Gear is actually a bit different from Discipline and Holy from what I understand, although I’m still learning Discipline. I can tell you with the way I play Holy priest, I aim for 1200 Spirit before anything else; then spellpower, critical strike, and haste. Most Holy priests on the forums say Intellect > critical strike, but I am a big fan of Surge of Light procs. Above all else though, Spirit is your friend! It’ll give spellpower thanks to Spiritual Guidance, not to mention the extra oomph from Spirit of Redemption and Holy Concentration, so it is a wildly better stat for Holy than Discipline. Avoid mp5 whenever possible because it doesn’t have the chemistry Spirit does with Holy talents.

I’m personally building a Darkmoon Card: Greatness for Spirit for my smite set because hit gear commonly lacks Spirit and it’s just that amazing for the Holy tree. In REALLY mana intensive places like ToGC, I’ll be using that card for healing as well. I highly recommend it if you’re looking for a quick fix! The comments on WoWhead in the link go into a lot of detail about how the Spirit version benefits Holy priests and Restoration druids.

Guardian Spirit is your single best spell IMO (other than maybe Circle of Healing); it’s not just a crutch to save a tank like Pain Suppression is, but a means to boost healing overall on the tank temporarily. I always walk around with the Guardian Spirit glyph so that I get the spell back real fast when the tank doesn’t die during it’s duration, and I swap out my other two glyphs based on the situation. It’s great for times when you know the tank might take spike damage, like Ony landing!

Hybrid healers are people that can off-heal in a pinch and are mostly filled these days by Elemental shamans. The problem with Shadow priests and Balance druids is they have to dance forms, and Retribution paladins don’t really have the mana pool for it. Smite priests are a great alternative but it’s a very rare spec in WotLK; back in BC, the GCD wasn’t as gimpy and smite was more feasible. It takes an excruciating amount of hit, Spirit, and crit to pull off effectively (over 2.5-3k); I’ve only recently been able to do it in raids without problems and it took a ton of i226+ gear! They’re almost worthless in 25-mans but situational-awesome in 10-mans.

Let me know if you have any other questions; glad to help!

Anyway, thank you for the response and again with all the help! My guild and I are not quite yet to 10-mans (although my friend is probably there with her gear and experience, she just hasn’t done it yet). For the most part, we’ve got our heroics down – with the exception of TotC for me (the healer) and our tank. Our tank is struggling to hold aggro, which makes heals hard for me. But I’m also a little weak with emergency situations, and I’m realizing I need to read up on all the fights and figure out what’s best to do when. It’s not all cookie-cutter, is what I’m finding out!

Good to know about ToGC, though, and I’ll be sure to keep this info for when we do get started on 10-mans, which really may not be too long for some of us. I got the glyph for renew, and I use body and soul for PW:S. Keep forgetting about Guardian spirit, but i’ll try to practice with it more in our 5-mans, so I’ll be ready in the future.

So, hybrid healers are like a 3rd person that can “off-heal?” That’s really good to know for when we start forming our raid groups. Can’t decide if I’ll mostly holy heal or stick with disc. I’m more comfortable with disc, probably because I’m used to having to keep our tank alive! And I love bubbles, especially since I have the glyph that gives a little bit of a heal. But sometimes my group suffers, so I wanted to look into holy. It’s a toss up now, but as I get more comfortable (and my other guildies improve), I’ll probably learn what works best for us.

Lots to think about and continue to research! Thanks again!

Thanks so much for the kind comment! My guild has just started ToGC (heroic 10-man), so I admittedly don’t have too much to offer on that front. But I can tell you about the first boss, which we have had success with!

If you’re playing a Holy priest in there, you’re going to want the other healer to be a strong class for tank healing, like a paladin (or a Discipline priest :p). On Gormok, you’ll want to use your Guardian Spirit aggressively on the tanks that are spiking from impale; Gormok’s the hardest part of the ToGC Beasts fight. It’s really important to keep the Renews going on both tanks, and I actually glyph for Renew for that fight because it helps me keep up with Impale’s tick. I save Divine Hymn for if worms spits all over too many people’s faces at once.

We planned on going into ToGC this weekend with two other healers and myself in smite spec, since our raid/guild lead has read so much about hybrid healer/the 2.5 healer method being effective in there. It’s one of those situations where 3 healers is great–but then you need DPS to keep up with the timer!–and 2 healers is stressful. I’m a tad intimidated about the prospect since elemental shamans (and pretty much every other hybrid) hit harder DPS than a smite priest, but then, smite priests have the best hybrid heals in pinchy situations.

For regular-10man ToC–the strat I went over in this guide was built around that. I try to be responsive to damage I know is inevitable in that raid, i.e. I keep my Circle of Healing ready for Worms spitting on things, Icehowl throwing the raid out; Guardian Spirit ready for when someone forgets to click the portal right before Twins explodes; and on Anub, I like to use Body and Soul’s Power Word: Shield effect to make sure people can run to the snow and avoid the spikes. (Which is about the only time a Holy priest should be PW:S, versus a Discipline priest using PW:S all the time; it’s a mana sink for a Holy priest to bubble too much! >.<)

Hope this helps!