Nov 18 2009

Holy priest PvP spec

I recently went over Smite priest PvP spec, which looked at the viability of a lvl 80 smite spec in battlegrounds. This spec gives the priest the utility of switching between DPS and heals with relative ease.

But what if you want to heal exclusively in PvP situations?

I’ve always been Holy > Discipline, regardless of the situation; because of that, I’m going to review a strong, deep Holy tree build for PvP. If you’re looking for a Discipline build–admittedly more common in PvP situations–then try the Cookie Cutter Discipline Priest PvP Build or the Alternative Discipline Priest PvP Build from WoWWiki.

Holy priest PvP spec (14/57/0)

This spec involves the following talents:

HOLY

  • Holy Specialization (5/5): If you decide to swap Surge of Light (see below), swap this with Blessed Recovery and Healing Prayers for survivability and greater Prayer of Mending spam / mana sustainability.
  • Improved Renew (3/3): See strat below.
  • Healing Focus (2/2): Pushback resistance for when the Horde (or Alliance?) are pounding on you.
  • Spell Warding (5/5): 10% reduction to spell damage in PvP? Yes, please!
  • Divine Fury (5/5): For obvious reasons.
  • Holy Reach (2/2): This will let you hide in the battleground bushes (or whatever) and do your damage/heals from a ninja position.
  • Desperate Prayer (1/1): Will save your life.
  • Spirit of Redemption (1/1): Will save someone else’s life.
  • Surge of Light (2/2): Only take this if Holy Specialization and your gear brings you to a 25% crit rating. The free Flash Heals will be beneficial in sticky situations, but it’s useless if you don’t crit enough to take advantage of the talent often. If you decide to skip Surge of Light, you can invest into Martyrdom in Discipline instead, or 2/3 Holy Concentration.
  • Spiritual Guidance (5/5): Since you’ll be investing into the Spirit-based PvP gear, this is the way to go for your extra spellpower.
  • Spiritual Healing (4/5): I only invested 4/5 into this because I was straining on points. If you opt out with some of the optional talents mentioned, you can drop an additional point in here.
  • Blessed Resilience (3/3): This is the most important PvP talent to any priest that has points invested into the Holy tree. You will notice a drastic improvement in classes that thrive off of critical strikes to blow you up. Also note that Blessed Resilience can proc off of crits that never actually landed due to Resilience; the talent is taken into consideration before Resilience is.
  • Body and Soul (2/2): This talent is almost as important as Blessed Resilience. See below for more.
  • Serendipity (3/3): This is key for getting off quick, powerful heals in PvP situations. It’s also one of the most enjoyable factors in Holy healing.
  • Circle of Healing (1/1): Is win.
  • Empowered Renew (3/3): See strat below.
  • Divine Providence (5/5): Give your healing spells an oomph and make your instant casts more frequent.
  • Guardian Spirit (1/1): In PvE, I encourage priests to use this to bolster heals rather than actually sacrifice the spell; in PvP, it’s the exact opposite. Use this when you know you or a teammate is about to die.

Here’s a visual of the tree:

Lvl 80 Holy PvP Build

When PvPing this way, some points to keep in mind:

  • Instant casts are your friend. The more you refrain from a casting bar, the more you save yourself from interrupts. If you went ahead and followed my preference of taking Holy Specialization and Surge of Light, this will be easier for you. I operate with this kind of spell priority:
    • Keep Prayer of Mending up on yourself, but try to refrain from PW:S. You’re a pin cushion, but you don’t want to lose your sprint when it’s time to run.
    • Renew anyone taking damage or about to take damage. Empowered Renew and Improved Renew really help with this. If you’re in a situation where you know you’re about to get mauled, Renew yourself ahead of time.
    • The moment more than one person in the area has damage–even if it’s just two–Circle of Healing. This will likely proc a Surge of Light and you can insta-Flash Heal the person lowest in health. If it’s you, consider Desperate Prayer instead and Flash Heal the next most wounded target. Always think of CoH as your SoL-proc-button.
    • PW:S is your insta-cast sprint button. Don’t be afraid to give a flag carrier or a near-death ally sprint. If you get really good, you can recognize when someone’s trying to kite a melee and PW:S the melee to catch up with the kiter.
    • Dispel, Dispel, DISPEL!
  • Gear for Spirit. There is Spirit PvP gear, and my goodness, it’s meant for you! Also, make sure you have 5% hit rating to get rid of paladin bubbles and other nifty offensive dispel duties.
  • Use Serendipity to try to ninja in a PoH or GrH whenever a kicker isn’t in range of you.
  • If someone interrupts you, don’t be afraid to use Shadow spells; fear is the most ideal. (Did I mention that 5% hit is helping you scream?)
  • Resilience = better Blessed Resilience.
  • I personally save Inner Focus for my “Oh crap!” moments where I realize I’m out of mana and need to pop my fiend.
  • Glyphs vary, but I like the FH and Renew ones. CoH glyph is great for big battlegrounds.

Any questions, thoughts, concerns? Feel free to ask / share!

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Filed in Holy, Priest | Kourtnie McKenzie

7 Comments

  • By Maurya, November 19, 2009 @ 8:56 am

    Great guide, explained a lot :)

    I’m still a 32 priest but once i hit 80 it’s going to be thrown into the arena’s and bg’s as a healer. :)

    Thanks for the info

  • By Kourtnie McKenzie, November 19, 2009 @ 9:47 am

    Maurya, thanks for the kind comment! Holy PvP is much more enjoyable in battlegrounds than arenas because it is designed to heal large amounts of people fast. That said, I arena with my Blessed Resilience because I like how it’s constantly available (unlike Pain Suppression with its cooldown.)

  • By Aquaria, January 9, 2010 @ 8:00 pm

    Interesting post and nice to see people being inventive with their specs. Sadly the cookie cutter spec for PvP is the best. For arena that is. In BG’s I could see it being viable as targets are normally focused and burned and its more of a random free for all. The fact still remains no priest will make it to Glad rating with Holy spec. Although it is way more fun to play imo.

  • By Kourtnie McKenzie, January 10, 2010 @ 8:14 pm

    I agree that Gladiator rating is probably not happening as Holy. My 3’s team is currently only in the 1200’s (although we keep getting higher each week; we normally stop after the minimum 10 games.)

  • By Seramin, May 1, 2010 @ 5:44 pm

    hello ^^ i’m new to this page, recently i started leveling priest only for BG purposes and was searching for a good holy pvp spec (guide), i would have only one question, which addons do you use when playing in BGs ? Keep up the good work ^^

  • By Kourtnie McKenzie, May 10, 2010 @ 10:32 am

    Seramin,

    I apologize for the delayed response. :)

    I use Grid and Bartender 4. I use hover macros (ex. /cast [@mouseover] Flash Heal) on Grid and have Grid set up to 25-mans for BGs. Bartender 4 lets me shove all my buttons into one corner and Grid takes up the other 2/3 of the bottom of my screen. I have a pretty large monitor to pull it off at max resolution. When I was shadow, I used Need to Know and Tell Me When, but otherwise, I only rely on the above two addons.

    Hope that helps!

  • By Seramin, May 11, 2010 @ 6:22 pm

    Many thanks for reply, and no need to apologize :) . I was thinking wether to use Grid maybe in a combination with Clique or to use Healbot, but as soon as i ding 80, i will try with Grid. Thanks again ^^

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