Holy priest arena and pvp guide for MoP

[BALTOBOULBOBBI]

With disc being worse than ever, more people have started trying to pvp as holy instead. I have played pvp as holy only since April 2011 and decided to share some useful knowledge. Being a member since 2007, this is actually my first created thread here. Holy priest arena and pvp guide patch 5.0.5 1. Talents and Glyphs 2. Rotation and Abilities 3. Statistics Priority 4. Macros and tips Talents and Glyphs Tier 1: Void Tendrils is the best choice for 3v3 where it greatly improves your survival against melee cleaves and melee/hunter teams (which always target the holy priest). For 2v2, dominate mind is a must have to be able to finish games versus dps/healer teams. However, if you see that you are facing a double melee dps team, Void Tendrils might be a better choice. For RBG's I find all three talent to be equally useful Tier 2: A hard choice between Body&Soul and Phantasm. Body&Soul is useful in more situations, both when you are the target and when your team mate is the target, and since we are not specced into Psyfiend, B&S also help us reach our fear target. Tier 3: Mindbender is an easy pick since you will almost never be casting flash/greater/binding heal to get FDCL procs. Power Word Solace is just not good enough (yet). Tier 4. In Cataclysm, Desperate Prayer could heal you for up to 100% due to all the healing bonuses holy had. Now it is always a 30% heal, never more or less. Spectral ***** is very situational. It can help you avoid a few attacks from casters, but unlike deathing a sheep, absorbing a poly with Spectral ***** does not cause diminishing return, and with the fact that so many CCs have become instant and that the talent is worthless against melee, Angelic Bulwark is our only choice here. Tier 5. An easy choice just like tier 3. You will not be casting any Prayer of Healings or Greater Heals, and haste is close to worthless for holy, which means Twist of Fate is the best talent here, especially since it activates from Guardian Spirit procs. Tier 6. Divine Star is the best pick for any arena. Cheap mana cost and short cooldown makes it worth using in our rotation. For RBGs however, Cascade is the best spell with its huge range and homing capabilities. Halo is way too mana expensive to use on only 2-3 targets in arena, and has too short range to compete against Cascade in battlegrounds. There are two mandatory glyphs. Glyph of Prayer of Mending should be used since this is one of our two main heals. Glyph of Lightspring will put your Lightwell on autopilot, which your team mates will appreciate. It also does something that the tooltip doesn't tell you, it increases its range by a lot. The third glyph should be changed depending on what you face. Inner Fire or Fade against melee cleaves, Inner Snactum or Shadow Word: Death against casters. Rotation and Abilities Your rotation depends on the ammount of damage the enemy team is capable of. At low pressure, for example in 2v2 against a dps/healer, your rotation would be: Place Lightwell Cast Renew Prayer of Mending Holy Word: Serenity Prayer of Mending Holy Word: Serenity Prayer of Mending Holy Word: Serenity and so on. With this rotation, you will not drop any mana at all. At medium pressure you just add Power Word: Shield into your rotation. This spell is a bit more expensive so you might drop some mana slowly, but not enough to go OOM if you use your Mindbender. At high pressure, for example while being constantly trained by a warrior and DK, you might have to add Circle of Healing and Divine Star into you rotation. These spells are multi target heals, which means it will be a small heal for a big mana cost, but it will be neccesary to stay alive. At very high pressure, for example when a mage and warlock is popping cooldowns on your partner, you will have to complete your rotation of instant spells with Flash and Greater Heals. Example of rotation at maximum pressure: Prayer of Mending Holy Word: Serenity Power Word: Shield Circle of Healing Divine Star (if your partners are withing range, otherwise skip) Flash Heal Flash Heal Greater Heal Statistics Priority Intellect=pvp power>mastery>crit>haste Try to keep a 60:40 ratio between intellect and pvp power. Mastery is slightly better than crit now that Prayer of Mending counts as a direct heal. Renew and Lightwell are the only heals not affected by mastery. Crit affects all your healing spells, but since you get more mastery percent per stat point than crit, mastery will boost your healing slightly more. I always say that spirit and resilience is a personal matter. You might find out that different ammounts are optimal in 2v2, 3v3 and RBGs. Macros and tips You can find a whole lot of priest macros in other guides, but I will provide you with some holy exclusive ones. The following macro will disable your active Chakra on the first click, cast Chastise on the second click, and go back to Chakra: Serenity on the third click. Tip: the duration of Chastise is longer than the cast time of Dominate Mind, which means holy priests can land a guaranteed mind control every 30 seconds on classes like warriors, which would be hard otherwise. Very useful in 2v2. #showtooltip holy word: chastise /cancelaura Chakra: Serenity /castsequence reset=4 Holy Word: Chastise, Chakra: Serenity Now that Serendipity is a baseline holy ability, the following macro will save you a keybind. #showtooltip Flash Heal /castsequence reset=20 Flash heal, Flash Heal, Greater Heal Replace your Flash Heal with this macro. This will cast a Greater Heal instead of Flash Heal every time you have 2 Serendipity stacks. Patch 5.0.5 Made by Bigbossman, Khadgar EU 2,3k exp holy priest. Bigbossman @ Khadgar - Community - World of Warcraft The Holy Channel - YouTube