Holy Talent Guide

This holy talent guide goes over each of the talents in the Priest's holy talent tree. The Holy talent tree is for Priests that spend their time healing. The holy talent tree is the most commonly used talent tree for high level Priests, as the vast majority of priests spend their time healing in the end game. The tree allows you to cast bigger, faster, more effective heals that will keep your group alive longer. When being invited to a group, unless you let players know otherwise, they will assume that you are a holy priest.

Return to the Priest Talent Guide. The Priest Talent guide contains the links to all three talent trees: Holy, Discipline and Shadow. These Talent guides provide you with the resources to better understand Talents and the best ways to go about spending your Talent Points.

• Healing Focus - Max 2 points, provides up to a 70% chance to ignore interruptions caused by damage when casting your healing spells
  • This removes much of the interruptions that you would get from being hit when trying to cast. It does not reduce the chance of stuns or any other interruption though.
  • Stacks with other interruption avoiding abilities such as a paladins Concentration Aura.
  • Recommended
    
    
• Improved Renew - Max 3 points, Increases the amount your renew heals by up to 15%
  • Increases one of your common healing spells to be more efficient, this one is a no brainer if you are a healer.
  • Strongly Recommended
    
    
• Holy Specialization - Max 5 points, Increases the critical effect chance of all your holy spells by up to 5%
  • Works for all holy spells and is a must for Smite builds.
  • Great for damage and healing, although tends to contribute greatly to over healing.
  • Recommended

• Spell Warding - Max 5 points, reduces all spell damage that you suffer by up to 10%
  • In most situations you will not be hit by spells, since your tank will be the center of attention.
  • This ability really comes into play in PvP though where you will be targeted as one of the first targets.
    
  • Recommended for PvP
    
    
• Divine Fury - Max 5 points, reduces the casting time of your smite, holy fire, heal and greater heal spells by up to 0.5 seconds.
  • Reduces the cast time of your Greater Heal by 16% which effectively increases its mana efficiency by that much as well.
  • Offers a significant improvement to both damage output (Smite) and healing over time
  • Does not change the base time of the spells, meaning they keep the same amount of +healing or +damage.
  • Must Have Talent for Smite Builds

• Holy Nova - 1 point skill, an AoE spell that damages all enemies and heals all friends within 10 yards, without causing threat.
  • This ability provides your only real AoE ability and can be very useful however it casts TONS of mana at almost 900 mana at top rank.
  • Very nice to have though and worth the 1 point
  • Recommended
    
    
• Blessed Recovery - Max 3 points, heals you for up to 25% of the damage taken over 6 seconds, whenever you are critically hit.
  • This is meant mainly as a PvP talent, however since it does not stack and you only have the most recent one active it is of limited use.
  • If you have shield up, it can activate, but since you took no damage you heal no damage.
  • Skip it
    
    
• Inspiration - Max 3 points, increases your targets armor by up to 25% for 15 seconds after each critical heal on them.
  • This is a very nice ability when healing tanks (best of all raid tanks) since extra armor on then means less healing needed to be done.
  • Extends your mana pool in long fights if you are healing the same target over and over again.
  • MUST Have for Raid Priests

• Holy Reach - Max 2 points, increases the range of your Smite and Holy Fire spells and the radius of Prayer of Healing, Holy Nova and Circle of Healing by up to 20%
  • Range is not an issue with most of these abilities in PvE especially with Holy Nova since its radius is so small that a 20% increase is next to nothing.
  • Comes into its own in PvP where Smite and Holy Fire increase to 36 yards of range. This can be important where you will be targeted and need someway to hit first.
  • Useful in PvP but not essential
    
    
• Improved Healing - Max 3 points, decreases the mana cost of your Lesser Heal, Heal and Greater Healing spells by up to 15%
  • This one is very simple to understand, it increases your mana efficiency as a healer by 15%, making you last 15% longer.
  • Must have for Holy Priests
    
    
• Searing Light - Max 2 points, increases the damage you cause with Smite and holy fire spells by up to 10%
  • This talent is a must for Smite builds as it improves your damage by 10% for 2 points!
  • Most healers will try to pick it up for soloing as it is easy to justify the 2 points.
  • Strongly Recommended

• Healing Prayers - Max 2 points, reduces the mana cost of your Prayer of Healing and Prayer of Mending spells by up to 20%
  • While Prayer of Healing is a great group heal, it suffers a major downside, mana cost.
  • 20% reduction makes this a much easier ability to use as you can use it more often without fear of running out of mana.
  • Must have for Holy Priests
    
    
• Spirit of Redemption - 1 point skill, increases your spirit by 5% and when you die, you become a spirit of redemption for 15 seconds. While you are the spirit you can cast all healing spells for free.
  • This ability provides a last ditch effort to save the group, even if you die. While 15 seconds does not sound like a lot, it allows at least 5 greater heals to get off, which if you are close to the end of the fight, can save the group.
  • If nothing else the 15 seconds of healing allows the groups backup healer to get out of combat and switch roles to healing.
  • The 5% spirit bonus is worth the point alone
  • Strongly Recommended and a must have for Holy Priests
    
    
• Spiritual Guidance - Max 5 points, Increases all your spell damage and healing by up to 25% of your spirit.
  • WOW! On most level 70 priests this simple talent will provide roughly 75 extra healing and damage, all for only 5 talent points. I don't know many players that don't take this one if they are 20 points into Holy.
  • Strongly Recommended and a must have for Holy Priests

• Surge of Light - Max 2 points, up to 50% of your spell criticals allow your next Smite spell to be an instant cast spell, costing no mana but being unable to critical hit.
  • Any spell can grant this ability. You can be healing, get a critical, cast your free smite and then go back to healing.
  • Better yet, because it is an instant with no casting cost it does not set off your 5 second rule or global cooldown.
  • Recommended and the core talent for Smite Builds
    
    
• Spiritual Healing - Max 5 points, increases the amount healed by all your healing spells by up to 10%
  • Who can argue with 10% more healing for 5 talent points?
  • Must have for Holy Priests

• Holy Concentration - Max 3 points, provides up to a 6% chance to enter a clearcasting state after any Flash Heal or Greater Heal is cast. When in this state your next Flash Heal or Greater Heal costs 100% less mana.
  • Any free spell is a good spell and one that doesn't start the 5 second rule!
  • Any spell cast can trigger the ability, which may then be used on any other spell. Meaning you can spam rank 1 Flash Heal to get the proc and then cast a max level Greater Heal.
  • Must Have for Holy Priests
    
    
• Lightwell - 1 point skill, allows you to create a lightwell that members of your group can click to restore health over 6 seconds. Any damage taken cancels the effect, and the lightwell itself lasts for 3 minutes or 5 charges whichever happens first.
  • This is meant to be a core Holy ability by Blizzard, however it is not widely used. Many players click off more than a single charge or never use it, so many priests ignore it.
  • Can be very mana efficient if everyone uses it perfectly or horribly mana inefficient if used wrong or not at all
  • Nice, but depends on the group
    
    
• Blessed Resilience - Max 3 points, up to 60% of the time when critically hit, you will become immune to critical hits for 6 seconds.
  • Provides some defense to the multiple crits so common in PvP and worth taking there.
  • In PvE where you are not as likely to get hit, never mind critically hit, it has less value
  • Recommended for PvP player

• Empowered Healing - Max 5 points, increases the healing bonus from your items to your Greater Heal by up to 20% and you Flash and Binding Heal by up to 10%.
  • The math on this one can get complicated since the bonus is based on your +healing stat and then reduced by the spell coefficient. How it works out in the end though is that Greater Heal ends up getting +105% of your +healing bonus and Flash and Binding Heal get +53% of your +healing bonus instead of the base 85% and 43% values.
  • Scales amazing well with gear since it is entirely based on your gear.
  • Must have for Holy Priests

• Circle of Healing - 1 point skill, heals all party members within 15 yards for up to 550 health.
  • Heals the target party or raid member and everyone in their group around them and is fairly mana efficient if there are multiple people around them in the same group.
  • Very hard to use effectively in most cases due to limited range
  • Very useful in some fights that require players to cluster into groups.
  • If your this far into holy you really should take it.
  • Recommended

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