on a non-crit and 12000 on a crit.

Greater Heal will be a huge help to you when you find yourself as tank healer, or even just when you’re helping out with tank healing or a random raid member takes a large single target damage spike, such as Magmatron’s Acquiring Target ability. Greater Heal has a 3 second cast time (2.5 with talents) and with average gear heals for about 22000 on a non-crit and 32000 on a crit.

Holy Word: Serenity and Sanctuary become active when you activate the corresponding Chakra state. Serenity is most useful while tank healing as it provides a rather small instant heal but also increases your critical strike chance on that target by 25% for 6 seconds. Line up a few Greater Heals after Serenity to hopefully heal your tank back up quickly.

Sanctuary is most useful when your entire raid is stacked up in one spot and taking AoE damage. It is not recommended to use Sanctuary when less than 6 people are grouped up and even then it is a toss-up, as it has a very hefty mana cost of roughly 10000. It does however last for 18 seconds and will heal everyone within it for roughly 600 health every 2 seconds (900 on a crit). The healing effect is reduced if more than 6 people are within the Sanctuary.

Guardian Spirit is useful in any situation where you expect someone to have a relatively good chance of dying. Preferably, this is placed on tanks that take a huge dip, but can also save other people that have neglected to get an essential buff (like Grounded/Levitate on Ascendant Council) or yourself when you’ve done something dumb. It also increases healing received on the target by 40% for its duration, and as such is a great help in restoring a tank’s HP pool. Sadly, its glyph got changed, so now its cooldown is 3 minutes at base value, 2.5 minutes glyphed.

Life Grip is our new toy, and much like Guardian Spirit it can help save people from dying. This is most useful when you catch someone standing in bad stuff on the ground or wish to assist them in kiting. If you have the Talent Body & Soul, using Life Grip on someone will also increase their movement speed for 4 seconds afterward.

Divine Hymn is an extremely potent and smart channeled AoE heal on an 8 minute cooldown timer. This is comparable to a druid’s Tranquility spell, except every tick it’ll pick the three nearby lowest-health targets to heal regardless of party. It’ll tick a total of 4 times on up to three people each time and heals for roughly 9000 non-crit and 13000 on a crit.

Hymn of Hope is also channeled; restores mana to 3 nearby raid members, ticks up to 12 times (total, so up to 4 ticks per person) and increases their maximum mana pool by 15% for 8 seconds. It typically picks the three people with the lowest mana, which means you won’t neccesarily be one of its targets. However, if you use it while your mana pool is extremely low, you’re likely to receive some mana back from it. In any case, it’s a great mana restoration tool for your raid members and they’ll most likely be thankful no matter when you use it.

Inner Fire will be your most-used buff of choice. It greatly increases your armor value but most importantly increases your spell power by 532. This effect lasts for 30 minutes or until cancelled.

Renew should be used on tanks whenever you find yourself tank healing in Heal chakra. However, it has lost most of its appeal in raid healing as renew spam is just not sustainable anymore. You will find yourself running out of mana constantly if you try. Try to keep usage of Renew to tank healing and as a filler spell while moving. With average gear, Renew heals for about 2800 on a non-crit and 4200 on a crit.

Binding Heal can be used whenever you take damage at the same time as another person AND this damage needs to be healed quickly. Binding Heal has a 1.5 second cast and the same mana cost as Flash Heal and heals for slightly less on the individual targets, but since it does heal two people at the same time, it’s more efficient to use than Flash Heal. Neither of them should be used outside of an emergency situation, though. With average gear, Binding Heal heals for roughly 13000 on a non-crit and 16000 on a crit.

Flash Heal has become very expensive to cast in patch 4.0.1. As trade-off, it now heals for signficantly more, about 16000 on a non-crit and 23000 on a crit. It also has a 1.5 second cast time and should be reserved for extreme emergencies as it will quickly drain your mana pool.

Power Word: Shield is an amazing tool made awesome by talents for disc priests that loses a lot of value for holy priests, but useful for two reasons: Firstly, if you have taken the talent Body and Soul, it becomes situationally useful (for instance, to give a person running a debuff out of the raid a speed buff) and secondly, it is an instant spell so you can cast it while running. Mind you that disc priests will not be very happy with you if you decide to randomly shield people, since it places a weakened soul debuff on the target that prevents re-application of Power Word: Shield for 15 seconds.

Desperate Prayer is a rather weak instant self-heal with a 2-minute cooldown that can be used as an emergency heal when you see your own health dipping low quickly, or when you know you’re about to take an inevitable chunk of damage. It heals for about 10000 on a non-crit with average gear and 13000 on a crit.

Inner Will is the other self-buff you can choose to use instead of Inner Fire. Inner Will will give you a passive 10% movement speed increase and will reduce the cost of your instant cast spells by 15%. However, the movement speed increase does not stack with boots- or head enchants and the only instant cast spells you’ll use on a regular basis for regular raiding are Circle of Healing and Prayer of Mending, so Inner Fire will be the better choice in most cases.

That covers just about any healing spell you’ll ever need to know about for raiding purposes.

==Spec==

Fairly common specs:
6/32/3 (25-man throughput)
http://www.wowhead.com/talent#bchZfhMrRkrkcdoh

6/33/2 (10-man mana efficiency)
http://www.wowhead.com/talent#bchZfhrrRorkcdo0b

3/33/5 (Darkness instead of Twin Disciplines)
http://www.wowhead.com/talent#b0hZfhrrRorkcdohbVZ0

Next, let’s talk specs. With the talent spec consolidation that was implemented in 4.0.1, there is not much wiggle room. You HAVE to spec 31 points into holy before you can touch other trees. There are a total of 36 points in the holy tree, so you can skip up to 5 of them. I’ll go over the staple talents that you really should have in your spec.

In the first tier we have Improved Renew, Empowered Healing and Divine Fury. Empowered Healing and Divine Fury are no-brainers that every priest should have in their spec. Improved Renew is still a good talent and one you should pick up, even if you’re not using Renew much right now.

In the second tier we have Desperate Prayer, Surge of Light and Inspiration. Desperate Prayer is situational, but if you think you can get used to it and will use it in situations where your life is in danger, it’s worth spending the talent point. If you won’t use it, skip it. Surge of Light now gives you a 6% chance to trigger an instant, free Flash Heal when you use Smite or Heal. However, in 25-man content, you’ll rarely find yourself using Heal, and statistically speaking, a Surge will only trigger on every 17th cast, so you should mostly spec into it if you do 5- and 10-man content. Inspiration is a no-brainer, do take it.

The third tier greets you with Divine Touch, Holy Concentration and Lightwell and Tome of Light. Lightwell and Holy Concentration are staple talents, definitely take those. Tome of Light is useful especially if you find yourself utilizing a lot of Heal Chakra, and Divine Touch is a good option in lieu of much choice.

In tier 4 you will find Rapid Renewal, Spirit of Redemption and Serendipity. Spirit of Redemption no longer carries its 5% spirit component, but can still occasionally be useful in 5-man and raiding content. If you prefer Surge of Light or Desperate Prayer instead of SoR, take either of those instead. Serendipity now is activated by Flash- and Binding Heal and as such you won’t get quite as much use out of it as you used to, but it is still nice to have in emergency situations to heal both a tank and/or a party back up quickly.

Tier 5 awaits with Body and Soul, Chakra, Revelations and Blessed Resilience. Blessed Resilience is now basically a pure PVP talent, don’t bother taking it. Chakra and Revelations are staple talents, pick up both. Body and Soul is increasingly useful in many raid and instance situations and now also gives a speed boost after using Leap of Faith (Life Grip).

Tier 6 has Test of Faith, State of Mind and Circle of Healing. Circle of Healing and Test of Faith are staple talents, take them. State of Mind is very convenient and one of the better talents to spec into.

Lastly, we have our final 31-point talent, Guardian Spirit. Although its usage is occasional, it’s an incredibly powerful tool that should not be missing in any holy priest’s toolbox. Sometimes you’ll be assigned to use it in a cooldown chain, other times you’ll be able to use it at your discretion when a tank or another raid member is close to death. Either way, it ends up being useful in many situations. Learn to love and use it!

Now, for the other trees – this is actually where the biggest spec variety awaits you. When you look at the first tier of both the discipline and the shadow trees, you’ll find 4 worthwhile talents to take. Keep in mind that you have at most 10 points to spend, though.

The Discipline tree has Twin Disciplines and Mental Agility, whereas the Shadow tree sports Darkness and Veiled Shadows. Twin Disciplines is a direct 6% healing increase and hence should be a no-brainer. If you use a lot of instant cast spells but suffer from mana issues, Mental Agility might be worthwhile for you. On the other hand, Darkness in the Shadow tree gives you a 3% increase in spell haste and Veiled Shadows decreases the cooldown of your Shadowfiend by 1 minute. Twin Disciplines and Darkness are direct HPS increases, so if you don’t have mana issues you’re best off spending your points here. However, if you do have mana issues, you may instead opt for Twin Disciplines and Mental Agility. If you really cannot sustain your mana throughout a fight, Mental Agility and Veiled Shadows might be something to try out.

This also goes for glyphs. With 4.0.1, the glyph system got a huge makeover. We now have three tiers of glyphs – Prime, Major and Minor. Prime Glyphs, according to Blizzard, are meant to be direct performance increases, while Major Glyphs are more situational and Minor Glyphs are for fun and convenience.

There are a total of four useful Prime Holy Priest Glyphs that you should pick up.

* Glyph of Prayer of Healing
* Glyph of Guardian Spirit
* Glyph of Lightwell
* Glyph of Renew

While Glyph of Flash Heal and Glyph of Renew are also Prime Glyphs, neither of them bring a performance boost in the currently widely accepted raid style. However, if you’ve managed the miracle of making Renew sustainable and find it gets a lot of use (or the people you play with still don’t understand the concept of Lightwell), you may wish to exchange the Lighwell or GS glyphs for Renew. For most priests, this is not recommended.

As far as Major Glyphs goes, you have a little more wiggle room.

* Glyph of Circle of Healing
* Glyph of Dispel Magic
* Glyph of Mass Dispel
* Glyph of Psychic Scream
* Glyph of Fade
* Glyph of Holy Nova
* Glyph of Spirit of Redemption

These are all Major Glyphs you may want to look at and evaluate. Glyph of Circle of Healing should be a staple in any holy priest’s setup. Glyph of Dispel Magic provides a small healing boost, while Glyph of Mass Dispel brings your Mass Dispel cast time to 0.5 seconds. To me, these seem to be the most valuable in any given situation, but if you do not make use of either type of Dispel much, you may instead choose to opt for Glyph of Holy Nova or Spirit of Redemption. One lets you pretend you didn’t just die for 6 seconds longer, the other caps your Holy Nova at a 1 second global cooldown without any additional haste. Fade/Psychic Scream are situational, but may prove useful in some boss encounters.

Minor Glyphs will not directly affect your throughput or efficiency, but Glyph of Levitate and Glyph of Fortitude are usually good picks for convenience. Also, Glyph of Shadowfiend is moderately useful if you tend to summon the bugger in the wrong moment and it dies instantly to some sort of annoying AoE.

==Gearing, what to aim for==

As one of three cloth caster classes, you’ll always face gear competition. It’s all the more important to know what you want and look for in gear. Lots of stats are good for us, I’ll list them in the order of how I rate their importance.

* Intellect
* Mastery
* Haste
* Spirit
* Crit
* Stamina

Intellect, since 4.0.1, now grants you spellpower and hence replaces spellpower as the easiest and most straightforward throughput stat. The more Intellect, the bigger your heals. On top of that, intellect increases your mana pool and hence affects how much mana you regenerate from replenishment, shadowfiend and hymn of hope; it gives you critical strike rating (around 150 Intellect equal 1% critical strike rate) and slightly increases your mana regen (this function is tied in with spirit). In short, it’s an incredibly beneficial stat.

Mastery is a new mechanic implemented in Cataclysm. Mastery does something different for every class and spec. For holy priests, Mastery causes Echo of Light, which means that any direct healing spell you cast puts a HoT on the target for 6 seconds. This HoT heals for a percentage of the original heal and the percentage is based on your mastery rating. The base rate with 0 mastery is an 8% HoT, and with each additional full point of Mastery (179.3 Mastery Rating), the percentage increases by 1.25%. Echo of Light currently accounts for about 9% of my total healing over a fight and is a direct throughput increase.

Haste is still a good throughput stat, but has lost a lot of its value since we now have to watch our mana more and use less instant cast spells. Haste gives you faster heals, but on the flip side it also makes you spend mana faster. Currently, around 12.5% haste is sufficient for most priests (128 Haste Rating equals 1% Haste). Past that number, you will probably find it more useful to stack mastery. For more math-y information on Haste, I recommend the Elitist Jerks thread that is constantly updated with Theorycraft. http://elitistjerks.com/f77/t110245-…st_compendium/

Spirit is now a direct mana regen increase and not much else. You should make sure that most if not all of your gear has spirit as a stat to ensure you don’t run out of mana during a fight, but do not gem or enchant for it unless there is no better option.

Critical Strike Rating does what it says it does – it gives you increased chance to crit on your spells, whether they’re damage or healing spells. However, as throughput increase it is fairly unreliable, so it’s low on your priority list. If you pick up a piece that has crit rating and haste rating on it (but no spirit), you should consider reforging some of the crit chance into either haste or mastery rating.

As for Stamina… we all need it. Stamina automatically goes up as your gear level increases. Unless your gear level is way below the level of content you’re doing, you’ll pretty much always have enough of it.

==Enchants and Gemming==

Holy priest enchants are very straightforward. I’ll list what’s generally considered the best choice for each slot.

Head: Arcanum of Hyjal, the 60 Intellect/35 Critical Strike Rating enchant, available at the Hyjal Quartermaster at Revered Reputation would be the best choice.

Shoulder: Greater Inscription of the Charged Lodestone, which adds 50 Intellect and 25 Haste Rating to a shoulder slot and is available at the Therazane Quartermaster at Exalted Reputation. Your second best bet is the Lesser Inscription of Charged Lodestone, available at the same place at Honored Reputation. Obviously this does not apply if you’re a Scribe.

Back: Darkglow Embroidery for a tailor if you need additional regen, Lightweave if you want throughput, 50 INT otherwise.

Chest: 20 to all Stats or 40 Spirit would be your best bets.

Wrists: You have the choice of 50 Spirit or 50 Haste here, depending on whether you want additional Regen or Throughput.

Weapon: Heartsong and Power Torrent are both good choice. Power Torrent will occasionally proc an INT buff while casting, Heartsong will occasionally proc a spirit buff. Quote (and credit) from EJ on Weapon enchants:

For Holy, Heartsong will net about 40-50 more mp5 than Power Torrent. Timing shadowfiend with a PT proc will increase the regen benefits of that enchant. For Disc it’s much closer, with Heartsong having about 10 mp5 advantage over PT. So with good shadowfiend management PT could be nearly equal for regen.

Hands: 50 Mastery and 50 Haste are both acceptable enchants.

Legs: Powerful Ghostly Spellthread will give you 95 Intellect and 55 spirit.

Feet: Lavawalker which adds 35 Mastery and a slight run speed increase or alternatively 50 Haste or 50 Mastery.

As far as gemming goes, there are different ways to gem your character. You can stack just one stat that you’re lacking or that you favor and neglect all others or you can choose to gem for socket bonuses.

I personally prefer to gem for socket bonuses using Brilliant Inferno Rubies (40 INT), Reckless (20 Haste, 20 INT) or Artful (20 Mastery, 20 INT) Ember Topaz and Purified Demonseyes (20 INT, 20 Spirit). That way, I stack up on Haste/Mastery, Intellect and Spirit, the stats that are most important for my playing style. Alternatively, you might prefer to gem all Brilliant Inferno Rubies. This will likely be mathed out in the near future, so stay tuned.

There are two meta gems that you may find interesting. Widely considered as the best choice for healers is the Ember Shadowspirit Diamond, which gives you 54 Intellect and 2% maximum mana.

Another slightly less valid choice would be the Revitalizing Shadowspirit Diamond, which gives you 54 Spirit and 3% increased critical healing effect. Early testing points to the Ember Diamond resulting in more throughput.

That about covers the basics of successful priesting. Thanks for reading!

via tankspot

And here is another great guide from mmo champ.

Your Friendly Guide to playing a Holy Priest in Cata

Welcome! I have seen a lot of posts on the forums lately either TRYING to give out useful information, or asking a lot of questions on certain situations. So here I am, I have been healing since Molten Core, I started as a resto druid, In BC, I played a holy paladin and cleared sunwell, in WoTLK I played a priest and cleared all content. I only post this to state that what I say is legit.

I do not come here to throw theory crafting and numbers in your face. I come simply as someone who knows how to play the game, and help others in a simple play style.

SECTIONS:

-Spells
-Chakra States and Uses
-Talents
-Gear
-Gems/Enchants
-Glyphs
-Races/Racials
-UI/Mods

-Encounters/Mechanics

[Section 1] – Spells

As a holy priest you will find yourself with a massive amount of tools at your disposal for healing. It’s not what spells you use, but the situations you use your spells in. I feel this is EXTREMLEY important and often times confused with which spell is “the best”. Truth is, there is NO best spell, each spell has a use of it’s own to increase efficiency in every encounter you come across.

-PoM [Prayer of Mending]

This spell should absolutely be used on cool down regardless of whether or not the fight is healing intense or not. The utility this spell has to offer is unlike any other, simple enough, it’s the smartest heal in the game. It bounces to other targets the are low on health, and heals them the next time they take damage [Yes it CAN crit as well]. You never know when there might be an add that does a quick aoe [For example the mobs in stonecore with a AOE ticking ability, this causes prayer of mending to bounce back and forth until all of the charges are used up, healing anyone who takes damage with PoM on them].

-Heal/Chakra State: Heal

Ah yes, heal. Welcome back! There is a lot of frustration/confusion on how exactly this spell should be used. To be honest, it should absolutely be your #1 go to healing spell for most encounters. With ANY trash pull, UNLESS i know for a fact it’s a heavy AOE pull [Which is rare in heroics] I always start with renew, chakra Heal.

Why you ask? Simple:
-Cheapest heal we have
-Heals enough to keep the group up
-With enough regen it costs no mana at all [Meaning if your spirit/in combat regen is high enough your regen will tick faster then heal will cost mana.]
-Heal Chakra increases ALL single target spells crit chance by 10%
-Heal Chakra Refreshes renew on anyone it hits [Best for tank healing, but can be used on aoe fights as well as very useful mechanic]
-Out of mana? No problem! Cast heal. [Again, if you have enough Regen this is absolutely possible to do while being almost completely oom]

Downsides? Maybe a few:
-Slower cast
-Not good for emergency situations [Which we will discuss later]

Heal has endless amounts of usage, blizzard bringing this spell into our arsenal was the best choice ever. Do not under estimate the useful ness of Heal, or Heal State: Chakra.

-Flash Heal/Surge of Light

Easy enough, it’s our emergency heal and also comes from our SoL procs. Unfortunatly, there are plenty of situations you will probably be finding yourself using this spell. For example:

-Bad pugs
-CC going wild attacking everyone
-Someone made a mistake and everyone just took a huge AOE hit
-Someone didn’t move out of the fire fast enough and almost died
-You get the picture hopefully.

Flash heal is a spell you will find yourself using when people make MISTAKES. I will say this, and live/die by it. If you know someone died by standing in something they shouldn’t have, defend yourself as a healer. Let the group know it was not your healing error but simple a mechanic of a fight that has to be avoided by said person. On a quick sidenote, I feel that people base their play style on bad pugs, and I don’t think this is how it should be. Holy priests have a VERY specific play style, and a unique one to boot and should not be swayed to think otherwise.

Back on topic, Flash heal is your ‘AMG CRAP CRAP CRAP SOMEONES DYING” Go to, emergency spell. Try your best to not panic if people get low on health and think you HAVE to cast flash heal. It’s pretty rare that is the case and again, only if someone messes up.

Now onto Surge of light. People whine, complain that it is only a 6% proc chance. With the amount you cast heal however, it procs quite often. Which is another reason you should be using heal more!

Surge of Light makes your next flash heal cast within 10 seconds instant cast, cost NO MANA, BUT not able to crit.

Benefits:
-Instant Free Heal [What could be better?]
-Flash of Light procs Serendipity
-ITS A FREE HEAL!!! Use it regardless if someone needs it, it procs serendipity, and why waste something thats free?!

-PoH [Prayer of Healing]/CoH[Circle of Healing]
By far, my personal favorite spells we have for so many reasons.

Prayer of Healing: Heals all members of your current party within range for X amount.

Benefits: PoH

-Aoe healing, obviously
-Glyphed with PoH glyph + mastery it puts an extremely nice hot on anyone it hits.
-Not a terribly high mana cost, yes it costs more then other spells… but think about it, it’s healing 5 people all at the same time for the amount that your HEAL hits for. Not too shabby.

Benefits: CoH
-Instant Cast
-Used directly after a PoH, can increase the amount of aoe healing done in a short time span.
-Can be used in emergencies when someone is JUST barley alive and you have no other way to heal them.
-Not a terrible mana cost
-Procs our Mastery Hot

On the note of using CoH directly after PoH, upon discovery, I found that you should NOT actually cast CoH directly after a PoH, instead let the mastery from PoH tick once, THEN CoH. Which means waiting about an extra second, which isn’t bad.

Reason: CoH appears to be clipping the mastery hot that is applied from PoH if it is cast before the mastery gets a chance to tick once.

So, here it is. Our aoe healing arsenal. PoH and CoH. Clearly our choice for aoe fights. Such as, Sindragosa! yes I know it is cata, but most people have seen this fight and can relate to the type of aoe damage it puts out.

One of the best aspects of PoH/CoH combo is the master proc, PoH glyphed puts a hot on the targets it heals healing 20% over 6 seconds, with 6500 Spell power, thats roughly 1000 Every two seconds for 6 seconds. On top of the mastery proc, with 18-20% Mastery, roughly the same as the glyphed hot. So we are looking at a TWO hots

1 Ticking every second for 18-20% (if you geared properly)
1 Ticking every two seconds for 20% (If glyphed)

Conditions of using these two spells are fairly simple:

-If you have 1-2 Stacks of serendipity up
-If the group is taking HEAVY consistent aoe damage [I bring back the trash mobs from stonecore that spam that nasty AOE]
-THe entire group is at 50% health and you know it’s going to continue to go down, cast PoH.

Do not be afraid to cast PoH if it’s needed. CoH helps, but often times just is not enough to get an entire party back up to where they need to be. The mana cost is higher then other spells YES. However, has multiple abilities that proc off it, increasing it’s efficiency.

-BINDING HEAL

Wait, whats that spell do again? OH RIGHT! It costs the exact same as flash heal, however… heals TWO TARGETS! Your current target, and then YOURSELF. Also slightly healing for LESS, then a normal flash heal, but more then a regular heal.

Wait so, you are telling me this spell has actual USE? Well of course my friends it DOES! Believe it or not, blizzard actually made this a good spell in cata.

Benefits:
-Procs Serendipity x1
-Heals two targets, for the same mana as one spell that heals a SINGLE target
-Procs our Mastery

So, you ask “What situations would I cast this?” I answer this by saying “OMG THERES AN ADD ON ME AND MY OBLIVIOUS PUG TANK HAS NO IDEA AND OMG HES TAKING DAMAGE AND OMG SO AM I!!”

I think that speaks for itself, when you are taking damage as well as someone else you are healing [I find this most useful when I am tank healing]

I wouldn’t say this is a spell i use TERRIBLY often, but often enough to post it in this guide as an important play style mechanic.

-Greater Heal

Welcome back to molten core raiding 101!!

Ill start with this:

Benefits:
-By far our most mana efficient/largest heal spell we have.
-Heals for more then Flash Heal, AND costs less mana.
-Procs our mastery
-Great for healing when people are low on health, but there is no incoming damage.
-With serendipity x1 or x2, it has the same cast as a flash heal and costs 40% less mana.

Downsides:
-Same cast time as heal [NOT A 100% DOWNSIDE]
-Unreliable as an emergency heal unless x2 serendipity is up

So, as I was saying. Our by FAR most EFFICIENT heal in the game for the above said statements. I find myself using this spell a lot honestly. It’s a good replacement for regular heal when people are low on health, but just not taking damage. [Perhaps they stood on a bomb in TolVir and got blown up].

I strongly recommended use of this spell when you can. People seem to shy from it because of its slow cast, but half the time you will have at LEAST 1 serendipity up due to SoL procs from flash heal. And honestly, you just should be using this spell when heal is just not enough.

-Renew

Discussion time, I have had a lot of people trying to convince me that renew is still a good spell for multiple people. I cannot come to terms with believing this, to me I just think there are many other spells in our arsenal that can be used more effectives then renew can, I think it’s a great spell for SITUATIONS, but I do NOT advise the use of relying on renew to save anyone.

They nerfed renew spam quite a bit in cata, it costs a lot more mana now, and does not heal quite as much as needed in current encounters for the high mana cost.

Id say it’s more about a quickness thing, yes healing is less frantic, but renew also ticks fairly slow, every two seconds. With 7500 spell power it still only ticks for 3500/2s.

Not bad, but not amazing! For aoe encounters I still suggest a mix of PoH and CoH timing and SoL procs.

Currently with haste and renew: You need 12.5% raid buffed haste [meaning any class buffs you get, moonkin aura, lock buff, shaman totems ect] in order for your renew to grant an extra tick of healing.

Benefits:
Good for tank healing

Downsides:
-High mana cost
-slower healing then PoH/CoH
-Does not heal for enough to be useful with current health pools/raids as aoe healing

-Hymns

Divine Hymn, and Hymn of Hope.

Divine Hymn

Basically casting 3 regular heals on your party members every x amount for 12 seconds and increasing healing done to those targets by 10% for 8 seconds. Its usefulness comes in that it IS a smart heal. Meaning it targets low party members first to heal them up.

Benefits:
-OMG EVERYONES TAKING DAMAGE AND IDK WHAT ELSE TO DO
-Decent amount of healing, wont top off a group like it did in wrath, but can sustain health pools during aoe spikes.
-Not a terribly high mana cost, 7.7k
-Good for end of fights when mana is running thin
-Does proc mastery

Downsides:
-Does not heal for enough to top off a group
-Long Cooldown

This is absolutley a panic spell, for me at least. I find myself using it most when things unexpectedly happen and I can’t react fast enough to said situations, mostly at the end of boss fights. A good example is the THIRD boss in Blackrock Caverns. The aoe damage at the end of that fight + adds can make it somewhat tricky to decide who is going to take the most damage at that time, PLUS, everyone at that point is taking massive damage and I pop it at 10+ stacks regardless just to be safe.

Hymn of Hope

Nerfed in wrath, meh. Still a good spell for multiple reasons.

Benefits:
-When used with shadow fiend + arcane torrent. Gives back MASSIVE amounts of mana
- Grants you 15% of your mana for 8 seconds [Great for those times when you are OOM, and just HAVE to get off a PoH or two, or a couple flash heals.]
-Grants 2% of your mana every 2 seconds [Less with haste] for 8 seconds]

Downsides
-Very VERY long cooldown
-Bosses seem to love casting a spell on you right after you use this cooldown, so be wise when you use it!

Lightwell

-THEY MADE IT GOOD!!! YAY!

All I can say about this spell, is GET PEOPLE TO USE IT. Before every boss fight, I place it to ensure people see it, and make note of how good it is simply because a lot of people do NOT understand how much it got buffed and how much of a group saver it CAN be.

Benefits:
-6k+ hot [Depending on SP] every two seconds.
-No mana cost
-Usable by whoever needs it

Downsides
-People DONT use it
-People FORGET to use it
-People TUNNEL vision on their DPS and dont realise it’s just as important for them to manage their OWN health pool when able to

I can’t say enough how glad I am blizzard made this a useful spell, I can say I wish it worked more like the lightwell you see in ToC 5 man. However, I cannot complain because this spell is just TOO good to NOT use!!

I can’t stress enough making a macro for this spell, stating its usefulness within. I have a macro that describes it and everytime I cast it I see someone say “Oh wow they buffed lightwell? It’s actually good now!”

-Power Word: Shield/Body and Sould[Talent]

I am going to go more in depth with this talent, to show it’s usage and clarity of when it should/should not be used.

IF YOU ARE SPECCED INTO BODY AND SOUL IN THE HOLY TREE. It makes PW:S one of your largest tools to survive in raids. Increases your movement speed by 60% for 5 seconds when you cast power word shield on the target.

This is absolutley something that I would spec into regardless of the fight, because you are ALWAYS having to move around on bosses at SOME point and avoiding mechanics.

“BUt there is a disc priest in the raid and i don’t want to screw them over!!!”

Answer: Coordinate the fight with the said disc priest,, let them know you are specced into body and soul and tell them that you will be shielding people targeted by mechanics they need to escape from. This prevents the problem of worrying about weakened soul on the target, and any confusion in the raid.

“I got yelled at by a disc priest for shielding people, but I thought i was doing the right thing?”

Answer: Check why you were shielding people, were you doing it at the correct times? Do not shield people if you have a disc priest in the raid UNLESS you coordinated with them and told them you were shielding specific people or during specific times. If they don’t understand after that, then they are just silly and should read up on their other talent trees more.

benefits:
Body and Soul [Easier positioning transitions, quicker movment out of void zones/fires/bad things/ect.]

Downsides:
Mana cost
Does not absorb as much as disc
Interupts disc priests bubbles on the raid

Leap of Faith

Our new cata healing tool!! yayyy. well, not REALLY healing, but in a sense yes.

Benefits:
Need I say more? Grip those baddies standing in fire tunnel visioning their weak dps!

Downsides:
I can’t say I know of any! Maybe it’s longish cooldown, but shouldn’t be needed that often if the group is competent.

Every day I find myself using this more and more in different ways, not just in “OMG GET OUT OF THE FIRE” ways but, also in ways of “TANK WHY ARE YOU KITING THE BOSS TOWARDS OTHER TRASH PULLS? *Grips* kind of ways.

It has endless utility, and in my opinion IS a healing tool because it can reduce the amount of healing you may need to do in a group/raid setting.

Find your own ways to use this spell as much as possible, but dont be silly with it and start griping people for no reason…

-Shadowfiend

Need I say more? Sadly yes, because our shadow child simply forgets to take his ADD medication on a daily basis *sigh*

Make this macro.

#showtooltip Shadowfiend
/cast [nopet] Shadowfiend
/petaggressive
/petattack
/cast [harm, pet] Shadowcrawl; [target=pettarget, pet] Shadowcrawl
/cast [target=pet,exists]Dispel

Because unless we dot a boss, this wonderful tool will simply sit at our sides and purr at us quietly asking to be pet. Instead of shadowcrawling the boss and being useful.

Inner Will/Inner Fire

Not really a “Healing” tool, but more of a output/regen tool.

I personally have not used inner will yet in an encounter, I am sure I will eventually but if you manage your mana properly you shouldn’t HAVE to use this spell. It’s more of a playstyle choice then anything.

TO me, id say it’s a better disc talent for shielding then anything because of the mana reduction

Innerfire is the spell I use, I just like having the spell power and glyphed, the extra armor to mitigate any melee damage I might take from adds/aoes.

Benefits: Inner Fire
-More spellpower/output
-Increased armor from glyph

Benefits: Inner Will
-Reduces mana cost of all INSTANT cast spell by 15%
-Increased movement speed by 10%

Downsides: Both
None

Guardian Spirit)

It’s our “OH CRAP SOMEONES DYING” spell. Mostly used on tanks, but I have found plenty of times to use it on DPS.

For 10 seconds ALL healing done to the target is increased by 40%, and if the target takes a killing blow during the duration it saves them and heals them for 50% of their health instantly, removing the effect if triggered.

Great spell for holy priests to have, it’s our saver for tanks and anyone who is about to die, not much else to say about it as use it wisely and make sure you don’t waste it on someone standing in a fire and not moving, if they die to it. Thats their own fault.

Benefits:
-Life Saver! And increased healing for the duration if it isn’t triggered.
-VERY low mana cost

Downsides:
-Long Cooldown

Spirit of Redemption[Talent]

I have gotten into some discussion on wether or not this is a raid viable talent. The answer?

YES, for god sakes think about it. It’s a new expansion, new content new possibly never before seen mechanics. Wipes happen, deaths happen, mistakes happen. People are going to make mistakes, whether or not it’s you, is beside the point.

Examples: Someone has a debuff on them and didnt move out of the raid fast enough, and you just happened to be on the outer edge of the group just close enough to said person, and were the only person in the raid to get hit be this “explosion” of sorts. you die, GUESS WHAT?

SPAM HEAL THE CRAP OUT OF EVERYTHING TILL IT’S USED UP! Then wait for a battle res, if it is available.

Example 2: “Oh my god an add spawned and the tank wasn’t able to pick it up fast enough, i got healing aggro and got owned”

Guess what?

SPAM HEAL THE CRAP OUT OF THE RAID!!!!!

See what I am getting at? Situations happen, where this talent could be either a group saver or simply, just an announcment to the raid that you oopsed, one which is good, one which is obviously bad.

A lot of people have the idea of “WHY ARE YOU DYING YOU DONT NEED THIS TALENT!!”

I go back to my point on progression, enough said on that note.

A lot of discussion on this talent has also come up because of the fact that it does NOT give the 5% spirit buff anymore. Which is true, but because of above said statements I reccomend taking it.

Call it playstyle, if you don’t see it suited for you. THen don’t take it I am not forcing it upon you to say “YOU MUST HAVE THIS!” For me, it’s my playstyle to be ready for ANY situations that arise in a raid setting where things can go wrong, very very quickly.

Chakra: Serenity/Sanctuary

-OK! here we go. CHAKRA! No not naruto chakra, well.. kind of, but not really

Lets start with the basics of ANY chakra state.

-Chakra is probably the biggest change to how holy priests work in raids, think of different chakra states as “stances” similar to how battle/defensive/Berserker work. or DK presense.

-The difference? Chakra is actually a spell you have to work to maintain for a period of time by casting certain spells to add time to the duration, and also to proc the chakra “state”

-Chakra: When activated your next Heal, Prayer of mending, Prayer of healing or smite will put you in a chakra state based on what you used to trigger it.

-Tome of Light: It’s our wonderful talent that helps us keep chakra refreshed. Whenever you cast one of the trigger spells that trigger a specific chakra state, it increases the duration of said chakra state by 4 seconds. No cooldown. With this talent, you can keep a chakra state up infinitely and is highly suggested to take advantage of this.

Lets start here.

Chakra: Serenity

It’s our single target healing chakra. What does it do? Increases the critical chance of all single target spells by 10%. So that list includes, flash heal, greater heal, heal, and our wonderful Holy Word: Serenity.

Which brings me to our holy word. Holy Word: Serenity. It’s the spell we gain through Chakra State: Serenity. It’s an instant cast that heals roughly between what heal and flash heal would hit for, capable of a critical hit. It also puts a buff on the target that increases the critical strike chance of YOUR heals on that target by 25% for 6 seconds.

-This holy word can be used in multiple situations, the best two I reccomend are:

-When you need to get an instant cast off on someone who is low on health.

-When you need to bomb heal the tank.

Overall it’s a great spell for us, it’s low in mana cost, and heals for a good amount. It also procs our mastery.

When should I be using chakra: serenity? Well, it’s up to you really, but I can suggest a few situations that might occur that give you full benefit of this chakra.

-When bosses are not heavy in aoe damage, and there are bursts of spike damage on a single target.
When you are TANK healing
Heroic 5 mans, where random “oops” happens a lot, and there just isn’t a lot of AOE damage that isn’t healable by single target casts.

-Between phases in boss encounters, for example atramedes. In ground phase I am in our other chakra state, otherwise known as Sanctuary. And during the air phase, i switch to Chakra: Serenity.

Atramedes is a good example for the useage of switching chakras during boss encounters due to the very different types of damage that go out in the different phases of the fight. Ground phase he aoes a lot on the raid, where poh/coh/mending is needed. Air phase damage is mostly based on how people are positioning themselves and who gets targeted by certain single target abilities.

Moving on! Chakra: Sanctuary!

I mentioned this spell already, you can probably guess what it does!

When chakra is up, and you cast either PoM or PoH it procs. It increases the healing done by all aoe effects by 15% also including renew. Also reduces the cooldown on Circle of Healing by 2 seconds.

This is obviously, our AOE healing chakra. This is used when boss fights wield high amounts of aoe damage and a lot of PoH/CoH/PoM is needed. 15% on our aoe healing abilities is no joke, because on top of the extra 15% to our AOE healing, thats 15% to our mastery from those spells we cast.

Examples of when to use:

Sindragosa: Constant heavy aoe damage on the entire raid the entire fight

Atramedes [Grounded]: Bursts of heavy aoe damage on the raid

Chimaeron: Heavy aoe damage consistantly, although you don’t have to get people TOPPED off, you have to get them to a certain health, quickly.

This chakra is refreshed by PoM and PoH.

Section 2 – Talents

You could say holy priests have several options in terms of specs, I am only going to list the three I personally see most effective.

1] http://www.wowhead.com/talent#bchZfu…cdoh:aVozmV0mV

2] http://www.wowhead.com/talent#bchZfurrRzbkcdoob

3 http://www.wowhead.com/talent#bchZfurMRzrkcdoh [Body and Soul]

4] http://http://www.wowhead.com/talent#bchZfubrRorkcdoh For those of you who love renew, and cannot let go of the talent.

The difference lies within either Darkness 3/3 or Veiled Shadows 2/2 and having Body of Soul 2/2. Body of soul after 3.1 became VERY useful for encounters where kiting is specifically important, in current content[Raids] there are plenty of fights this could become useful.

I personally play the third spec, it’s more of a playstyle issue then anything. I have been a healer for a VERY long time, so I know how to manage my mana properly enough to not need the extra cooldown on shadowfeind. Not saying I wouldn’t even use it, I may switch eventually, but for the time being I personally prefer the haste.

There are other specs out there, even one with archangel in it, but none of those specs are just as viable as these two. They both have your main arsenal in healing, and your regen talents as well.

Specs right now are fairly self explanitory so there isn’t much explanation needed, feel free to ask questions on this part if needed though!

Glyphs

PRIME

-Glyph of Prayer of Healing: Need I say more? No reason to NOT get this glyph as a holy priest.

-Glyph of Renew: Could be switched out for Lightwell glyph, but until I feel comfortable with people ACTUALLY using lightwell I will keep renew for the tank.

-Glyph of Guardian Spirit: Reduces cooldown by 30 Seconds.

Major

-GLyph of Dispel: One of the best glyphs in my opinion. On a tank with 180k Health, this is actually an effective heal when dispeling. I wouldn’t say spam it on the tank to actually heal them, but casting dispel takes time away from actually healing, and you should NOT ever NOT have this glyph

-Glyph of Circle of Healing – More of a raid glyph, but still an excellent one, increases the usage of CoH by 1 target. Think of it as a free heal.

-Glyph of Inner Fire: Increases armor from inner fire by 50%. Not a bad glyph, not the best. I use it just in case random adds go haywire in groups. Extra mitigation is never a bad thing.

Minor

No real major choices, I use Shadowfiend, Shadow protection, and levitate.

Optional Prime Glyphs:

-Spirit of Redemption (Ignore the people who say “WHY ARE YOU DYING YOU SHOULDN’T NEED THIS GLYPH ITS BAD) It is simply and elitest statement that should be ignored. The truth is, if you are progressing through raids, dying is GOING to happen… and battle res IS available in raids, so if something happened and something killed you, 6 seconds of extra healing wouldn’t be a terrible thing if you could get battle resed right after.

Flash Heal: This would be my last option in terms of glyphs seeing how flash heal is not used nearly as much, and the situations where people are below 25% health are low. 10% crit is nice, but not as useful as other glyphs.

-Glyph of Mass Dispel: Useful for Algaloth 25 man in baradin hold, could be used on other encounters but is more of a situational glyph VS a permanent one due to mechanics of fights, its rare you will have a raid 100% grouped up needing a mass dispel.. unless you are fighting Felmyst… which you shouldn’t be

Either guardian spirit OR renew can be switched out for lightwell and I highly recommended it if you are in a raid setting where people actually use lightwell, 5 more charges is 5 more heals being cast at NO mana cost, nothing could be better.

Section 3 – Gear/Stats

Ok GEAR/STATS! WOO! Favorite part!

I am not going to sit here and harp on “YOU HAVE TO USE THIS PIECE OF GEAR BECAUSE ITS WHAT IS BEST IN MY OPINION.

I am simply going to state what I play with, and what STATS are priority. Simply because everyone has a different play style and gear comes as it drops, theres no need to know exactly what piece of gear you need. As long as you can recognize when a piece has good stats for your class, thats all you need.

The basis: Int>Spr>Haste>Mastery>crit

Why you ask? Simple.

Intellect – is above all else, because it gives you the most of anything. Both Spellpower (Output) and Regen (replenishment + bonus to spirit regen), and increases your overall mana pool. More mana = More casting regardless of regen

Spirit – Your regeneration, and as a holy priest with the last hotfix increasing total in combat regen for a holy priest to 90% absolutley one of the most important stats you could have. Why?

-Spirit gives you BACK mana over time.
-Mana lets you cast, so regen in a way can be thought of as output because if you regen mana, you can cast more. If you don’t regen mana, you can’t cast!

A lot of people can say intel is still superior to spirit, which yes is true to an extent. However, your mana will eventually run out regardless of how much int you have, you NEED spirit in order to gain back what you lose from casting.

Haste - Output, currently in cata it is far harder to get haste to a higher% I do NOT reccomend STACKING haste gems. But if a piece of gear has haste on it that drops, and you are wearing a crit ring. HASTE SHOULD NOT BE STACKED IF YOU DO NOT HAVE ADEQUIT MANA/REGEN FOR ENCOUNTERS. Spirit/Int comes ABOVE any other stat. Do not start stacking haste until your regen is high enough to sustain the faster casting.

-Currently for haste 12.5% haste RAID BUFFED, gives you an extra tick on your renew, this does NOT enforce renew spam, simply makes renew a better spell for that case
-Haste reduces the casting of all spells, and now that you are using more slow spells to cast, it’s important to have haste on your gear to increase casting times on heals.
-It’s output, haste allows you to cast MORE spells in a shorter period of time.

Mastery - I fell in love with mastery once I got it higher, having a good 18-20% mastery as holy is what you should aim for currently, more isn’t bad. However, do not sacrifice other stats to stack mastery.

-Increases output, and is healing at NO mana cost
-Refer back to glyph of PoH + mastery in earlier section

You just can’t go wrong with mastery, it’s free healing.

Crit – Not a very useful stat for healers, not absolutley terrible but not something I would say you should gear/gem for. SoL no longer procs off of crits, just off of heal casts which completely threw crit under the bus.

-Crit is better for disc then holy
-SoL does NOT proc off crits anymore

Section 4 – Gems

There are a lot of options for gems, Personally I play by what I need, not whats “best”

-For example, if I am low on spirit, and I have blue sockets, I would gem either Int+spirit, or just a spirit socket.
-Low on int/SP? Socket Int/mastery, Int/haste, or pure int.

On current gear, the socket bonuses are very useful, because sockets have changed to either pure stats, or sub stats.

-If a socket bonus has intellect, get it, if it has spirit, get it.

Things like haste/Mastery are optional for sockets, but make sure you are meeting your meta gem requirments and if you have a socket color that matches one of your priority stat gems, then get it for god sakes!!

Hybrid Gems

Orange
http://www.wowhead.com/item=52208
http://www.wowhead.com/item=52205

Purple
http://www.wowhead.com/item=52236

Pure Breed Gems

Red
http://www.wowhead.com/item=52257 [Jewelcrafting only]
http://www.wowhead.com/item=52207

Blue
http://www.wowhead.com/item=52244
http://www.wowhead.com/item=52262

Enchants:

http://www.wowhead.com/item=52761 [Heartsong] – Has a VERY high uptime of 200 Spirit, BEST healing enchant until you can get power torrent.

http://www.wowhead.com/item=52774 – [Power Torrent] Best enchant once your guild gets the enchant/materials. Currently a very expensive enchant and only recommended using it on 359+ items you wont replace for a while, unless you have the gold to spare of course.

http://www.wowhead.com/item=52760 [Hurricane] – 450 haste proc for 12 seconds, decent enchant for output, I wouldnt reccomend using for holy, good for shadow.

Leg Enchants
http://www.wowhead.com/item=54448 [ Epic ] – Also a tailoring version which is practically free but wields the same stats.

http://www.wowhead.com/item=54449 [Blue] – Very Cheap if you cannot afford the epic one, or do not have tailoring at 475.

Shoulder Enchants
http://www.wowhead.com/spell=86403 – Inscription, best shoulder enchant possible.

http://www.wowhead.com/item=62343 – Therazane Exalted

Gloves
http://www.wowhead.com/item=52749 – 50 Haste

http://www.wowhead.com/item=52687 – 50 Mastery

Bracers
http://www.wowhead.com/item=52770 – 50 Spirit

http://www.wowhead.com/item=52785 +65 Haste

Chest
http://www.wowhead.com/item=52739 – 20 Stats

http://www.wowhead.com/item=52765 – 40 Spirit

Cloak

http://www.wowhead.com/item=52773 – 50 Intellect

http://www.wowhead.com/spell=75175 – Tailoring 800 mana proc

http://www.wowhead.com/spell=75172 – Tailoring 580 Spell Power Proc

Head
http://www.wowhead.com/item=62367 – Hyjal Exalted +60 Rep

UI/Mods

For healing, especially now that we are back to actually having to THINK about healing. Having a clean UI is important, I will post my current UI as an example. There are many MANY uis you can download from Wowinterface.com that would be suitable for healing as well, or you can always create your own.

Here is Mine.

[IMG] Uploaded with ImageShack.us[/IMG]

Mods I personally wouldn’t raid without.

Grid
Deadly Boss Mods

Those three are honestly as much as you will need for raiding, the other mods are used simply due to making UIs look nice and customizable. Others may argue but if you know your stuff well enough, you should only need .

Other useful mods:

Clique
Bartender [Easy keybindings and customization for raids]
Sexy map [Able to make your map smaller/fade it out to clear up screen space]

Useful macros:

I will start with mouseover macros. If you do not like to use clique [Which does take getting used to, but it's amazing when you do] mouseover macros are your next best option by far. I have been using mouseover macros for healing since molten core, and have never gone wrong with them!

What do mouseover macros do for us?

A: They simply make healing easier, how they work is easy. They allow us to cast a spell on a target, simply by pressing a key on our keyboard and hovering our mouse over the target. The nice part, is there is absolutley no clicking to target people required, just moving your mouse around on the screen over health bars.

It makes healing faster and more effective.

An example of this would be:

#showtooltip Circle of Healing
/cast [target=mouseover] Circle of Healing

You would then put this macro on your hotbar, and find which hotbar it is placed on. Then bind that macro to a specific key on your keyboard. For me for example, my CoH is bound to my number 3 button for easy access.

You can currently do this with ALL healing spells EXCEPT FOR HOLY WORD:X

Currently for holy word:X, the only workaround I found is THIS:

#showtooltip Holy Word: Chastise
/target [@mouseover]
/click ActionButton10
/targetlasttarget

What this macro does, is creates a way for your game to click ANOTHER hotbar key by pressing this macro.

How would I use this?

I would put this macro on my hotbar, and bind the key. Then for example, the macro says its going to click “ActionButton10″ I would find where action button 10 is on my bars, and place “Holy word: Chastise” from my SPELLBOOK, onto ActionBar10. Then when I used this macro, it would use whatever chastise has morphed to.

NOTE: IN ORDER FOR THIS MACRO TO WORK, YOU MUST HAVE HOLY WORD CHASTISE ON YOUR HOTBAR. Do not forget like I did at first and wonder why it’s not workin!!

A great mod for this, is bartender, easy access to keybinds and knowing which hotbar you are using!

Dispel Macro + Stopcasting.

I have ALWAYS had a stop casting command in my dispel macro, simply for fights where dispeling is a priority over healing. If you are the only dispeler this will be more useful for you then you think.

Example: I am in the middle of a greater heal, and the boss puts a dot on someone that needs to be dispelled instantly. This macro stops whatever you are currently casting and casts dispel on your target.

Macro:
/stopcasting
/cast [target=mouseover] Dispel Magic

Power Auras

More now then ever as a holy priest, we have to maintain specific “states” and buffs.

Here is an example of my power auras, I will explain it’s use after the pic

Intersting layout aye? Mine is more elaborate then most need to be, I do it because im a nerd and I like to keep everything cohesive with my class.

BREAKDOWN:

The yellow/orange streaks you see on the side I have setup when SoL procs.

The blue “Antlers” on the top show serendipity stacks, when there is only one stack only the lower layer of blue shows up, two stacks theres two layers.

The golden angel wings in the middle show my chakra state, you cannot see the one behind it, but I also have the same one that is green. Golden shows heal chakra, green shows aoe chakra.

More now then ever this mod is useful for priests, it’s a simple way to keep track of procs and chakra, and makes your screen look nice.

On a side note, in my power auras setup, do you see a holy moose? i do.

Races/Racials

Goblin/Blood elf are best right now in terms of racials if you are looking to change or make a new character.

Blood elf being on top. Arcane torrent gives back 6% mana every 2 minutes, it’s basically a free mana pot every 2 minutes. With 100k Mana, thats 6k Mana back, which is a flash heal or greater heal which can either save or wipe a tank on a boss.

Goblin gives a 1% static haste buff, not a bad racial, but not the greatest. Good for output however.

Trolls give a nice haste buff, works like a trinket use ability. Good for bursts of healing, id put it third on the list in terms of being useful.

Tauren don’t give any real good racials to priests, warstomp maybe for pvp. The extra health is nice, but minimal at best.

Undead are good for pvp, fear break.

In all honesty, unless you absolutley BOUND to racials helping you, play the race you want to play! The game is completley doable regardless of class, it’s simply just perks that help a little not game breaking.

Professions

Currently there is some kind of benefit from EACH profession regardless of class.

I currently use engineering and inscription.

Blacksmithing gives Bonus sockets.

Tailoring gives decent cloak enchants and free leg enchants

Inscription gives an AMAZING shoulder enchant

Engineering gives an epic helm, and great tinker enchants for PVE content [Warning on failures ]

Herb gives a haste buff for a short amount of time

Alchemy gives mixology and a boost to flasks.

My top picks are obviously engineering/inscription.

Reasons:

Engineering currently grants a tinker to your gloves. with 1 minute cooldown increasing intellect by 420 for 12 seconds. Which rounds out to around 90 static intellect Absolutley fantastic.

Aside from that tinker, there is also Nitro Boost, which most of you have hopefully seen it grants a huge movement speed boost for 5 seconds [AMazing for escaping things] the downside? it can fail and actually cause effects that are able to kill you, for example.. instead of making you run fast, it blows you up in the air and can kill you from falling damage.

Inscription gives you the best shoulder enchant in the game, 80 more intellect then the epic one from reputation. Thats a lot of intellect.