Holy Priest Baseline Spells
This page contains all of the baseline Holy Priest spells.
##JUMP## and ##TESTING## Tags still need some editing work for navigational/testing purposes
Circle of Healing
Circle of Healing aka CoH
- The cooldown of CoH is reduced by Haste.
- CoH is a smart heal. It heals the target and 4 injured allies within 30 yards.
- Credit to Chaoly for the following diagrams, they show that CoH will prefer injured allies anywhere within 30 yards of your target.
Desperate Prayer
Desperate Prayer aka DP
- Heals the casting Priest for 25% of their health prior to the health increase being applied.
- Increases the casting Priest's hitpoints by 25% for the entire duration.
Dispel Magic
Dispel Magic aka Purge, Dispel
- Commonly known as Purge. Often referred to as "Dispel" when referring to an enemy target.
- Will cost mana regardless of actually removing an effect from the target or not.
- Does not have a cooldown but only removes 1 Magic effect per cast on an enemy target.
Divine Hymn
Divine Hymn aka. Hymn, DH
- Hymn buff increases all healing received from all healers, not just the casting Priest.
- Hymn channel time is decreased with haste
- Hymn ticks 5 times, spaced evenly throughout the channel with the first tick happening immediately
- The Hymn buff that increases healing received stacks up every time it ticks
- Gaining a stack refreshes the duration back to 15-seconds
- This means the healing buff will last for 15-seconds after the last tick refreshes the buff
Fade
- Fade does not trigger the GCD and can be activated between casts
- Fade reduces your threat to below 0 when cast, but does not remove you from the threat table
- Fade reduces the distances enemies will attack you by around 7-8 yards.
Flash Heal
Flash Heal aka FH
- Nothing of note to mention about FH.
- ##JUMP## to Trail of Light to see the FH interactions.
- ##JUMP## to Holy Words to see the FH interactions with Holy Word: Serenity.
Focused Will
Focused Will aka FW
- FW stacks are only generated by direct melee attacks.
- FW stacks are not generated by most physical AoE attacks.
- Some AoE attacks are flagged as a kind of melee attack, and will trigger FW. These are fairly rare unfortunately.
- Gaining a stack of FW refreshes the duration back to 20-seconds.
Guardian Spirit
Guardian Spirit aka GS, Angel, Wings
- "Massive Damage amounts will kill the target despite this effect" – The threshold for this is 200% of the target’s maximum HP in overkill. This means if the target is at full HP they can take up to 300% of their maximum HP in damage before dying.
- This effect works by providing the target with a special absorb once their HP hits 1. This special absorb doesn’t absorb damage before the health pool like regular absorbs, instead absorbing damage once the health pool of the target has been reduced to 1.
- Example: Target has 10% HP left and takes a hit for 30% of their maximum HP. The first 10% of the incoming hit reduces HP to 1, and the remaining 20% of the incoming hit is absorbed by Guardian Spirit which then heals the target for 40% of their maximum HP.
- This heal is capped at 200% of the casting priests maximum health. This doesn’t affect normal usage and was introduced to prevent it from being abused on NPCs with high health pools.
- GS can only heal for a maximum of 200% of the casting Priest's maximum hitpoints
- The increased healing effect increases all incoming healing on the target, not just healing from the casting priest.
- Taking damage that causes the life-saving effect to proc causes Guardian Spirit to be removed from the target immediately, including the increased healing received buff it provides.
- ##JUMP## to Guardian Angel to see the GS interactions.
- ##TESTING## Consumption of multiple Guardian Spirits on one target
Heal
- Nothing of note to mention about Heal.
- ##JUMP## Trail of Light to see the Heal interactions.
- ##JUMP## Holy Words to see the Heal interactions with Holy Word: Serenity.
- ##JUMP## Flash Concentration to see the Heal interactions.
Holy Fire
Holy Fire aka HF
- HFs ticks scale with Haste.
Holy Nova
Holy Nova aka Nova, HN
- Holy Nova scales linearly for up to 5 targets. For 6 or more, it then scales using the "1/sqrt" method.
- The formula is:
(1 / Sqrt(Max(5, number_of_targets))) / (1 / Sqrt(5))
- The formula is:
- Holy Nova will trigger a second time at 50% effectiveness (both healing and damage) if it damages at least 3 targets.
Holy Words
Holy Words aka Serendipity, HW CDR
- Holy Words grants Cooldown Reduction to the relevant Holy Word when specific spells are cast.
- Cooldown reduction is granted only to Holy Word: Sanctify, Holy Word: Serenity and Holy Word: Chastise. Not Holy Word: Salvation.
- Cooldown reduction for Holy Word: Sanctify:
- Prayer of Healing – 6 seconds
- Binding Heal – 3 seconds
- Renew – 2 seconds
- Cooldown reduction for Holy Word: Serenity:
- Flash Heal – 6 seconds
- Heal – 6 seconds
- Binding Heal – 3 seconds
- Cooldown reduction for Holy Word: Chastise:
- Smite - 4 seconds
- The Light of the Naaru talent increases all cooldown reduction gained by Holy Words by 33%
- Cooldown reduction for Holy Word: Sanctify:
- Prayer of Healing – 8 seconds
- Binding Heal – 4 seconds
- Renew – 2.67 seconds
- Cooldown reduction for Holy Word: Serenity:
- Flash Heal – 8 seconds
- Heal – 8 seconds
- Binding Heal – 4 seconds
- Cooldown reduction for Holy Word: Chastise:
- Smite – 5.33 seconds
- Cooldown reduction for Holy Word: Sanctify:
- The legendary power Harmonious Apparatus grants the Holy Words passive to additional spells.
- Cooldown reduction for Holy Word: Sanctify:
- Circle of Healing – 4 seconds
- Cooldown reduction for Holy Word: Serenity:
- Prayer of Mending – 4 seconds
- Cooldown reduction for Holy Word: Chastise:
- Holy Fire – 4 seconds
- Cooldown reduction for Holy Word: Sanctify:
- Cooldown reduction is also applied by the Holy Oration conduit.
Leap of Faith
Leap of Faith aka. Life Grip
- Leap acts as described, "Leaping" the target through the air to your location. This means they will still hit some effects such as beams/walls when gripped through them, and avoid most effects that are on the ground such as fire or poison. Blizzard are super inconsistent with this though so be sure to test it out on a specific mechanic before relying on it as a life saver.
- Leap will interrupt your targets current casts if they can't be cast while moving.
- Leap can not be cast on a target that is not in your party or raid.
Levitate
- Levitate is cancelled when damage is taken.
- Levitate can be used to move over some specific ground effects without being affected (debuffs or taking damage), but most will still hit the levitated target.
- Levitate can not be cast on a target that is not in your party or raid.
Mass Dispel
Mass Dispel aka. MD, Mass
- Mass Dispel is one of the few abilities in the game that can dispel a Paladin bubble and Mage ice block.
- Mass Dispel on friendly targets behaves similar to Purify, dispelling all magical effects on up to 5 friendly targets. This only removes magical effects though, not diseases.
- Mass Dispel on enemy targets can hit up to 5 targets, removing 1 magical buff from each target.
- A popular macro for Mass Dispel to prevent the flickering of the targeting reticule, is:
#showtooltip
/cast !Mass Dispel
- In Patch 9.1, MD was hotfixed, as Mass Dispel was dispelling targets in a specific order based on the character's GUIDs. This mechanic paired with a weakaura was causing it to be used to predict where people had to stand for the knockback on the Remnant of Ner'zhul encounter in Sanctum of Domination.
- This hotfix does not change how Mass Dispel functions in any meaningful way, and was done to prevent "gaming" of the dispel order functionality it previously had.
July 20, 2021:
When Mass Dispel dispels multiple targets, the order of dispels is now random.
Mass Resurrection
Mass Resurrection aka. Mass, Mass Res
- Mass Resurrection casts are cancelled if you enter combat during the cast
Mind Soothe
Mind Soothe aka. Soothe, Smooth
- Can be cast on any Humanoid or Dragonkin, including bosses.
- Does not generate threat or put you in combat when cast.
- Combined with Fade, can be used to move very close to enemies without getting into combat with them.
Mind Vision
Mind Vision aka. MV (Noone has ever actually called it MV)
- Can be cast while already channelling Mind Vision on a new target, effectively letting you chain it infinitely. This lets you explore continents or raid/dungeon zones so long as you can target (or /target) new allies/enemies to cast the next Mind Vision on.
Power Infusion
Power Infusion aka. PI
- Power Infusion does not trigger the GCD when cast.
Power Word: Shield
Power Word: Shield aka. pw:s, shield
- Power Word: Shield returned to Holy Priest in Shadowlands.
- PW:S scales with intellect, critical strike and versatility
- Unfortunately, PW:S doesn't scale very well at all for Holy Priest and the mediocre absorb it provides makes it largely a useless and expensive spell that should be avoided in almost every situation.
- Does not scale with the Holy Priest Spec Aura.
Prayer of Healing
Prayer of Healing aka. PoH
- Prayer of Healing hits only the target and their 4 closest allies. There is no smart healing that targets injured or most injured allies.
- ##JUMP## to Holy Words to see the PoH interactions with Holy Word: Sanctify
Prayer of Mending
Prayer of Mending aka. PoM
- Is instant-cast.
- Cooldown is reduced by Haste.
- Stacks to a maximum of 10 stacks.
- When bouncing to or cast on a target with PoM already, it increases the stacks up to 10 and refreshes the duration to 30 seconds.
- Does not collide with other Holy Priest’s PoM,targets can have multiple PoM on them from different priests.
- Heals immediately after the target takes damage.
- Prefers bouncing to injured targets without PoM already.
- Can leave renew when talented into Benediction.
- Is left on targets hit by Holy Word: Salvation, but with only 2 stacks.
Purify
Purify aka. Dispel, Cleanse
- Removes all magic and disease effects when cast on a friendly target.
- Casting purify on a target that doesn’t dispel any magic or disease debuffs, does not cause Purify to go on cooldown, but still costs mana.
- Confusingly despite being called Purify, it is most commonly referred to as Dispel and sometimes even Dispel Magic (not to be confused with the Holy Priest spell Dispel Magic of the same name), or the paladin magic dispel Cleanse.
Renew
Renew aka "Don’t cast Renew"
- The amount of Renew ticks are modified by haste. Haste doesn’t increase the duration of Renew, just increase the number of ticks inside its regular duration.
- Renew scales linearly with haste with no breakpoints, resulting in a micro-tick of Renew to account for additional haste outside of added Renew ticks.
- Due to an effect commonly referred to as Pandemic, if renew is refreshed with less than 3 seconds remaining, that time is added on to the regular 15 seconds.
- Refreshing renew with more than 3 seconds remaining will only increase the remaining duration of Renew to 18 seconds (15 base + 3 extra). ##TESTING##
Resurrection
Resurrection aka. Res
- Resurrection casts are cancelled if you enter combat during the cast
Shadow Word: Death
Shadow Word: Death aka. sw:d
- Nothing of note yet.
Shadow Word: Pain
Shadow Word: Pain aka. sw:p
- Nothing of note yet.
Smite
- Smite has a passive increasing its damage (Smite Rank 2), commonly referred to as "Smite Rank 2"
- ##JUMP## to Holy Words to see the Smite interactions with Holy Word: Chastise
Symbol of Hope
Symbol of Hope aka. SoH, Symbol
- Restores a percentage of missing mana only, not total mana
- Only affects friendly healers within 40 yards at the time of the cast
- SoH ticks 1-second after the channel begins, every 1-second until it ends (5 ticks total)
- Receiving the SoH benefit grants the Symbol of Hope
- Cast time is increased by haste, condensing the time between ticks
- Each tick returns 3% of missing mana (dynamically updates throughout the channel)
- Each tick reduces the cooldown of a specific defensive ability by 12 seconds.
- This is done by increasing the cooldown recovery rate by 1200% ##TESTING##
- The following abilities have their cooldown reduced by SoH:
Spec | Ability | Spec | Ability |
---|---|---|---|
Death Knight - All | Icebound Fortitude | Paladin - Retribution | Shield of Vengeance |
Demon Hunter - Havoc | Blur | Priest - All | Desperate Prayer |
Demon Hunter - Vengeance | Fiery Brand | Rogue - All | Crimson Vial |
Druid - All | Barkskin | Shaman - All | Astral Shift |
Hunter - All | Exhilaration | Warlock - All | Unending Resolve |
Mage - All | Mirror Image | Warrior - Arms | Die by the Sword |
Monk - All | Fortifying Brew | Warrior - Fury | Enraged Regeneration |
Paladin - Holy | Divine Protection | Warrior - Protection | Shield Wall |
Paladin - Protection | Ardent Defender |